’til death do them part (or, john edwards is an asshole)

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Emily

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I can’t stop thinking about Elizabeth Edwards.  But first, a confession.

There was a time, many moons ago, when I actually thought John Edwards might make a half-decent President.  I think I even voted for him in the ’04 Democratic Primary.  Underneath one of the Obama stickers on our car, there’s a John Edwards sticker.  There, I said it.  For me, Edwards’ primary appeal as a candidate had to do with the fact that he was really the only person running who was willing to talk about poverty, an issue very close to my heart.

Well, fast-forward to the here and now, and it’s safe to say that John Edwards is a first-class asshole.  Don’t think I need to explain things any further on that score.

But I can’t stop thinking about Elizabeth.

After I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in December, 2007, I dove into Elizabeth’s memoir SAVING GRACES, and found in her voice an intelligence, candor and spirit with which I genuinely connected.  She wrote about losing her son in a tragic accident, and the depression that engulfed her.  She wrote in stark, unsparing prose about her own cancer diagnosis and treatment.  To me, she seemed like a hero.

All of the drama in Elizabeth’s life – her son’s death, her illness, her husband’s decision to run for the Senate, and ultimately for President – was, in her book, played out against the back-drop of the intense love and devotion which she and John shared.  The Edwards’s marriage always struck me as a union of equals – two people whose gifts perfectly complimented one another, and whose commitment to each other was utterly steadfast.

If you do an internet search for Elizabeth Edwards at this moment, you will undoubtedly come up with dozens of stories about her recent separation from John.  You’ll probably even find reviews of two new “tell-all” books which describe her in, to put it mildly, a less-than-flattering light.  Too bad about the cancer and everything, but honey, she’s a real bitch.

As I write, I am trying to untangle how Elizabeth’s illness factors into this tragic tale.  Aside from her presumably grim prognosis – she is, after-all, fighting metastatic stage IV breast cancer  – I am driven to wonder how her diagnosis may have contributed to the disillusion of this seemingly ideal marriage.  The specifics don’t really concern me, though, because all I see is a man who betrayed his sick wife, had an affair with another woman and produced a child, all while putting on a public show of affection and devotion.

Today, I read Janet Maslin’s review of Andrew Young’s book about the Edwards’s tragedy, and was particularly struck by this passage, describing the depth of John’s pathology:

And Mr. Edwards, according to this book, freely played the cancer card. “I can’t let her die knowing this,” Mr. Young says Mr. Edwards said about his affair with Ms. Hunter.

I don’t quite know what to make of this statement (assuming it’s true), but I know that it sent a chill down my spine.

Cancer is a fucking nightmare no matter how you slice it, but I have been blessed with an extraordinary partner who has been at my side every step of the way – every terrifying, painful, confusing, disgusting step.  It’s something I never take for granted.  But spend a few hours hanging around virtual cancer communities, and you will find story after story of relationships that sour after a partner is diagnosed, leaving the patient to face his or her disease without the primary emotional support he or she always thought would be there.

I know, I know – Elizabeth is rich and has access to world-class health care and she has her children and a million friends and family who are there to help her carry on.  Still, her story haunts me.  I picture her rambling around her enormous home in Raleigh, fatigued after a treatment, looking around and wondering where the man who was supposed to be at her side  – “until death do us part” – has gone.   At the end of the day, her celebrity notwithstanding, she’s just another woman fighting cancer, only now, she has to do it on her own.

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all in a day’s work

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Emily

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Today, the somewhat complicated relationship I have always had with my job got that much trickier.

Know, first of all, that I work in an office populated almost entirely with women – mostly young women of child-bearing age – and that right now we are in some kind of fertility over-drive.  In the past several months, it has seemed that about half the women in the office are pregnant.  OK, it’s considerably less than half, but when you don’t have any reproductive organs, being around ONE pregnant woman – much less a half dozen – can make you feel like a barren wasteland in an oasis of fertility.  To compound the situation, because of things going on in the courthouse where we practice, staffing assignments are being shifted and the job of roving substitute for the pregnant attorneys who are about to go out on leave has fallen to – you guessed it –  ME!!

If I were writing a novel, or a play, this could be great comic fodder.  But in reality, in my actual life that I am trying to put back together and live as fully as possible after cancer, it’s an ironic twist that I could, quite frankly, do without.

Today, I learned that two more women in my office are now expecting.  Great.  Just great.  In my head, I had already begun doing the math to figure out when the woman who has the latest due date would be going out, and was beginning to imagine a time when I could roam the halls of my floor without running into swelling bellies at every goddamn turn.  Not so fast.

There’s a good chance that for as long as I work at my current office, I will have at least one pregnant co-worker. Not a lot I can do about it, and I’m just going to have to suck it up.

