Day 747: What's In a Word? The "Skinny" on Breast Cancer

Recently, I saw that someone had commented on my blog about reaching the critical 2 year cancer-free mark, “that was really good. Why does she keep talking about being skinny?”

It’s a valid question. So I thought I’d explain.

Cancer is a disease that seems to scare the collective shit out of us all so badly that we are always looking for a way to explain why it exists, and then to say, see, that’s why I won’t ever have cancer. Breast cancer is even worse than other cancers in this regard. There’s the infamous “is it in your family?” question that people ask, since now everyone and her mother is “aware” of the BRCA gene, but no one seems clued in to the fact that only a tiny percentage of women with breast cancer of any age are actually BRCA positive. Besides that genetic factor, however, which is clearly not your fault, most of the other breast cancer risk factors we focus on have to do with things that are already sensitive subjects for women. Things like drinking, and diet, and exercise habits, and breast density.

Things like weight.

See, being overweight is one of the only known risk factors for breast cancer, along with a sedentary lifestyle (isn’t that a risk factor for most bad things?). I have to point out that almost all risk factors are determined for estrogen-positive breast cancer, and are studied primarily in post-menopausal women. Risk factors for triple negative breast cancer are mostly unknown, and researchers seem completely at a loss to explain risk factors in young women. But I digress.

Now, if one is overweight and becomes diagnosed with breast cancer, I’m not sure what one is supposed to do with that information. Hang her head in shame? Because, look, just about everyone in this country is overweight; we focus on this as a major public health issue all the time.

So most people are overweight. And yet, most people don’t get breast cancer.

And furthermore, only 5% of the 1 in 8 women who will have breast cancer in her lifetime are under age 40 at diagnosis. Only 2% are like me, and are diagnosed before age 35.

How many of us are overweight at diagnosis? Is weight even actually an issue for very young women with breast cancer? The answers aren’t clear.

And yet we have to constantly be told to watch what we eat, to try to be thin, to be active, or the presumption is that cancer will return and it will be our fault.

But what if we were already thin and active, and we got that shit anyway? It starts to get tiring.

I want people to get out of my size 26 pants and start thinking about how this focus actually makes breast cancer survivors FEEL.

It is a strange burden for someone like me, someone who has always been naturally small and then went through a period in her life, like many women, when I wasn’t small anymore. I gradually put on about 15 pounds over the 11 years I took birth control pills. When Gabe and I met, I was 27 years old, a healthy size 4, at 5’5” and about 125 pounds. Even then, I felt big to myself, having been tiny throughout my teens, graduating from high school at 5’4” and maybe 100 pounds.

Then, I got pregnant, gained about 40 pounds, and had one hell of a time losing that baby weight. I would nurse 8 times daily, work out 3 hours a day and eat small portions of healthy food and it didn’t make a difference. I never ovulated after Lenny’s birth, even though I was having regular periods starting about three months after I weaned her. I had my thyroid checked and it was borderline abnormal but not enough to warrant treatment. And I’m telling you, I just knew something wasn’t right. Well, now we know what it was—my hormones had blown up and I had the beginning glimmers of triple negative breast cancer. But of course, we didn’t know that then.

When I got pregnant with Augie, after taking clomid for one cycle, I weighed about 140 pounds and was a size 8. I felt enormous, though Gabe told me I looked amazing. The day before Augie was born I weighed 178 pounds—more than my husband. Then, I gave birth to that crazy kid, and everything changed.

Damn, did that little boy jumpstart my metabolism and bring me back to myself—my real self, the way I always was before medication and pregnancy. Within six months of his birth, I was down to what I had been when I got married. I just kept losing. I had a ton of energy and started having normal cycles when he was 3 months old even though I was exclusively nursing. When he was 11 months old and I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I weighed what I weigh now: 117 pounds. I was a size zero or a size two, as I am today.

I finally felt like myself again, and then this shit happened. And now every day I have to ask myself if I had breast cancer because it was hard for me to lose the baby weight, or because I gained weight from the pill. All the while, I know that it might be the other way around—cancer might have done a number on my hormones, making it hard to lose weight. Who knows? Wasn’t it bad enough to just have had those issues, without putting the guilt of cancer on top of it? And isn’t it bad enough that I was thin and healthy and feeling great, and then I found out I had cancer growing in my body for years, and now my thinness is considered some kind of requirement for making it to age 40 when other people have no such judgment on their frame? Isn’t it bad enough what breast cancer actually does to your body, and to your body image?

Isn’t cancer bad enough?

Here’s my gripe. We focus so much on women’s bodies and what they look like, how they are shaped, and it’s ridiculous.

I wish being small had saved me from having breast cancer. But it didn’t. I also don’t think that having extra post-baby weight for a few years gave me breast cancer. It just seems like people want to be able to look at you and know why something bad happened, and we focus on the size of breast cancer survivor’s bodies because we are collectively obsessed with focusing on women’s bodies in general.

I have heard so many ludicrous things about my body since this so-called journey began. Apparently, these 34bs are just an abomination of smallness in the breast lexicon, as mammography technicians, surgeons, nurses, and others remark about my “small breasts.” Before cancer, I never thought I had small breasts. Perky, yes, but you know, I thought they were nice. They seemed adequate. Boys and men seemed to like them pretty well. All of a sudden, they were problematic, annoying for mammograms, difficult for the purpose of lumpectomy, and full of that god-awful “dense breast tissue” that apparently is trying to kill us all.

I have heard that I didn’t burn badly from radiation because I don’t have body fat on my chest and therefore “there’s nothing too deep to burn—you know, it’s like deep-frying a turkey; the fat burns hottest.”

Wow, you really just said that to me.

I’ve been told that I won’t feel this injection or this 7 inch needle, but oh wait, yes you will, you’re thin, so it will hurt. I’ve been told I should get a port even though “it will look weird on you because it will stick up on your chestbones.”

Again, wow.

“Your arms are thin but muscly so therefore your veins really roll, and it might be hard to get this IV in.”

Did you just blame your professional incompetence on my goddamn VEINS?

“Surgery will be easy on you! You’re skinny! We love skinny patients!”

We don’t love you back.

“You would have never felt that tumor if you had weighed even 10 pounds more.”

Thanks for scaring the shit out of me as I eat this piece of pizza.

“Wow you are in great shape! Keep it up! That’s the best defense against cancer.”

Well, it didn’t help me before.

