Full Colour Cancer Supplement
Now Playing: Feature song: REM - Shiny, Happy People
Topic: Living Despite Chemistry
The March 1st edition of the
Vancouver Sun included a supplement from the
BC Cancer Foundation promoting their new research facility in Vancouver. Oddly, the very tiny title at the top of the pages say "Special Advertising Feature,"as though it was a presentation about lavish new homes.
"Take a few moments to read the stories of courage...touched by cancer." The expression "touched by" almost suggests that cancer could be contracted through having random strangers brushing against you. The gentleness implied refers to the Currier and Ives image of a cancer patient lying in bed, frail and delicate in a darkened room. Maybe they mean it like a chilly draught across your neck.
On page 3, it is reported that "death rates from most common lymphocyte cancer reduced by 50 per cent" so that catches my interest. BC has one of the best treatment facilities in the country and there are better survival rates so you might get to die from something else.
The rest of the Special Advertising Feature talks in glowing detail about research, giving many fine examples of how donations have been used. There's a list of donors. I used to get solicitation letters from the Cancer Foundation which prompted me to send e-mail demanding to know how I got on the Christly list. Receiving an innocent letter asking for money to help cure a wicked disease had triggered a primitive impulse in me. I snapped. I thought the Cancer Foundation should go straight to hell. A nice woman replied and told me that I must be on a subscription list, so thanks very much TV Week. My name's off the list.
In the supplement, there are vivid plans of additional good tidings...bright futures...and despite re-reads I cannot make it sensible in my head. It's a written sensation similar to hearing Charlie Brown's teacher and, irrationally, I am slightly furious that the newspaper I was reading with my breakfast had some fucking cancer article in it.
In 1994, I was 33, busy having a good time, busy being good-looking, clever and ambitious. Then one afternoon I was in an exam room with one of my best friends, two or three oncologists, and quite possibly a nurse, being told that I had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a cancer which affects the immune system and cannot be cured unlike its Hodgkin's counterpart. It's because of cell structure. The other shoe dropping was that I have both aggressive, fast growing and indolent, slow growing lymphomas lurking in my system. They reassured me that there was plenty of medication to take care of it, and I was praised for my early detection. After an awkward silence, my response was "Well...how about that," as though, being told of a tragedy on the other side of the world, I felt moved and interested to know more, or that some people I knew in the next block had somebody die and I wanted to bring them a casserole.
I remember the few seconds before the diagnosis was delivered as being some of the sweetest even though I knew the shite was hitting the fan. It's a bit like being in a fast elevator going in either direction with crisp audio and bright lights. I heard a sound sort of like the PNE roller coaster as its brakes are unleashed. The same drill applies to this ride: grip the bar firmly but leave your elbows loose; hope that nobody barfs; try to hold onto both your dignity and your hat.
Imagine that you're about to be diagnosed with a big-ticket health item. Generally you receive the news in a roomful of people: two or three strangers, all medical professionals, one or two loved ones, and you. Everybody wants to know how you feel and it creates an unnerving sensation, a weird sense of obligation in you to come up with a suitable response, and don?t worry about how hollow your voice might sound. You?ll become accustomed to having people ask after you all the time, and on occasion, the answer will even be provided. Nobody?s really listening, but you need to decide how you want to present yourself in this new phase of your life ? AD - After Diagnosis. Here?s a tip: everybody in your world will be looking at you differently and sometimes it?ll be hard keeping up with expectations and fighting stereotypes.
Good Patients and Fighters. To my mind, these are the identities people with illness are refitted with by others. The Good Patient is unconscionably sunny, and slightly preoccupied with their condition, as though they've joined a new club and creep everybody out with enthusiasm. They?re also really trusting. Good Patients strike up conversations during which they sometimes ask what you've got. I thought they grouped patients throughout the week - I'm there on Lymphoma Thursdays as opposed to Melanoma Fridays. Furthermore, it?s impertinent to come out and ask somebody what they?re in for, at least by my proudly draconian standards. To whoever wants to know, remember that strangers asking me questions like that earns you a mental ?Fuck you, pal,? without putting too fine a point on it. Even in correctional institutions, the inmates display more sense than to ask.