But it’s not just the absurd proportion of pregnant women in my unit that taxes me, and forces me into this daily tug-of-war with the reality of how cancer robbed me of my fertility.  It’s the fact that I continually am faced with the reality that every day, every where – in this city, around the country, around the world – people are having babies that they cannot care for.  Or worse, that they actively harm.

So imagine my delight this afternoon – shortly after getting the news about the newest office pregnancies – when I walked into a meeting with the mother who almost murdered my infant client through horrific abuse and neglect. On the one hand, I was glad to know she had finally been arrested and spent ten days in custody before her grandmother bailed her out.  But when I went back to my office and looked up her docket, I discovered that the most serious offense she has been charged with is aggravated assault.  Excuse me?  The doctor at the child abuse clinic who evaluated my client described her condition as “one of the worst cases I have ever seen – a near fatality.”  And all you’ve got for me is agg assault?

It’s a good thing I used to be an actor.  When I walked into the meeting this afternoon, I couldn’t even look at this woman.  I was eventually able to make eye contact with her as I asked her a few questions about her criminal case. But what I really wanted to do was reach across the table and put my hands around her throat.  There are times, really, when the reality I am exposed to every day presses down on my heart so hard that I actually feel capable of violence.

This little baby and her toddler sister are two of only a very few clients I have had the urge to take into my own home , and they are certainly the first since cancer.  Even though I am getting ready to advocate for a new placement for them, to try and get them into a home that doesn’t have five other kids (including another infant) and where they can get the undiluted love and attention that they need and deserve, I know that trying to bring them into my own family is not the answer.

But I also know that one day, in the not too distant future, my husband and I are going to open our home to a little human being, and the magnitude of that gift, and the love that we will generate, will be about a thousand times greater than anything this world has ever seen.

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magical/irrational (CT scan eve)

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Emily

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Tomorrow morning, when I enter the radiology suite at Pennsylvania Hospital, my passport to cancer-land will be stamped yet again.  It’s time for my second CT scan.

The first was over the summer, when I was still a little rough around the edges, still working on getting my sea-legs back after treatment.  I brought the husband with me; I am pretty sure I had a good-sized case of anxiety ahead of time.  There were insurance issues – referrals still being relatively new to me after changing health coverage a few months earlier – and some scheduling mix-ups.  It was not a seamless process, and the banana-flavored barium smoothie left a bit to be desired.  But the tech was awesome (is there a tech who ISN’T?) and the test itself was utterly painless;  I don’t think I even had to undress.  Other than what I was warned would be a weird sensation in my “hoo-hoo” after getting the contrast, it really was no big deal.

Then, of course, the wait.  Those of us who have been through a scary medical diagnosis know the old adage:  bad news travels fast.  I mean, REALLY fast.  So, in a way, I am comforted when, after a check-up or a diagnostic test, the phone is silent that first evening when I get home.  And then the next day, and the next and the day after that.  Before you know it, over a week has gone by and you still have absolutely no idea what is going on with your effing test results.  But you also know that if there was something bad going on, you would have heard right away.

So there are two kinds of thinking I am engaging in right now – the magical, and the irrational.  My magical thinking consists of believing that my health is inextricably linked with how I am feeling.  As in, I feel great!! Of course my cancer isn’t making a comeback.  I am running almost 6 miles at a time; I am losing weight, feeling strong and looking better than I have in a long, long time (if I do say so myself.)  I feel balanced, happy and completely on top of things.  It’s simply impossible that I am not well.

And then there is the irrational.  It goes something like this:  we’re about to buy a house.  We just made plans to go to New Orleans.  We are on the verge of beginning the adoption process:  of course my cancer is back.  Of course all of the positivity and good vibes and healing energy that is all around me now is about to be obliterated as I am plunged into the next phase of my cancer nightmare.

In my moments of calm, I recognize that both of these extremes are absurd.  My cells are going to do what they are going to do, regardless of how many miles I run, or how many times I have to shop for the next pant size down. As frightening as it is to admit, when it comes to cancer, it’s really out of my control.

At the same time, though, there’s an odd comfort I take in that reality: it’s out of my control.  Just like so much of life.  I can’t know what my scan will reveal tomorrow;  I won’t know what that “undifferentiated” 4mm spot on my liver has got up to in the last six months until someone at my oncologist’s office gets around to picking up the phone and calling me.  So, in the mean time…

In the mean time, carry on.  Live well.  Listen to music.  Relax with tea.  Play with my dog.  Tell my husband I love him.  Think about where I will put furniture and hang art in our new house.