You get what I’m saying. One of the most infuriating things about being a woman going through a difficult medical issue is how you are suddenly just DEFICIENT. Everything about me was suddenly wrong: my breasts, my veins, my everything. They gave me a chemo dose based on a 126 pound woman when I was lucky to weigh 113 going into treatment each time. It’s like they wished I was someone else, because then life would be easier for them. Do you think men have to listen to this shit? I’m sure men with testicular cancer are not subjected to tirades about their misshapen balls, chastised for having beer bellies or for having chicken legs, or told that their ventricular structure is just WRONG.

Here’s what I really want to get at—can we just stop? Stop talking to women about their body types all the time? I’ve been hearing this since I was a little girl: oh you’re skinny. Well, sue me. Now don’t I sound like a bitch saying that?

Yes, apparently I do. According to a recent article in Glamour magazine, women (more than men) are judged based on their body type for different personality traits by strangers. Heavier women are more likely to be considered lazy, on the one hand, and nice on the other. Thin women are seen as competitive and driven and also…bitchy.

I’ve heard that one before. Friends joke that they call me that skinny bitch. Girls in high school would say, hey you’re skinny…I hate you. People are always surprised when I am laid back. I work out a lot and people assume that’s because I’m vain, rather than that I’m just a hopeless insomniac or because I don’t want to die from recurrent breast cancer. Think about it. You look at someone and think it’s ok to call her a bitch, or say that you hate her? I know they are figures of speech, joking expressions. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother me.

So, I talk about being skinny, even though I’m not actually skinny, because people talk at me about it all the time. Gabe said to me a few weeks ago, I just don’t get it. You’re not skinny. You have a soft belly and strong legs and arms and that bodacious booty! Why do people say that to you?

The sad thing was, his comment kind of hurt my feelings. And that fact highlights that there’s 36 years of reasons for me talking about this now.

When I was a tiny little kid, I found out I had epilepsy. The medication was really toxic and did a number on me. Eventually it made me gain weight, at the same time that it made me never want to eat. My parents worried that I had an eating disorder. In third grade, when I was no longer tiny but also not big at all, a boy asked me if I was pregnant. I was eight. And I still remember that.

When I was hit by a car in 4th grade, I was weighed in the emergency room as they medicated me and contemplated surgery that never took place. I secretly hoped to weigh 50 pounds because I thought that would be a nice round number. I was disappointed to only weigh 45. Upon telling this story years later, laughing at the fact that I was able to distract myself from my own potential death or paralysis by focusing on the scale, a friend told me “Damn Katy. There are healthy three year olds who weigh 45 pounds.”

In 9th grade, my English teacher berated me for my size all the time. Now, she was a heavy woman, and kids made fun of her for that, which was terrible. But I wasn’t like that—I never would have made fun of someone for being big—my mother raised me right. I didn’t like her much, because her class was boring and she was mean to me, but I never said a negative word to her or about her and I continued to get straight As. But really, who was this teacher to ask me if I was anorexic? To tell me I shouldn’t wear shorts because my legs were so skinny? To ask me if I ever ate? Me, that 14 year old who ate like a horse and was just getting used to the idea that girls did this thing called “dieting,” since no one did that in the neighborhood where I grew up, where I often heard such backhanded compliments as “well, you’re fine for a skinny white girl,” or “at least you’ve got a nice booty.”

For a. At least. What bullshit. What man has to listen to this crap? You can be as skinny as Mick Jagger, as big as Tony Soprano or as ripped as 50 Cent, and some women will still be throwing their panties at you trying to get next to you. Guys just work what they’ve got, buy clothes based on their actual body measurements, and focus on other things. And we let them. As a society, we give them permission to be themselves.

I mean, Gabe will talk about how he wishes he could get huge guns like some guys, he will glance a little wistfully at his own muscular arm, and then he will shrug and move on with his life. When we moms were relaxing on mother’s day after the breast cancer walk, we were talking at one point about legs, because I was hot and I needed to put some shorts on and other moms don’t like their legs and therefore don’t wear shorts. The guys were all at the park talking about the Avengers or something, and one of them kept stripping down out of the multiple layers of clothes he was wearing. I’m doubtful that the shape of legs, the relative hairiness thereof, or anything else related to any one of their bodies was on the agenda that day at the park.

We do this, because we are taught at very young ages to do this. I can’t stand having to listen to people comment on my daughter’s size. Yes, goddamn it, she’s little. So freaking what. SHE IS SIX YEARS OLD. Why are you looking at her body? “oh, she’s so tiny!” “She’s such a peanut!” “Do you feed her? “ (Yes, idiots have asked me if I fucking feed my daughter). “She’s so petite! The boys must love her!” What? Are you sick?

Not off the mark, though. Little boys have said they like Lenny because she’s cute and little. Dads have remarked about how thin she is, and said that it’s good she got my body type and not Gabe’s. Thanks for making me know that you have checked out both me AND my little kid.

We had to switch pediatricians because of Lenny’s small stature. He kept telling us she wasn’t big enough, she wasn’t heavy enough, and that we should feed her butter and whipped cream to fatten her up. Seriously—that was his medical advice. He made me feel like a bad mother. And other people made me feel that way too, as they glanced askance at my small baby and talked about how proud they were of their kid who was 90th percentile. What was that about? Were these moms implying that their baby could kick my baby’s ass? What is WRONG with people? Anyway, finally we changed doctors and he, being a very slight man himself, never seemed to take much notice. She sleeps all night? Is active? Smart? She’s fine. At one point he was worried because she only showed up as 2nd percentile on the weight scale.

“Look Doc, I’m second percentile too. Someone has to be second, or they wouldn’t be percentiles, would they?” He laughed at that, and then helped me stop Augie from escaping the room in a mad flash.

And I thought to myself, second percentile. Yes, that’s true. And she can do cartwheels on the balance beam. She can do multiple pull-ups in a row. She can hang on a bar in the park forever, holding up her 34 pounds with those impressive little biceps. She’s not lacking in the brains department either. Hell, she’s arguably smarter than me. And her doctor. And lots of other people.

And she is so awesome, just the way she is. Today I told her that we were going to take pictures for the blog, because I was writing about how people always comment on who is big or small and it shouldn’t make a difference but I wanted to show that I was proud of her the way she is. She held up her hands and said “You should just like how you are. Right? You can’t change.” While Gabe was tearing up at this pronouncement , I said, more importantly, though, there’s no reason to—you’re fine just how you are.

And of course, she is fine, but her size has its advantages and its disadvantages. It will be both easy and difficult to find clothes that fit. She will be noticed, for better or worse. She will be aware of herself when she shouldn’t have to be, because she will remember how everyone talked about her being little from the time she was born. For every nice, reasonable respectful boy who is attracted to her in part because of her petite size, there will be another who preys on her for the same reason.

