Category Archives: Breast Cancer
Life After Cancer Treatment
“So are you cancer free now?” My hair stylist asked me a couple of days ago. She was trying to conjure up something normal out of my three inch orphan Annie curls that started taking the shape of Jagr’s mullet. I watched her in the mirror and replied: “I guess…I mean, for now, I guess …
So You’re Done, Right?
Next week is my last chemo infusion. It will be one year and thirteen days after my very first poison drip. Everybody keeps smiling at me and exclaiming that I must be really excited. Excited is not a word that has populated my vocabulary for quite a while now. I am glad I will not have …
I Don’t Want To Try
During a checkout, a clerk in a shoe store glanced at my driver’s license issued pre-chemo and said with a crooked smile: “Oh…it is you…just your hair is different.” He didn’t hide his disapproval with the change of my look. His voice was screechy, like a goat. I bit the inside of my cheek and …
Neither Here Nor There
As I near the completion of my active treatment for cancer, I often think of what others call the landmarks and milestones I reached and passed. The biopsies, surgeries, the chemotherapy, the hair loss, the reconstruction, the PET scans, the follow ups, the blood work, the hair re-growth. It sounds as if I walked around …
Treasure in the Murky Pond?
I strolled with my dog on a winding sidewalk that lead around a pond. It was warm and windy thanks to the distant hurricane. Suddenly, as I walked by one of the trees, its little branch smacked me on top of my head. I could almost hear it say: “Stop stressing out! Stop thinking about …
At Grandma’s, Time Stood Still
As I recovered from each chemo, I often wondered what it would be like if my Grandma was still alive. I imagined myself staying at her house or, rather, a one bedroom apartment in the city. A fifth floor walk up, I used to run up the stairs, sometimes taking two at a time. Breathless, …
A Model for a Day
The girls wear tight blue jeans and black tank tops. Their feet take careful steps on their four inch heeled shoes. The one and only guy swaggers in. We each have our own make up artist as we perch on the bar stools. Our front is covered with a black plastic bib and we look …
Beastly Anniversary
Last night, a strange feeling enveloped me. It stuck to me like a spider web; it clung to me like a wet shirt. It weighed me down like a diving bell. It constricted my breathing as if an anaconda wrapped itself around my torso. It changed my thoughts to black and white. It played out …
“I Would Rather Have AIDS than Leukemia”
I creep quietly in the cancer support group room because I am almost 15 minutes late. This is a new set of people for me. A fourth different group so far. I have been trying to find one that would actually live up to its name. I sit down in the last empty chair and …
Hey, God: Fuck Your Plan
I saw a phrase recently that said something like God won’t give you what you can’t carry. To me it is just another one of the platitudes that religious people use to make themselves or someone else feel better about their shitty lives. After what has happened to me in the past couple years (and …
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