Those of us going through these rituals of life with cancer – the check-ups and tests at regular, seemingly unending intervals – know what it’s like to have your reality divided into such discrete segments.  We live in three month chunks, or six months, or a year, during which time we can sometimes – often, hopefully – pretend that life is “normal,” or even that cancer never happened.  Close your eyes, breathe deeply, feel the strength inside of you, and you might even feel whole again, free of the latent anxiety that usually hovers around the edges of your consciousness.

While living this way makes it hard – sometimes even impossible – to plan for the future with any feeling of confidence or certainty – there is something to be said for having these kind of artificial demarcations define our existence.  For these intervals give me a chance to look back, and measure my progress.  I remember going to my scan in July – the fierce thunderstorm that rocked Center City that morning, the downpour Mike and I ran through as we dashed from the parking lot to the hospital entrance;  the infernal televisions in the waiting room, with Sandra Bullock talking to Matt Lauer about her new movie; the sweat gathering in my armpits as I waited to be called for my test; the nice woman at reception who helped straighten out my referral problem.  I laughed with Mike as I grudgingly drank my barium cocktail, making faces with each sip, but it was an edgy laughter, tinged with fear.  I needed him with me, to help steady me.

Tomorrow morning, six months later, I will walk in on my own, with the latest New Yorker and a decidedly greater sense of calm. I will drink my barium, and read the profile about Neil Gaiman.  I will smile at the other patients waiting for their tests.  I will hold all of my thoughts – magical and irrational – firmly inside of me.

When I am called in for my scan, I will engage in pleasantries with the techs.  I’ll tell them they can access my port for the IV contrast.  The tech will ask me a question or two about how my health is currently, and I will give the obligatory, positive response.  My hoo-hoo will tingle.  And that will be that.

Then I will walk out the door, onto Spruce Street, on what is supposed to be a sunny, pleasant morning, and head to work.  Just like any other day.

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getting over certainty

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Emily

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It feels like an eternity since I sat down to do this.  What does that mean, I wonder?  That cancer and its aftermath are finally taking a backseat to other things?  That seems implausible.  For regardless of what is in the foreground, cancer and its lingering effects are still there, lurking in the shadows, creating a kind of psychic white noise that I often don’t even realize is there.  It seems important to go through the exercise of tuning in to that static, letting it register.

There are a few disparate threads I am toying with; I don’t know if I will be able to connect them.

Recently, I have been feeling the limits of my powers as a cancer fairy godmother.  A few months ago, there was this energy coursing through me, as I reached out to and connected with so many young people – women mostly – who were facing cancer, or cancer scares.  I had the wings, the wand, the whole bit.  I was as light as a feather and as strong as an ox.  I fed off of the knowledge that I was doing something, serving as some kind of beacon for scared young people who were facing the demons that I had successfully beaten back.

Time marches on.  It’s January and today is bleak, with relentless rain, and I feel like I need a scorecard to keep track of all the people who have entered my universe because of cancer, and how they are faring in their fights.   More than anything, I am coming to understand the helplessness that accompanies trying to be a cheerleader for those facing cancer.  On the most basic level, I imagine that the simple fact of being someone who has been through it and survived serves to buoy those who are in the thick of it, feeling sick and exhausted and afraid.  Beyond that, I want to believe that sharing my unique perspective and experience might provide some tangible good.

But in the end, I don’t really know what any of it adds up to.  In the end, there is nothing I can do for my friend who is going through treatment for her second recurrence, beyond checking in and offering a hug when I see her.  In the end, I have no way of knowing what is going on with my friend from high school who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in May of 2008, when he stops posting on Facebook and doesn’t respond to my emails.  He is on the other side of the country, fighting his fight, and all of the virtual high fives and notes of support will not change the course of his disease.  My hands are tied, and sometimes it feels like cancer is winning.

Everyone faces this beast in his or her own way; some people want to talk, some people don’t.  Some people are knocked sideways by treatment; others power through, keeping going to work, exercising, living as fully as possible.  Each one of these lives that I am now struggling to connect with is singular, contains its own story and meaning.  But the cancer fairy godmother in me wants so badly to be able to just gather up all of these souls and hold them close in the hope that together, we can all be bigger and more powerful than this monster.

Today, for no particular reason, I had a flashback to the particularly bleak period that immediately followed my treatment.  Treatment was over, but in a lot of ways, the nightmare was just beginning.  I remembered real, excruciating conflict with my husband – all of it borne of cancer – and struggling to communicate, trying to find a way to connect with each other through all of the confusion and anger and fear.  Forget the nausea, the exhaustion, the weakness – that feeling of being torn away from the person most dear to me was without question the most unendurably painful part of my cancer experience.