I should know. Especially in high school, I knew that my petite frame was one aspect of my general attractiveness to boys. It also made me a target, as boys who liked to wield their comparative large size and strength over others chose me as easy pickins. This fact made me hyper aware of my surroundings at all times, and, I’ll admit, it made me mean. I learned how to fight. I got good at it, even as I knew I could never win these fights based on strength or size alone. One time, when I was a senior, I went to an informal dance at my high school. A boy who had preyed on me before picked me up, trapping my arms at my side over my head, like I was a rag doll. He was high on something, and he told me he was taking me into the boys’ bathroom. He must have remembered that other time he picked me up and started to molest me, when I punched him in the face and head with my hands until he let me go, more out of shock than pain. There was no way I could fight him with the way he was holding me. He was a football player, so much bigger and stronger than me. He told me there was nothing I could do about it. I looked around and realized that even though there were thousands of kids there, no one was going to help me. My friends couldn’t see me, other people weren’t paying attention, and his friends were in on the whole thing, I’m sure. I thought I was beat. I was terrified. Then I realized something. I was sober, and I was smarter than him. I had to have some kind of advantage. What was it? Oh…

So I straightened my arms into a diving pose, sucked in my breath, made myself smaller and narrower than I thought was possible, and slipped right out of his grasp. I landed on my hands and feet, and I ran.

I told someone this story years ago and she said, I guess the moral of the story is that it’s good to be strong, so girls should work on that, but it’s also just good to have your wits about you.

I said, the moral of the story is that boys and men shouldn’t be sexual predators. My size and strength have jack shit to do with anything.

So let’s just stop. Stop talking about who is skinny fat, whatever that is, who is strong, who is curvy, who is tall or short, who is lopsided.

Someone once asked, ain’t I a woman? And I say, yes, you are. If you have two x chromosomes, you are a woman, so stop trying so goddamn hard to prove it. Apple, pear, or hourglass shaped? Still a woman. 2nd percentile or 98th? Still a woman. Big floppy breasts, small perky breasts, mastectomy scars? Still a woman. Long flowing hair, short pixie cut, bald as the day you were born? Still a woman. Long legs? Stumpy legs? Big muscles? Pencil arms? Curves all over the place? No curves at all? Gay? Straight? Kids? No kids?

Still a woman.

Is your body functioning correctly? Than claim it, own it. Not everyone is so lucky.

I have lost the healthy function of almost every single part of my body at some point: my legs, my brain, my heart, my left arm, my lungs, my liver, my sweat glands, my pectoral muscle, my immune system, my goddamn cellular structure. I have lost my hair. I have had chunks of my breast removed, leaving it indented on one side. I have gone through menopause. I have gained weight from medication and gotten so skinny from chemo that I could hardly walk. I have scars and tattoos. And I’ve been the same me the whole time—still small, still pissed off about a lot of things, still verbose, still sarcastic.

Still a woman. A woman who had breast cancer, and had to hear about her body, her hair, and her face all the time when she was worried about her life. That's the skinny, folks.

Day 508: The Beat Goes On

If this blog does anything for me, it shows that time changes things. A year ago today, I was released from the Critical Decisions Unit of the local trauma-center hospital after spending 36 hours there for chemo-related heart issues. That was one of the darkest times in my whole experience with cancer. I remember everything about that hospital stay as if it happened yesterday, from the conversation I had with Gabe about using my life insurance to pay for a nanny for the kids, to the kind doctor who attended to me and brought me some much-needed faith in the overall humanity of the medical community, to the realization of how immodest I had become in my new starring role in the Katy SciFi show, where I was bald, with fingernails painted black to try to stave off the chemo-rot, with heart monitors and patches all over my chest, reading a book about genocide in Rwanda and wondering if I was trading early stage cancer for a permanent heart condition.

And here I am now, with no more sense of the answer to my question than I had then. I have no idea how well my heart is working except to say it seems to be working just fine. And I have no idea if there is cancer in my body, though I can't imagine that there is because the concept seems too unreal, even to me, a person who has already faced the reality of multiple, insidious tumors growing inside me. I don't know, but I'm just assuming I'm all right. After these 500 days I've started to assume that I am actually a cancer survivor, that chemo didn't permanently alter the inner-workings of my heart, though I know it is too early to really say.

I've heard about breast cancer survivors who get multiple MUGAs all the time to assess the performance of their hearts, I've seen pictures of women going through AC chemo whose hearts were continuously monitored during the infusions. Not so for Katy. I never had any of that, just as I have never been offered follow-up blood tests. I guess this should disturb me, but in general, I just want to believe I'll make it. I left that hospital a year ago, ingested beta blockers every day for the remaining month that I did chemo, took myself off them, never followed up on my heart issue except to take Zyrtec when Taxol gave me heart palpitations, and have tried to not look back. My heart seems to work, but how do we ever really know what is going on inside of our bodies when we can't see it? The trouble is, you don't know until there's a problem. I felt wonderful until I found out I had cancer; hell, I physically felt just fine after I found out. You wake up in the morning and walk around and go about your day and just take it on faith that you can do these things, because, well, you are doing them. My heart must be working, because it hasn't stopped beating. I'd love to say the same about cancer--it must not be in my body, because I feel so opposite of what we assume it feels like to have cancer that it can't be true.

Cancer, heart conditions, epilepsy, many physical disabilities are ironically these insidious beasts that you often can't see. I have received so many comments in my life that start with the following statement that sometimes I feel that my goal in life should be to prove that appearances are deceiving: "But you don't look like someone who...":
has cancer; should be in a wheelchair; is so smart (a few guys have actually said that to me); recently had a baby; has seizures; does economic research; is in her thirties.

So who do I look like if not myself? How can anyone look like anyone else, and what are you really supposed to do with any of those statements, those supposed compliments that, perhaps unwittingly, deny some aspect of who you are? A year ago, Gabe said something to me like, you don't look like a sick person at all, you don't look like you have cancer or a heart condition. You just look like you, bald. Because you are just you, bald, doing cancer treatment. You're not sick. It's weird.

And he was right, it is weird, isn't it? It's weird how we can't get away from ourselves even when we feel like our selves have gotten away from us, that our bodies have betrayed us. Perhaps that's some kind of goal in and of itself, to be yourself completely, even in a state when you feel like someone else entirely. Because you don't have the option to be someone else, it's ok if you feel like you're faking it.

Today I was managing a conference at work, and I looked around the room, which was 90% men, and I was one of the youngest if not the youngest people there. And though I should have been thinking of other things, I found myself wondering, how did I get here? Am I really some kind of expert on payment systems? Is my work life a real thing, is this really me? People seem to like me and respect me in this environment, they seem to believe I know something, and perhaps I do, but then why do I feel like I'm just making it all up as I go?