Fighters often do more research than Good Patients, have slightly aggressive optimism and go through every procedure under the sun largely because they are higher stage patients with a genuine cause for alarm. Cruelly, some of them have shorter after-diagnosis life spans. Christ knows what you?re meant to do with a 6-month prognosis. In the meantime, they've made radical changes in their lives and hold on tight. I see them, slightly wraith-like, in the waiting room. Some of them have their own file folders with various colour post-its hanging out and big felt pen lettering on the cover. They remind me of refugees.
I don't think I have a category. Here's what I do: I've researched NHL and the drugs and now I'm done. I bitch about how long I have to wait for stuff to happen at the clinic and ask to have my card mailed whenever I can. I always sit in the small waiting room because it makes me think of business class. On my way to appointments, I like somebody to piss me off a little bit in traffic so that I'm less afraid. I don't know what to do with myself a lot of the time, and I talk to my cat more than with other humans. Apart from being crap at making plans before I was diagnosed, now I'm afraid to, or maybe I'm just lazy. I don't remember if I have dreams of things I'd like to do or just rely on To-Do Lists.
I'd known one other person with cancer, a boy I went to junior secondary with. Andrew Norton had had some sort of bone cancer and after childhood operations walked with a cane and didn?t go to gym. We spent many happy hours entertaining each other with Monty Python skits and although I realise just now that I loved Andrew, he was never my boyfriend. That wasn't the point. A couple years after high school, I ran into a woman named Laura Kruk, whom I knew in Grade 10, and she was wearing one of those sad looking headscarves that they try to interest you in when you first come in for chemo. Laura had cancer, and I forget what kind, and when I told her I was sorry, she looked unmoved.
Eleven years later, after 2 doses of harsh chemo (consisting of drugs whose names I can no longer say out loud or even think about without feeling uncomfortable), one cycle of which was accompanied by a dash of radiation, and two of chemo light, featuring fludarabine, I still cannot fathom that this is happening to me although I?ve seen the films. It?s a very subtle disassociation, anything to dull the pain, which isn?t always physical. Note that I haven't included any diagnostic procedures in the Have Done list, so add umpteen x-rays, 3 or 4 MRIs, over 300 blood samples and counting, more than 2 dozen CTs, 2 bone marrow extractions, and 3 open biopsies in a pear tree. Two biopsies were in the same armpit. I think my type is Good Sport.
I have been bald twice. It's not so much my vanity that suffers but more my sense of privacy. Baldness is obviously a fashion statement in some circles; my neighbourhood, Commercial Drive, is an ideal place to be bald as opposed to the Westside of town in which people assume you're having chemo. I wore a bright blue bandana and looked as tough as could be expected. As we are always judged by our ensemble while we're out in the world, we ought to devote some time to our creations. I think I make others in the waiting room slightly nervous - for the most part, they're a slightly older, well-coiffed crowd and I dress like a teenage boy. I prepare for visits to the Cancer Agency by wearing boxer shorts, flannel in winter and cotton in the summer because after being prodded and examined by dozens of strangers I was damned if I would wear inadequate undergarments. My self-preservation had to start with something. During an early examination, some comedian noted that my boxers matched the gown I had on. Work socks are perfect for CT scans and MRIs, but do mind the slippery floor. The piece de resistance is the undershirt; I favour black because, Lord knows, the last thing I want is to look vulnerable, and I don't wear gowns unless forced. That's the deal.