But then I thought about now, and the happiness we have, the strength that we have gained, the fearlessness we share, and I thought, what I want to be able to do, more than anything, for those around me who are fighting, whose struggles I am watching from afar, is to carry them through the pain of the present and into the warmth and comfort of a happier, stronger future.  I want them all to feel what I feel now, to have a shot of the love that propels me through each day.  I want the needless suffering to end.

My rehabilitation is not over.  I know that.  The restoration of spirit is on-going, and I am not even certain if it will ever be complete.  How much of cancer’s damage can be completely, permanently reversed?

Reading Dave Eggers’ ZEITOUN has brought this question into sharp focus.  It didn’t occur to me until a few days ago, how my connection with New Orleans might have deepened since facing cancer.  We will be there in a few months, visiting for the first time since my illness; our last trip there, in 2007, was not long before I was diagnosed.  (It’s odd: whenever I think of 2007, I recall all of the events of the year as a high-speed train, coming off the rails, on an unavoidable collision course with cancer.)  In 2007, New Orleans was still in the first throes of recovery from Katrina.  I literally felt my heart breaking while I was there – the trauma was so vast, so palpable.

This year, 2010, we will return to New Orleans, with my wounds – and the city’s –  still healing, with my  – our – rebuilding still very much a work in progress.  So I wonder, is there a limit to the progress either of us will ultimately make?  Are there certain things which can never be recovered?  How much of New Orleans is lost forever, and how much of me?

I can’t know – for me, for the city on Lake Pontchartrain, or for the people I have grown to care for who are fighting for their lives at the moment I write these words.  Certainty eludes us all.

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simplicity: holidays 2009

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Emily

The holiday season is finally over.  That seemingly endless stretch starting with Thanksgiving and ending with New Year’s has come and gone, and here I sit, wearing my favorite fleece pants and my re-imagined fuzzy purple cancer socks, listening to the wind howl outside my window.  The lights are still on the tree, but the festive glow is dimming, and an expanse of long, cold months lies ahead.

Last year at this time, I took a serious plunge into darkness.  Now, though, I feel the strength at my core expanding each day.  I am anxiously awaiting – rather than fearing – what comes next, and I am looking back over the past six weeks, feeling blessed.

One of my extremely funny cancer friends wrote on her own blog that, “I started my holiday toast with ‘Here’s to another Christmas I’m not dead!'”  While I didn’t have the chutzpah to pull a similar stunt at my family’s Christmas dinner, the sentiment was very much on my mind, and was perhaps what motivated my relentlessly light-hearted feeling all through the season.

I remember my father, in the immediate aftermath of my diagnosis, saying that he knew that everything was going to be “just fine” (code, I assume, for “I am not worried you are going to die.”)  It was great to hear at the time, but in hindsight I wonder exactly how he knew that.  Just because my mom survived ovarian cancer in 1989 didn’t necessarily mean that the same fate was in store for me.  I mean, “Stage III” is not exactly what you want to hear accompanying a diagnosis of ovarian cancer.  I never once assumed that my survival was a given.  When my husband and I started making videos to memorialize my treatment experience, I once said to him, semi-seriously, “You’re not going to play these at my funeral, are you?”

The Christmas immediately following my diagnosis, while I recovered from surgery, my family spent the holiday on the beach in St. Lucia.  Back in Philadelphia, I made a lasagna and we had our Jewish friends over for dinner.  It was peculiar, to say the least. But now it is two years later, and this holiday season featured two wickedly awesome kitchen dance parties, magical opportunities for me and my sister to commune and laugh and drink together, while family and guests floated around us. Both Thanksgiving (here at home) and Christmas (in New York), I was able to bask in the glow that really does come from being with the people most dear to you, and reflect on how strong and calm I am feeling now.  I don’t really remember what the holidays were like before cancer, but I certainly don’t recall them ever feeling this good.

Another clear memory came back to me this season:  the fear I had of not living to see my nephew grow up.  He was three when I was diagnosed, and certainly not old enough to understand what I was going through, though the thought of him being afraid of me as I went bald and lost weight broke my heart.  Now, he is five and a half, and I have been able to watch him turn into a real little boy, with whom I can have long (usually hysterical) conversations, in addition to building with Legos and Magna-tiles.  Best of all, in the midst of the Christmas food preparation, I was able to give him a slightly intoxicated (me, not him) lesson in ’70’s dance moves as we shook our booties to The Clash’s “Magnificent Seven.”  Watching him break out into a huge, mischievous smile as he swung his shoulders sassily back and forth, in imitation of my own goofy moves, was probably the best Christmas gift I have ever received.

What I noticed throughout these holidays, as that moment with Oscar exemplifies, is how grateful I am for simple things.  The real gifts this year didn’t come in packages.  Finally brining my dog to New York, and walking her in Central Park; taking a Christmas Day run with my sister after the turkey went in the oven; going to the movies with Oscar and sharing popcorn  – these were all moments that filled my heart with an unadulterated bliss that I don’t think I ever knew before my illness.