In my role as moderator, I didn't know exactly what to say, so I spoke about the Fed's interest in payment system efficiency and integrity and payments governance. Then I said that I didn't think we should feel too bad that we didn't have all the answers. I related a story of how when I was walking into the Fed this morning, a very aggressive protester got up in my face asking me "Did you vote for the war? Huh? Did you?!" And I said to the audience at the conference, if there are folks who believe that the Federal Reserve, or me in particular, makes military policy, we shouldn't feel bad about being confused about who is in charge of something like payments. This got a lot of laughs, and some people even clapped. My strange confrontation in the rain made that little moment possible, and I couldn't have planned that.

A little later, one of the very few women in the room (hello? if we've made strides in equalizing fields where men and women work, I'd like to see the evidence) was talking to me about the event and then suddenly said, your hair is so cute. It's so daring. Huh? I asked, looking enviously at her very stylish short haircut. Mine is so average, she said. You're much more chic. I said thank you, but I thought, this is chic? This is sticking a barrette in my hair and tousling it after the shower because I have no clue what else to do and figuring, what the hell, it's a step up from bald so let's just walk out the door. And then I thought, this is how I know I know something about this--because I can just wing it, and it turns out ok anyway. I can use the story of what just happened right before I entered the building and it can sound relevant. I can be lazy about my hair, and somebody out there will think I spent money to get it to look like this. If I play it off well enough, enough folks will think I planned the whole thing, whatever it is, that my life will look purposeful and knowledgeable, which, in turn, might actually be true.

That's what I'm trying to do over here in general, I guess: be comfortable enough in my own skin that I can just wing it. Hell, maybe that's the only thing I've ever been able to do. I can sit down at the computer with no idea what I want to say, except that I want to comment on where I am today compared to where I was a year ago, and in the end it sounds like I had some kind of message, though I'm not sure exactly what it is.

It goes back to the old theme, the need to be able to see yourself as if you are outside of yourself. At the start of my diagnosis, when I was deep in the sorrow of losing my hair and potentially my breasts, a few people who were close to me told me that the characteristic that most defined me was not my hair, but my big black eyes. I didn't believe that then, and I don't necessarily believe it now, but perhaps I should take their word for it. Maybe the eyes show something: that weariness and acceptance from a year ago, the relative contentment of today. Back in those early cancer days, someone said that the "killer" thing about my eyes was not the way they looked but the way that they looked when they're looking at things, and that wasn't going to change. What a wonderful thing to say; what could I say in return? Well, I can offer that if eyes can show anything, it's just a reflection of what they see, of the world. So it's not me, but the world that I see and the life I've been able to live that is interesting, that is worth reflecting on. I like to think that I see the world as it is, that I'm comfortable enough with myself and this strange vessel and this convoluted mind that I can show my hand, reveal myself, without worrying about losing too much. So I guess I'm just writing this blog today to say that as long as it's still beating, I'll keep wearing my heart on my sleeve, or at least on my face. It's easier to see it there than inside of this strangely distorted chest.

Day 494: The Kiss and the Story

For the last eleven days, I have had no inspiration whatsoever to write this blog. Of course, I didn't really write a blog on September 1 either; I just wrote that poem and posted it and decided that would suffice. I started thinking that maybe there isn't anything left to say, so I could forget about it for a while and just lounge on the couch and watch some football, (see what the kids learn from me? Some kids might mimic their mom by playing dress-up, mine sprawl all over the couch during the game), cook some comfort food, and do other run of the mill things.

So why am I sitting here on a Monday night, contemplating writing one of my deepest blogs yet, while watching the game? Well, in part because I can't imagine NOT watching Monday night football if it's on, no matter what, but mostly for two important reasons.

One is that yesterday was the tenth anniversary of September 11. I am not going to attempt to connect the events of this blog with the events of that day. As I will discuss later, I don't take myself that seriously. But I do read the newspaper, and I read the coverage of the memorial services in New York, Washington, and other places. There were so many moving moments, but the one that got me the most was something a teenage boy had written for his dad, which went something like this: "I still miss you, dad. I wish you had been around to teach me how to drive, how to ask a girl out on a date. I hope that my brother and I became the kind of young men you would have wanted us to be."

There really isn't anything for me to add to that, and most people reading this will know why that makes me tear up, beyond just the given feelings of empathy. The second thing that happened is that an old friend and colleague posted the following link on Facebook about Dignity Therapy for the Dying (this is what I love about facebook, that you get to see what other people are thinking about, out of context, and yet it makes perfect sense and you remember what you like about those people, even when they literally live halfway around the world): http://www.npr.org/2011/09/12/140336146/for-the-dying-a-chance-to-rewrite-life

All of a sudden, these two passages converged for me. What is so poignant about all of the memorial statements for those who died on September 11? Well, one of them is the way that loved ones talk about the sudden nature of all of those deaths and the lack of closure. News coverage mentions a woman and her 23 year old sister, a man's 29 year old son, someone's 67 year old mother. But those are their ages stopped in time ten years ago. The present-tense nature of the way these things are portrayed is a brutal reminder that those people did not have the chance to age another ten years, and no one saw it coming.

While everyone who dies is always eternally placed at the age they reached before death, I think it's even more significant when you die suddenly or when you are the subject of unexpected news. That child will always be 29, that life will always be cut short. We conflate this and bring it into our everyday lives. I know that one of the reasons that the friends of my childhood and my youth are so affected by the story of my cancer is that I am literally cemented in their minds as the age I was when they knew me or saw me last. I know that I would feel the same way.

Recently, my mom brought me a few of my formal dresses from high school, thinking I could fit into them. My favorite dress was a vintage, rose-colored dress with a beautiful back that I bought for $35 on the north side somewhere. I couldn't believe I could fit into it. Haven't I had kids? Didn't my hips finally expand when I was 20? Didn't I grow an inch and a half in college? (Alas, the only thing stopping the dress from fitting comfortably is that my damn rib cage grew. It even fit better on my behind, I didn't even have to suck in my stomach, but that ribcage must've expanded somewhere down the line). I know that if my boyfriend at the time or someone else from that era saw this picture of me wearing it now, they would think, that's Katy! 17 years old, in 1992. Because I will always be Katy, 17 years old, in 1992, to some people. That's just how it is. The things you are go back to the way you are remembered.

But it doesn't have to be so static, and that's what's neat about life. If your only sibling dies, are you an only child? You might think you are, but you will never be an only child, because you and so many other people have all the memories of you being a sibling. And if you are alive in the world, you get to age, and people who see you as stopped in time somewhere in your past just have to deal with the fact that that image isn't real. But if you don't get that last glimpse, that closure, if you don't get to see that body or bury that person, time and memory can play all kinds of tricks.