I won't use the expression "my cancer" for the obvious reason that it isn't mine although I have no qualms about saying ?my cold? or ?my bunions,? if I had any. Cancer is like a squatter, neither homeless nor a tenant. I will use the word "cancer" in sentences about me, sometimes with the word "patient" right after it to make a point that has nothing to with self-identity but with classification or description. Ergo, "I am a cancer patient but I'm not one." I don't go to seminars about NHL and the few times I went to a support group, I felt like I had nothing to say and had trouble hearing other people?s stories but it wasn?t from self-centeredness. The words "journey," "challenge", "gift," or "survivor" used with any frequency provokes ill temper in me. Am I like the alcoholic who won't go to AA because it's full of drunks? No, it?s that for me, dealing with cancer, as with all the other shitty things that have happened in my life, is primarily an individual effort. I have a time-honoured tradition of not asking for help until it becomes an emergency although I appear to be improving. I am not a group person and I?m not easy to be close to. Ask any of my ex?s.
Try reading Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor to see what it means to be a person with an illness. It upsets and confuses the others if they think you?re not getting enough attention even if you don?t want it. Suddenly your family will want to know all about you because they think you?re dying and they better act fast. One of my oldest friends, an ex-girlfriend, had inexplicably severed our friendship 6 months prior and only acknowledged me in the most perfunctory way in social settings when she couldn't avoid doing so, at least had the decency to keep that up after she heard I had cancer. I applaud her integrity, and I know that she genuinely wished me well. I?ve had a friend offer to pray for me and to put me on a prayer list, and my response was similar to that when I received a birthday present entitling me to have strangers come and clean my apartment. I?m afraid that grace was not the order of the day.
The other day I went in to the vet's, as I tell my cat, and I got one of those nurses who thinks that using a Pretty Doggie voice when speaking to patients will be soothing. The nurse?s job is merely to call your name in the waiting room, escort you to the exam room, weigh you, and make a polite enquiry as to your current state. "Hello-o-o! How are yoUUuu?" she said, and, as my Dad put it, you want to bark at them. I?d like to tell them to fuck off but it really pays to keep the nurses glad to see you. I am pleasant but not encouraging. She asked me about 3 times while folding the nighties, as she called them, how I was until I sighed heavily and mentioned that I?d had to reformat my computer and what a pain in the ass that was. You have to keep reminding medical professionals that your brain is still functioning so look busy. Crossword puzzles done in pen make a good impression. Maybe next time I'll bring in a clipboard and draw elaborate diagrams on graph paper.
So, about that Special Advertising Supplement about Exciting Advances in Cancer Research. Rarely does a week pass when there isn't another announcement. Used to be on Wednesdays that new cures would be unveiled - cheery pieces for the evening news to put people at ease, just a little bit, for one damn day. There. That oughta keep them quiet. What bleak prospects for drug companies should cancer be cured. On a personal level, I want nothing better than to be rid of what's come to afflict me yet I'm afraid to be [insert word like "hopeful", "optimistic"] because I'm afraid there's nothing there. Not a big gambler, me. Sounds like the X-Files, doesn't it? I Want To Believe.
I don?t spend much time pondering how I came to be in this jackpot because I recognised immediately the futility in that, and because it's like being mugged. Whatever hit you is miles away by now. My soul mourns for how I used to feel before I had cancer, for the confidence, the desire, the vision. My soul aches for how I feel now, for what I imagine I could?ve had: opportunities, adventures, perhaps the love of my life so naturally I take time to review every bad decision I've ever made. After I'm done, I can rely on Teutonic genes enabling me to better accomodate these frequent periods of angst in an otherwise only slightly depressed existence and bury the melancholy until next time it oozes out. Lately, I have been reaping the benefits of frequent cannabis use. I?m able to lead a relatively happy life and think Wow! I?m not dead yet and Let's have a snack. Most days are like that but I sometimes feel like the Coyote holding an umbrella as a shield against a falling boulder and then I can?t bear to hear anything about courage.
Posted by Jetta
at 12:01 AM PST
Updated: Friday, 11 March 2005 6:12 PM PST
vegas lucky