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While so much of what I experience now remains framed by cancer – at least in the quiet of my own mind – I still have mixed feeling about how much attention I want paid to the fact of my survival, my rehabilitation, the journey  I have made back to the land of the living.  It’s possible, I suppose, that the people who surrounded me during my illness didn’t observe its toll on me the same way I experienced it.  I look back, and I can’t even recognize the person I was during that time.  Perhaps my friends and family still saw me, just – diminished.

So when Christmas dinner featured a truly special guest – Double-Oh Seven, one of my climbing mates from First Descents this past summer – I was sort of hoping, in a way, that him joining us would prompt a conversation about cancer, about what my friend and I had both been through, and some acknowledgment of how massively we are both now kicking ass.  I love the way life has “normalized” over the past year, but every once in awhile, especially when the fact of my cancer is being so dramatically underscored by the presence of someone who I would never have known, but for my illness, I crave a little recognition.

For one reason or another, though, things didn’t unfold that way at Christmas dinner (seriously, who wants to talk about cancer at Christmas dinner?), but rather we all simply sat and talked and drank and reveled in the glow that comes from the essential fact of how good it feels to connect, and feel love, over a holiday meal.

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Simplicity bred still more joy on New Year’s Eve – a real death-trap of a manufactured holiday, in many people’s estimation, and not without good reason.  Two years ago, I struggled to celebrate the dawn of 2008 at our neighbor’s house, knowing that the next morning I would wake up to face a day of bowel prep for the second act of my hysterectomy.  Lots of us feel ambivalent about New Year’s Eve – that one, needless to say, was a new low.

What a contrast, then, was found in the delightful simplicity of this year’s ringing in  – a miserable, rainy night, spent in the warm glow of our friend’s fireplace, with abundant alcohol, sinful dessert and dogs aplenty.  We downed shot after shot of Jose Cuervo Tradicional, and I thought, for a brief moment, of a gathering with these same friends during the waning moment of my course of treatment, when I treated myself to a single shot of tequila, violating my own strict no-alcohol policy.  What a reluctant, guilty pleasure it was back then, when all I could think about was my white blood cell count, and what a free-wheeling bit of recklessness it was on New Year’s Eve.  And what a joy, really, to be able to let my guard down, to be able to trust my body, and not fear the consequence of every single defiance of the strictures imposed by my illness.  What an amazing thing, simply to be able to celebrate, freely, without inhibition, and to have the energy to do so.  These again are things I will never, ever take for granted.

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So yes, if I may borrow my friend Chris’s sentiment, here’s to another Christmas when I am not dead.  My suspicion is that with each passing year, I will learn a little bit more about the place that cancer occupies in my life.  For the moment, though, I am just thrilled to be living it.

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the wanting comes in waves

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Emily

large waves

In a post a few weeks back, I was thinking about the injustice of a world in which people who are unable or unwilling to raise children continue to produce babies at an often-alarming rate, while people like me get totally fucked out of the chance to have their own children by something as evil and arbitrary as cancer.

This is not a exactly a secret.  From children literally starving to death in the far reaches of so-called third world countries, to horrifically abused and neglected kids around the corner in North Philly, there is simply no end to the number of children in the world who are wanting, or who are fighting for their lives because of the incapacity of their caregivers, or other accidents of fate.

Even before cancer, working in child welfare, I was fairly well submerged in this reality.  I guess it was a different kind of cruel and ironic twist of fate, then, when cancer struck, and I was left unable to ever have my own children.

Two years later, being unable to have a child continues to gnaw at me, but it is tempered by other things.  Like watching friends adopt, or understanding that the physical suffering of other young adults battling cancer seems to never end, whereas mine was finite.  There is great hope in the former, and great perspective to be gained from the latter.

It’s a balancing act, realizing that what I have gained from my cancer experience (it giveth) and what I have lost  (it taketh away) are inextricably linked, and also to allow myself the opportunity to mourn and rage, while at the same time be thankful for all that I still have.

Every single day, this struggle is redefined.  I just recently spent an unpleasant few hours grappling with whether or not to attend a dear friend’s baby shower this coming weekend.  First no, then yes, then no again.  I need to be there; I want to be there.  I love my friend and I am so happy for her.  But I don’t think I can handle it; I don’t want to put myself through that.

Doesn’t there come a point when I just have to push through the bad feelings and suck it up?  Will this disquiet ever resolve?  Will I ever reach a place of real peace, where it’s not acceptance one minute and rage the next?