This contrasts so completely with the subject of the other piece, which focuses on the actions of people who know they are dying, who have time to prepare. Normally, when the cheesy question of "what would you do if you knew you only had x amount of time to live" arises, no one gives the option: "I would sit down and write about my life so that I could be remembered and the whole thing would seem real." And yet that is probably the only really true answer that a person could give to that question.

What do these things have to do with me? Well, nothing, really. I don't think I'm dying, not right now, anyway, but having cancer does bring you that much closer to death, or at least to thinking about death. And it makes people say things to you like, well, you might have cancer, but you know you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, we could all die at any time. And you want to smack those people, because of course you know that, and actually you were hit by a car, thank you, and you did have a gun at your head, and you almost died from an allergic reaction to penicillin as a baby, AND you had cancer, so clearly none of these things precludes the others. But the difference is that cancer gives you time to think, to reflect. When my grandmother knew that she had a breast lump when she was 75, she let it go for over a year. She was too terrified of cancer to get it checked out, thinking that having cancer meant that she would die. Her doctor sighed and told her, no Marthagene, it's not like a heart attack. Cancer won't kill you just like that. You have to suffer first.

She suffered more than she needed to, and she also lived another 11 years and died of other causes. But I digress. These two pieces of media converged in my convoluted mind and I thought, isn't that what I'm doing here, isn't that what this blog is about? I have enough presence of mind to realize that even if triple negative breast cancer ultimately does me in, I am alive now and will be for a while. I have time to tell my story. I have always admitted that I write this blog in part as a love letter to my kids, so that they could know me if they miss out on the real, corporeal me. I have also stated that I am doing it to make this real, so that I know that all of these things really happened, because I wrote about them and somehow that makes them true. If not for this blog, morbid insomnia might be some kind of off-color joke, that head-shaving experience might be some kind of dream Gabe and I had in the basement of our old house, and this relatively normal life wouldn't seem quite so marvelous.

I wrote it, so it must be true. I told the story, so it must have happened. Telling our stories brings us back to that basic aspect of ourselves, that somewhat desperate innocence. I knew I needed to write this blog after meeting our new young next door neighbor, a boy who is about ten, who spent at least an hour telling our entire family all kinds of stories, mostly small (life is so detailed at that age!). I realized how important it must be to him to get those stories out, even to us. It was also important to him that we believed him, as if he expected that we wouldn't believe the story he was telling us--about himself, and his life.

And it's important for your life to seem real, to be true. Every once in a while Gabe tells me that I got some detail wrong in this blog. A few times I will reflect back and say, yeah, I guess that happened at a different time of day, that event actually happened before the other one, not after. Other times I look at him and wonder what world he is living in, where he clearly experiences everything in a fog, because I know, I just know, that the way I remember it is true. And I'm sure he feels the same way.

Why do we have this need to tell our crazy stories? Why the task of dying, as the article reveals, that forces us to take stock and come to terms with what we've done with our lives? Are we narcissistic enough to think anyone cares? I remember when I was fresh out of an extremely painful breakup, I said to a friend that the last thing I wanted was to become one of his stories, or even many of his stories. And she looked at me thoughtfully and said, why not? I know it hurts now, but what is wrong with that? That's what happens to all of us, and it's an honor to be someone's story.

Don't I have insightful friends! Of course, she was right. It is equally important to be an actual part of someone's life, but if for some reason that isn't possible, how wonderful to think that someone thinks of you when they could think of so many other things. Perhaps being a part of the story is the whole point. Maybe we need to take ourselves much less seriously, think of ourselves as just part of the play, and try to entertain the audience.

But who am I to give advice? Here I was a week or so ago, entertaining some teenagers at my house, though I was sure they should have had something better to do, and I wanted to laugh at myself as I played at giving advice, as if I know anything at all. At one point I found myself telling them not to take themselves too seriously, not to think that everything matters so desperately. But of course it does when you're 18, right, and death is so far away! Your life is such an important thing, your decisions matter, your love is the only one. And yet, experience does teach you a few things.

I have very few regrets in my life, since I have always laid my cards out on the table, even when it was embarrassing, even when it made me look weak. And different things that I've survived or experienced have taught me not to take today too much to heart. In the middle of wondering why parents in Chicago need to spend a few extra work weeks of time figuring out where to send a child to first grade, I thought, does it really matter? When I was out of school for months after my car accident, I had a tutor for one hour a week--that's it. All we did was math. I liked other subjects more and asked her about reading and social studies and science and she said, you are smart, you can read, you won't forget those things. I pressed her, and she said something along the lines of "It's fourth grade. It doesn't really matter. You'll be fine." And when I went back to school it was as if I had never left.

As I was talking to these kids and thinking about how deeply you feel everything when you are young, I was brought back to the time right before I left for college. I had started dating someone, even though I knew I would leave and move 400 miles away a month or so later. One day we were at his parents' house lying in bed and he asked me if I wanted to go out. No, I said, this is nice, let's stay here. And he said, no--do you want to go out with me? Do you want to be my girlfriend?

In a moment typical of my own innate romanticism, I responded, sure, but I have to go out with this other guy first.

At the end of the day, I dated that guy I had known for a hot minute after high school for more than six years. But who was this other guy, the one I had to go out with first? Well, he was a boy I had always liked as a friend, and he seemed to like me. He played football, we were really different, but we had a great time together and had been lab partners in chemistry. One day I was walking down the street and he drove by, got out of the car, and asked me out on a date in front of all of his friends, and all of my friends, who were all different people. How could I say no? High school was over, none of it seemed to matter anymore.

So we went out, ate some ice cream, saw a movie, and he thought it was funny, not annoying when I talked through the film and yelled at the screen (hey, that's how I grew up). He tried to hold my hand in the theater and that's how I learned you can't squirm out of hand-holding without being a total bitch so you should just do it, no matter who it is. He's trying to hold your hand, not feel you up. You have to let him. Then we went back to his house and talked on the porch for a long time. He drove me home and leaned in to kiss me, and I pulled away, because I felt I would be cheating on the other boy. As soon as I did that, I regretted it, but I didn't know how to fix it. A few days later he moved to New York and I never saw or spoke to him again.

Oh, how serious I thought it was, how I thought it mattered if I kissed him. Of course it didn't. I could have slept with him, and what would that really have done, how would that have changed the course of things in all of our lives? The great part is that wasn't on the agenda at all. This was one of those moments you have in your life where this sweet kid is telling you, hey I'm moving away, and one of the last things I want to do before I go is kiss you, and then you take yourself so seriously you don't even do it. If only we could protect ourselves from ourselves at those moments. Because we can't, we give vague unsolicited advice to kids who look at each other like, this lady's crazy.

But maybe the moral of the story is that the boy in that story won, because here I am writing about him almost 20 years later. Maybe being a part of the story is better than the kiss, though I contend we could have had the kiss and the story, and that is what we should all be trying for at the end of the day. Telling the story is important, but so is living the story before you get to tell it.

Now, do I think that way because I am a woman and I relate to people through stories, not actions? While I scream out after witnessing an incredible 99 yard touchdown run, I am simultaneously thinking about the ways that gender plays out in our very real lives. I am remembering a story I heard from a friend, a guy who had been in a relationship with the same man for many years. He started talking about a trip he had just taken with his sister, and telling this hilarious story about how they suddenly were attacked by vampire bats. I was just about on the floor laughing, as was my other friend, when I realized he had never heard this story before this telling. And I thought, right there, that is the difference between men and women. You get attacked by some damn vampire bats, and you forget to tell your boyfriend? I would have had to build my own phone in the wild to make sure I could tell that one right away. It's so bizarre, how else would you know it was real?


That's what I guess this blog has brought to me, selfishly. What a gift to be able to recognize your life and what it is and what it means, not later, not in hindsight, but while it's happening. What a gift to yourself and to anyone else who is a part of that story. But you can't do that if you are too wrapped up in yourself and the way things are supposed to be. That's why we have conversations like this in my house (and we always have, way before cancer) while we're watching movies on Netflix: OK Gabe, if there's ever a civil war and you haven't seen me in two years and the world has gone to hell and you see Natalie Portman living by herself in a godforsaken cabin, just sleep with her. You will probably both be dead within the week, and I wouldn't hold it against you anyway. Or, ok Gabe, if you could save the entire human race but the only thing you have to do is kiss a woman who isn't me, you had better kiss that woman or I will make sure to kill you myself. In fact if you could save just one person, or even stop one person from getting hit by a car, by kissing someone else, promise me you would do it, ok?

And this circuitous train of thought brings me back to the early days of my cancer diagnosis, when I told Gabe I had something to tell him, and he gave me a crestfallen look before he steeled himself to hear it. I hadn't really thought about asking "permission" to have an ex take half-naked pictures of me once I found out I had breast cancer, but he suggested I find out if Gabe cared. Instead of asking, I just told him. When Gabe heard this he sounded really relieved and said, oh, that's not what I was expecting you to say. I thought you were going to say you had slept with someone else or that you wanted to sleep with someone else.

And then I got pissed, because first of all, did he really think that was at the top of my mind in the middle of my terror and sadness and grief? Really, I was thinking about sex? And then I got even more angry, thinking about this supposed hall pass I seemed to be getting, since it didn't even seem like he would have been mad, just a little hurt, if I had cheated. Like I was Cancer Girl. I said, what, do I have one foot so deep in the grave that the normal rules don't apply, I don't even need to be a normal wife anymore? And he stumbled, trying to explain. No, that's not it, of course I want you to myself, I don't think of you as dying, I just think that it's your life, and you need to do what you need to do, whatever will help you deal with this.

I was still angry, and confused, by this reaction. I told a good friend about it and she said, huh. Can you imagine being in that place? Imagining a betrayal from the person you love most in the world and immediately seeing past it, forgiving it, because you just want that person to feel better and you don't know how to help her? Think of how much pain you must be in, how much love you must have, to feel like that.

And while I was marveling at the existence of my super-intelligent and thoughtful friends, I understood exactly what she was saying. In part she was saying, you need to flip it, Katy. You need to realize that the story you just told me isn't about you at all, it's about Gabe. And I would take it further and say that by saying what she said, the story was really about her. Or the story was about the man who took the photos, who asked if Gabe would think it was weird that we were in our bedroom with the door closed and I was taking off my clothes in front of someone who used to be my lover while my husband played downstairs with the kids? All I could say is no, since I didn't have the heart to say, he thinks it's weird that I have cancer, that he might be raising those kids by himself, and this is really just some meaningless small potatoes in comparison. I couldn't say that because it wasn't meaningless to him. He wasn't living with my cancer every day, he was living in that awkward moment.

So for one of many times in my life I learned how to see myself as someone else saw me. And like everything does, that brings me back to gender politics and gender identity. Under the guise of empowerment, we spend a lot of time telling girls not to care about what other people think, not to see themselves how other people see them. And yet, I feel that we are taking away one of girls' greatest strengths when we do that. My mom used to say "men think they're beautiful." That means that many men have a hyper-inflated view of themselves and their attractiveness, their appeal. But it means something else too--they don't get that we don't necessarily see them that way. They just don't see it because they have never been taught to care what we think. But women, on the other hand, think about this all the time. We receive so many thoughtless comments (thoughtless in the real sense--even if they are positive) about how we look, our sex appeal, that we learn to objectify ourselves, to sit outside of ourselves and look in. However, too often, we are too hard on ourselves, and we make up flaws that no one else can see. In my mind there is a happy medium. Why can't we encourage everyone to see themselves the way that other people ACTUALLY see them? To put themselves in the other's shoes, and look back inward?

But again, here I am playing at giving advice. I can't say I'm very good at what I have just described. I have had my moments though. I was able to do that when I lost my hair. I thought, realistically I believe, that people will see me bald and think, that's kind of strange looking. Or they will think, she has cancer. A few people might think it looks nice. A few people might appreciate it. But no matter what the reaction, most importantly, those people will think whatever they will and then never think about it again, because I am a stranger and they don't give a shit about me or my bald head, so why should I make such a big deal out of it myself? The knowledge that my "otherness" wasn't so interesting in this wide world made it easier, just like it made it easier to be in a wheelchair, or to have such pretty hair that people you have never seen before and will never see again reach out to grab it and ask if it is real. Those people were seeing one perspective of me, they weren't seeing ME.

To see that, you would need to read this blog, or tell a story about me, and you would need to see me in the flesh or talk to me. Because if you have both, you can appreciate all of the unseen possibilities, you can think about that stranger who did a double take and then smiled and winked at you, and you can wonder if he would go back to the office and tell a little story about the cute bald woman he saw on the street. The wink made it real, the story made it last. And then you're outside of yourself, without ever having to leave. That's what completes the picture right? That's it--the kiss, and the story. You need both.