The agitation did resolve, at least for now, when I shared my mixed feelings directly with my friend.  One thing I have learned since cancer is that there is rarely anything to be gained from withholding honest emotions.  Rather, there is everything to be gained from strengthening existing bonds of love and friendship through open communication.  So, thank heaven for the compassion and understanding of  my dear friend, who knows me as well as just about anyone.  We have been connected to each other for almost twenty years; she regularly sent me cookies during the months I was in treatment.  Now, in the aftermath of it all, as I continue to struggle to rebuild, she has shown me what a real friend is, once again.

There are, then, it seems, these microcosmic (or just cosmic) moments of clarity and connection that enable me to see past the injustice I have endured, to the moment in the future when my friend’s child and my own child will meet and embark on the next generation of friendship.  But then, in the next instant, I am looking through another file, reading the story of another child born to another drug-addicted, mentally ill mother, and I feel things start to unravel once again.

Where does it end?  Another friend, also facing the spectre of being unable to carry her own child because of cancer, has just returned from an extended stay in Peru with her physician husband, and today shared her own thoughts about being confronted with this same cruel irony.  She wrote:

In a small house, a mother  surrounded by 4 children, one who was sick with a toothache and crying, was there and said to come see “the gringo doctor”, and about 7 more kids surrounded us. Thankfully I had my sunglasses on because I just couldn’t help but cry – here these people had nothing and yet had exactly what I wanted in spades.

There it is.  I can’t say it any more plainly.  These words moved me so, and left me to contemplate what it means to be wanting, and to consider the layers of injustice that shroud so much of what it means to be human.

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reflections on the season

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Emily

Two days shy of Christmas, and I finally have a moment to catch my breath.  Five nights with my parents as house guests; a blizzard; house-hunting; last minute gifts; news of my clean and clear CA125.  It’s been an eventful few days, and so I am pausing to take stock.

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Inevitably, I measure my progress by thinking back to this time last year.  December 2008 marked the beginning of my post-treatment depression – a plunge that lasted many long weeks before I was able – with  the help of my husband – to see my way clear to a Zoloft prescription, intensive acupuncture and a commitment to serious physical rehabilitation.  I remember so clearly coming home from New York after Christmas, and crying hard as I thought about how much I love my nephew, and how furious and sad I was about not being able to have my own child.  It was like a knife in the heart.  That moment, it seemed – combined with the predictable anti-climax of the holiday season – sent me plummeting into an ocean of bad feeling that I was unable to comprehend in the immediate aftermath of surviving treatment and being told I was “cancer-free.”  The winter of my discontent, indeed.

So here I am now, one year later.  Much in the way I was unable to recognize my pre-cancer self in the person I became during the course of my illness, I can scarcely call up what it was like to feel so trapped, so withdrawn, so much a captive of my own impenetrable sadness.  Perhaps I am just a walking testimonial to the power of psychotropic medication.  But I like to think that what has happened over the past year is also a function of the hard work that I have done – physically and emotionally – to regain my sense of self and to resume truly living.

Last Sunday afternoon after the snow stopped falling, I trekked over to the gym in my awesome new Merrell boots.  I changed into my Pumas and hit the treadmill, and pounded out 5.2 miles at a relatively brisk pace.  It was my longest run yet, and it felt amazing, like I could have just kept going and going.  I can feel myself closing in on the 10K that I am determined to run this Spring.  It is within sight.  I am going to do it.

This time of year, particularly after the holidays fade, it’s reasonable – and probably even healthy –  to hibernate.  Gather energy for the coming spring.  Retreat a bit.  But right now, even with the chill air and the ice underfoot, I feel warm and steady, grounded. More than that, I feel more determined than ever to stay strong and focussed and disciplined.  Between my illness and the depression which gripped me last winter, I have done the withdrawal thing.  I am over it.

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The holiday season takes a toll, no question.  There is an artificial, hyperkinetic cheer in the air which barely obscures a pervasive, bitter melancholy.   Still, this year, there is a light that even the bleak midwinter cannot extinguish.  It’s hard to say exactly where its origins are, but it is not hard to identify all of the things which have stoked the flame over the last twelve months –  hearing U2’s “Breathe” for the first time; crossing the finish line of my first 5K; climbing a mountain in Wyoming; cooking my first Thanksgiving.

As much as cancer took from me in 2008, this year has seen an epic rebuilding, a restoration of spirit, the likes of which I never could have imagined last December.  I am proud of myself, and indebted to those who have lifted me up along the way.

And so, I am wishing all of my friends, family and especially my fellow survivors, peace, joy and continued strength this season and in the coming year.