Day 103:Pontificating Blog

One hundred days have come and gone, and I am sitting here pondering my self-inflicted mandate to write a pre-chemo blog that actually doesn’t have a lot to do with my cancer treatment. I get very reflective in these few pre-chemo days when I feel normal. But there’s a slight Flowers for Algernon effect wherein I feel good and have the knowledge of how that will be taken from me in short order. I would love to just run away and keep this healthy feeling. Right now, I can eat, drive, work a normal schedule, go to the gym (three times in a week! But do you know how hard it is to do a chest press or reverse fly after two breast surgeries?), sleep, play with the kids. Ironically, it’s during these feel-good times that my immunity is in the toilet. It starts to go back up right before chemo, so I have this tiny window where I feel like being out and about, and I can do it without worrying too much. And then, hello A/C! I can’t believe I will be done with it tomorrow. I’m starting to wish I had chosen cytoxan/taxotere, even though I would be really paranoid about the permanent hair loss. At least I would be done in four treatments. I will just be to the halfway point tomorrow after 4 a/cs. Ugh.

So what random things have I been thinking about? I’ve been contemplating this issue of cancer as identity. There is so much controversy around the term “cancer survivor.” Some people hate it, because they feel that it is overly dramatic and that it defines them. For others, it’s an important way to bring some acknowledgment and respect to what they’ve gone through. For me, I’m fine with it, but I’m equally fine with being considered a cancer patient or whatever is the term du jour. The name isn’t important to me. I had cancer no matter what you call it. And, literally, I have survived it, so far. I live with the understanding that in two or ten years I might not be a cancer survivor anymore, so sure, go ahead and call me one now. At some point I might be one of those people who valiantly “battled” the disease and lost. As an aside, that whole battle metaphor bugs me a lot more than the term survivor. Who am I battling? Katy’s bad cells? Can’t we just sign a treaty instead?

I guess it’s never been clear to me why the terms people use for such things can so easily offend. People say they don’t want to be defined by cancer. That’s one of the main reasons women wear wigs, and one of the reasons I thought I would want to wear one in public. And that is totally legitimate. Who needs pity, or overcompensated niceties, or awkward encounters, or any of the other reactions I’ve received when people look at me and see not only a bald woman but a woman with cancer? Well, the thing is, if people find out you have cancer, they will in part define you that way. That’s the truth. But how is that different than anything else?

I know I still talk a lot about hair in this blog, even though I don’t have any. It’s not because I’m hung up on it but rather because that’s the public manifestation of this disease, the one that brings the most reaction because it’s the most tangible. I’ve brought that on myself by not doing anything to hide my baldness, and I realize that. Some of the reactions have been incredibly meaningful, such as one that you see here. Gabe’s aunt buzzed her hair off in honor of me. Wow! I didn’t know what to say. I think I actually said, you didn’t have to do that, and I hope you don’t hate it! I was very touched. It had sure grown some by the time we took this photo.

Anyway, recently, I’ve had this hair epiphany, wherein I’ve learned that for me, being bald and having long red hair are almost the same thing in the way that those traits affect my interactions with people. For me, it's still hard, because I really did love my hair, and I still reach up sometimes to put it back, expecting it to be there. But baldness and red-hairness have some things in common. Why? Because both are different, noticeable, unique. People notice, and stare, and ask me weird questions, and, amazingly, I get compliments from strangers. In one of my very first blogs, if not the first one, I questioned how I could go from being the girl with long red hair to being the girl with the small bald head. But that’s exactly what has happened.

People have a way of defining us by what we look like, or by other physical aspects of ourselves, regardless of the circumstances. It’s unfortunate, but true. Again, how is that so different with cancer than anything else in life? When I was pregnant, I was just that—the big pregnant lady in the gym, at the conference, wherever. Pregnant ladies always lose a little of their own identities to the person sticking out of their bellies like a beach ball. When I was in a wheelchair, that’s what people saw--I was “handicapped.” When I had seizures, I was an epileptic. I know that that term is not acceptable any more, much the same as handicapped is not acceptable. Too defining, I guess. The terms have changed, but I don't think people have changed that much. There just might be more of an understanding that I should have been seen as a person with a disability, or a person with epilepsy, as long as I was a person first.

Of course, in truth, I was always that person, regardless of what anyone else said. Maybe being a woman has taught me an important lesson that helps me with these issues. I’ve always said that I think women spend way too much time and energy worrying what men think. After all, I have a masters degree in urban planning, not mind reading. Because, ultimately, who cares what they think? People are welcome to their thoughts, and I sure as hell can’t control what goes on in other people’s minds. Worrying about it won’t change anything. Women get upset if men are having inappropriate thoughts about them, and my response is, how do you know what their thoughts are? The only thing that matters is actions. If they don’t do anything inappropriate, who cares if they’re thinking unspeakable things? That’s their problem. I only care if someone makes it my problem.

I feel the same about all of this cancer identity stuff. Who cares if people see me as cancer first and Katy second? How would I ever know that’s what they’re thinking, and why would it matter if I did? It wouldn’t change the fact that I need to do this cancer bullshit. It’s just not my problem. My problem, or one of them, is having cancer, and having to do chemo. I might get a whole gamut of reactions, mostly to my obvious cancer-sign of baldness, but that doesn’t change the situation. And it wouldn’t change if people didn’t know either. My struggle would be the same, even if people couldn’t see it. That’s why changing the easy to remember “Y Me” breast cancer organization name to “Network of Strength” just makes me laugh first, and second, makes me wonder who thought that women feel strength through breast cancer. Mostly we feel tired. We think, um…”Why me?” That was the perfect name for it!

Why am I in this situation where I am forced, through the fact of my own personality, to see some of this experience in some kind of sociological fashion? Let’s revert back to hair as an example. These days, I receive compliments, and instead of just feeling grateful, which I do, I file my discomfort with them in the back of my mind while I simultaneously think about what these compliments mean about gender, sexuality, identity, etc. Why the discomfort? Anyone who has gone through cancer, especially cancer that required chemo for treatment, knows what I’m talking about. One, the very fact that I receive so many compliments on being bald proves that looks matter in how people treat you, even through cancer, regardless of what people say. Two, it’s hard as hell to receive any compliments when you have cancer. It’s wonderful and makes it easier to go through (so don’t stop giving them!) on the one hand. On the other, every time, I think in the back of my mind, hey, I’m not John Belushi. I never said that I wanted to leave a good looking corpse. Yesterday a guy on the street stopped me while I was wearing the dress in the pic above and said “You’re beautiful! Just beautiful.” And I said thank you and felt embarrassed but I also kind of wanted to cry. This whole cheating death issue is not supposed to happen until you are no longer considered conventionally attractive, and at that moment I was reminded of that. Like Gabe said after the last blog, I’d rather get to be decrepit and old.

So am I a cancer survivor? Sure. Am I a mom, a wife, a worker (for the man, no less), a white person, a member of generation X, a daughter, a size 2, a sister, friend, and a million other things that don’t have that much to do with what goes through my mind on any given occasion? Yes. People see me as those things, and I acknowledge that I am those things. And according to the state of Illinois, I’m still an epileptic, or a person with epilepsy. I still need the state’s permission to renew my driver’s license, and I will for the rest of my life. The state doesn’t care that I have gone half a lifetime without medication. If that fact isn’t defining, than what is? Epilepsy is still a part of me, decades after most, but not all, of the physical effects went away. By that token, this enlarged liver came from somewhere, and it wasn’t from my notoriously excessive drinking. To add another example, that car accident defined me. I mean, most people don’t have arthritis when they’re ten, or remember learning to walk, or keep those looks of revulsion from strangers tucked away in their brains. So what? I’ve still done what I wanted to do with my life. There are so many reasons that people get treated as less than they are, and it affects what they get to do, their opportunities, their happiness. Somehow that hasn't been the case for me. Maybe it's easy for me to say, let people call you whatever they will. Then just keep walking, if you’re able, and go where you need to go. Maybe it's been somehow easier for me to choose my battles and ignore the terminology.

In yesterday’s Tribune there was an editorial about an unspoken “club” of people who have cheated death, who are alive and shouldn’t be. The article was filled with stories of people who had been stabbed, left out at sea (or lake), walked away from accidents, etc. And of course the moral was, you will never be the same after this happens. You will appreciate life more, see it as a gift, and be a better person. Everyone with cancer is supposed to have this epiphany if they get to live. As you all know, I’m not a fan of that assumption. It’s not that I don’t value my life, but I just think the whole notion simplifies matters quite a bit. On the one hand, there is a reason that I think "cancer survivor" is an appropriate term. Let’s not lie. In the developed world, “only” 46% of people who get cancer die from it. Now, many of these people are also older, so there could be complicating factors. In developing countries, 75% of people who get cancer die. So surviving this is actually a big deal. Cancer tries pretty hard to kill you. That’s why it scares the shit out of people. But if you live, you’re not done. You spend the rest of your life wondering if every ache or pain is more cancer. This is fairly universal. At some point, you stop thinking about it every day, or so I’m told. The treatments are often long, and for some people they never end. But life keeps spinning. It doesn’t go back to normal, and yet, it never really stopped being normal.

I mean, I still argue with Gabe. People, including me, can still be petty and cranky. Cab drivers are still insane and I often wonder if I am going to live to get to my treatments when I get a particularly enraged cabbie driving me to Northwestern. Bizarre things still happen. This week, the kids were sick with stomach flu one after the other—of course not at the same time—so I couldn’t see them much. Right before Augie got sick, I bought new rugs to replace the $60 ones I bought when I was 22 and had my first apartment of my own. I figured it was time. Within three hours of putting them down, he had thrown up on one of them. One day a few weeks ago I came home from a walk to hear Lenny’s agonizing screams and cries. Holy shit, what happened? My eye! My eye! Did she poke her eye out? No, not quite, but almost.

With a breadstick.

You know what I’m saying?

More than cancer terminology, I get annoyed at the way cancer is used to exploit our society’s fear of suffering and death. There’s this new show on cable called The Big C, a series about a woman who finds out she has terminal cancer. Of course, she decides to change her life, start telling people what she really thinks, etc. I shouldn’t be so judgmental since I haven’t seen it, but this theme is tiring. You find out you only have a year to live! What would you change? Well shit, if you have cancer, you would probably spend a good portion of that year at the doctor’s office or hospital. You would be scared, and sad. You would try to stay normal, knowing you couldn’t. You would probably not have the opportunity to change your job, move, meet some hot new lover or eat the best food in the world. Hell, you might not be able to work, eat, have sex, or yell at people at all. Again, let’s not lie.

Moreover, why is there so much focus on damaged people, people who didn’t appreciate their lives, finding the truth through cancer? How about a movie or tv show about a person who was happy, and appreciative, and had good perspective…and got cancer anyway? What’s the story line? "Woman who used to get excited about stupid little things finds out she has cancer and still gets excited about stupid little things but in the back of her mind is sad about all the ones she might miss!" No one wants to see that. If anyone is enough of a glutton for punishment to go for that, just read this blog instead.

Perhaps my issue with this life epiphany thing is that cancer didn’t enable me to join the cheatin’ death club. That happened 25 years ago when I got hit by a car walking home from school. I don’t often mention this, but my life flashed before my eyes that day. People say that, but what does that really mean? Well, think about it. How long does it take to hit the sidewalk in a crumpled heap when you’ve been thrown by a sedan? I don’t know, 5 seconds? That’s it. Your life boils down to that. I had fast random memories—walking in a park, learning to play tennis. Even at 9 it seemed mundane, surreal, and impossible. That was my life? That’s IT?! Well, yes. I remember thinking: when I hit the sidewalk, I will be dead. I barely comprehended death and now it was happening to me.

Or not. I weighed 45 pounds at 9 years old and the difference between life-threatening injury, permanent injury, and death, was random and small. The impact of the car broke one hip, the impact of the sidewalk the other. A few inches away, or falling on the same hip, and I would have been paralyzed or would have never walked again. Another few inches and I would have died. The internal injuries I sustained left it touch and go there for a while. But I lived, and I went through all of what that meant. Disbelief, anger, night terrors for a year. I finally had to admit out loud that I was afraid of dying in order to get better and be able to sleep. I had to admit it wasn’t fair, that I was too young to die. I had to realize that death wasn’t an abstraction, but something that could, and ultimately would, happen to me.

So cancer can’t give me what I already have, it can’t teach me a lesson I learned long ago. Every fall is a new life for me, every pile of leaves I couldn’t jump in makes my heart well up. Is that a real term? Heart welling up? Because that’s how it feels. I doubt that I needed to renew my membership in this dubious club. I do know that I’d like to protect my kids from joining it , even by proxy, from getting too close to understanding death, at least for a while.

And that’s my long ponderous way of saying, that’s why I’ll go back and do my last a/c tomorrow. As I go through this, I am reminded of what I learned a little too early-- that life is always the same. Your kid is in agony, so you take the breadstick away and get her an icepack. You give her a kiss. Then you go in the kitchen where she can’t see you, turn your bald head to her, put your hand over your mouth, and laugh. And why not? In that crucial 5 seconds, that memory might be the one that turns up, out of nowhere. Who needs an epiphany? Life is interesting enough, just as it is.