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the meaning of night

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Emily

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I love a good book.  Reading takes up a good chunk of my leisure time, and I love telling people how during my seven months out of work recovering from surgery and getting chemo, I read like a fiend and never once turned on the TV to fill the unending hours of isolation – at least after I stopped taking pain meds.  As the weeks and months wore on, I was amazed at the speed with which I devoured a huge stack of books, and I took a certain pride in watching the pile of ones I had finished grow higher almost weekly.  I couldn’t do much while I was sick, but I sure could read up a storm.

In hindsight, it seems I was determined to at least keep my mind sharp while my body became increasingly frail and vulnerable.  Reading seemed a good way to try and preserve my brain.  Chemo clearly took a toll on my moods, but I was not about to let it rob me of my imagination or destroy my intellect.

My equally bookish friend Kate recently recommended a novel called THE MEANING OF NIGHT, which she described as a Victorian thriller of sorts.   She  offered a general outline of the story, and shared with me the book’s opening sentence: “After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.”

How could I resist?

Last night, after almost a month and 700 pages, I finally finished reading THE MEANING OF NIGHT.  It was one of those books that utterly transported me, with vivid atmosphere, sharply drawn characters and a richly layered narrative.  So I was delighted when I found out that the author had also produced a follow-up novel – with certain common characters but by no means a simple sequel.  I was eager to read more of this gifted writer’s work.

So a few days ago I went out and picked up THE GLASS OF TIME.  I pulled it off the shelf at Borders and looked at the back cover.   I immediately noticed that the author’s bio had been amended:  MICHAEL COX (1948-2009.) There it was:  my newest literary obsession, dead at 60, after writing just two novels.

My morbid curiousity drove me to look into what happened to Cox, and sure enough, last night I came across the NY Times obituary from April, 2009, and learned that Cox had died after a protracted battle with a rare form of vascular cancer.  Cancer.  Of course. What else?

The details of his illness, though, and its connection to his writing, proved quite unexpected.  It seems that Cox, after being told that it was likely that he would go blind as his disease progressed, decided to crank out the novel that had been percolating inside of him for the last thirty years.  He was an editor, scholar and musician but had never, ever written a novel.  And so he sat down and produced this lush, atmospheric, intelligent, scary, humorous novel, just like that.  While fighting cancer.

Needless to say, I was doubly crestfallen – not only had this great talent, whose real gifts as a writer were not fully revealed until he was well into middle age, been taken from us too soon, but he was cut down by the world’s most popular killer – proving, once again, that only the cool kids get cancer.  It just makes me  want to spit.

Still, I took some small measure of comfort from learning what Cox had done.  Battling cancer and facing blindness, he said, “Confound it, I am going to write a novel.”  And not just any novel.  But one that garnered him heaps of critical praise and put him on the Short List for the  Newcomer of the Year at the 2006 Galaxy British Book Awards and showed up on a half-dozen 10 Best Books of the Year lists.  Rather than putting his life on hold, or deferring his dreams, Cox used his cancer as a motivating force to realize a vision he had had his entire life.

When I think about my illness, I look back and feel like time stood still, as if those long, lonely months were lost completely.  It was as though everything was out of my control, and I could only do the most basic things to remind myself that I was, in fact, still alive.  Granted, in spite of everything, I always maintained some expectation that once treatment ended, I would be able to return to work and resume living – no matter how excruciating that process might prove to be.  No one ever said to me, “Your time is limited.”

But what would I do if that had been my fate?  Would I have had the focus and the determination to do what Cox did – to pursue a dream, no matter how far-fetched, and make something amazing happen?  I don’t quite know how to answer that question.  In the mean time, I am going to tell as many people as I can about the remarkable thing that Michael Cox, cancer warrior, achieved with his writing.

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dance party, 8:30 AM, my gyn/onc’s office: be there

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Emily

Apparently the rules that apply to human house guests also apply to dogs – three nights, maximum.  No, I kid. We’ve had a great time with Marley, our dear friends’ Pomapoo, who has been with us since Friday night.  Now, though, it’s quiet time:  Sunday evening. Time to write, reflect and gear up for the week.  But Marley will not relent – he is tearing around the living room, shaking his little teddy bear with the bell inside (hey, at least it’s festive!)  Love that pooch like a rock, but I am ready for a little peace and quiet.

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It’s not just any Sunday evening, though: tomorrow marks another three-month check-up.  Here we go again;  I just looked at my entry from my last three-month check-up, and a great deal of what I said then still applies.  Happily, though, the anxiety leading up to these appointments continues to diminish.

The truth is, for the last few days, I have felt like a ninja who cannot be stopped. Yesterday afternoon I had a fantastic run and recorded my personal best time for the mile.  Today, a rainy, miserable mess, I went to the gym and had one of my now-rare workouts that doesn’t involve running, and came home feeling extraordinarily pumped up.  For the post-cancer version of me, there is nothing like physical exertion to remind me that I am deeply, determinedly alive.

Last night, as I ran, I thought about a few things.  First, that “Pastime Paradise” is my current favorite running song, and I wish I had a 50-minute extended mash-up to last the length of my average run.  But I was also thinking about why I love running so much now, and why it feeds my emotional health the way it does.  It has something to do, I think, with relying solely on my own strength and will-power to achieve something.

I have never thought of myself as an athletic person, but before cancer, I loved cycling. I still love my bike, but right now, my heart is with running.  With cycling, you are always at the mercy of your equipment.  With running, it’s just me. My music, my shoes and the road (or, somewhat less dramatically, the treadmill.)  Like fighting cancer, running is, for me, a solitary act that requires me to look inward, and find the strongest and most focussed part of myself.

Put simply, running does not feel good.  Lingering peripheral neuropathy makes my feet feel like they are wrapped in cotton, or like my socks are always bunched up at my toes. It’s impossible to know if my shoes fit right, or so it seems.  Problems feeling grounded, of knowing that my feet are actually on the ground, touching solid earth, afflicted me for months after finishing chemo, and the sensation of not being able to feel my feet properly caused me tremendous anxiety.  Think about it:  how can you feel stable – emotionally – when you cannot feel the way your body is connected to the earth?

Medication, acupuncture and time have all helped me overcome the worst part of this affliction.  Still, when I run, I am reminded that my feet are not quite right.  But it doesn’t stop me.  It just makes me want to run harder, and further (and, on rare occasion, faster.)

The emotional bumps in the road earlier this week – triggered by various events and encounters that were totally beyond my control – were unpleasant, to say the least.  I left work in tears on Wednesday after one of my five pregnant co-workers came into my office to announce that she’d had an ultrasound that morning and learned she was having a girl.  She wasn’t even talking to me, but I just became overwrought.  So, rather than smashing my computer screen into a thousand pieces, I quickly packed up my things and left.  Never mind that it wasn’t even four o’clock.  Some days, mental health takes top priority.

I cried as I stomped up 15th Street and headed to the el, talking to Mike on the phone.  I didn’t really care what I looked like.  My emotions were all over the place, and it was just too fucking bad for anyone who got in my way.

Once home, I quickly walked the dog, then changed into my running clothes and hit the pavement.  It had been an unseasonably warm, sunny afternoon when I headed home, but by the time I was out the door to start my run, the skies had darkened and a ferocious wind had kicked up.  After a few blocks, it was like running into a brick wall.  My hat almost blew off my head.  But I didn’t stop.  I ran my usual 4.5 miles, and my pace didn’t even suffer that much.  The harder the wind blew, the harder I ran.  I was determined not to stop.

Maybe that’s the thing:  when I run, when I feel how hard it is, when the wind kicks up, when my feet start to hurt, there’s a natural instinct to cave in.  To let the discomfort and the aggravation win.  But I always keep going, even when my bowels are acting up or that dull pain in my left knee kicks in.  Because each time I do, I get to replay my cancer fight – each tortured moment when I thought I couldn’t go on.  And each time I come to the end of a run, and I see that I’ve covered my greatest distance, or recorded my fastest mile, I feel triumphant, and it’s the greatest sensation I know.

Realizing what that run did for me on Wednesday, seeing how it gave me the push I needed to get back on track, psychologically, was a critical moment.  The lesson was clear:  when I can tune in to the things that give me peace, and a sense of balance and happiness, when I can control my environment to a certain extent, I feel great.  Like a ninja.  My baseline is pretty fantastic, and it’s not something I take for granted.

Nevertheless, I get tripped up.  I have acute, painful and at times very juvenile (or at least it feels to me) reactions to external things, like my pregnant co-worker.  Things that trigger some kind of latent anxiety, anger or sadness.  Each day, therefore, is a kind of emotional Russian roulette.  I can walk out of the house feeling invincible, and if someone says the wrong thing, or if I overhear a certain conversation, it can all come unravelled, fast.

My personal good fortune as a cancer survivor is that my baseline is a place of strength. This weekend, in addition to my great run and getting fired up at the gym, I was able to take good care of crazy Marley (though it was a bit of a challenge trying to dry him off after being out in the rain), trim our Christmas tree and spend quality time with Mike.  In those simple things, there is amazing power.

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So tomorrow I will start my day with my three-month check-up.  Earlier, I had to verbalize my usual irrational fear:  I will get bad news.  The jig is up.  Time for more chemo.  Time for all of this hard work, and all of these good feelings to get flushed down the toilet.

But really, just hearing myself speak those words is enough to vanquish most of the anxiety. And actually, now that I think about, it might be wholly appropriate to have a dance party  tomorrow morning at 8:30 – or maybe even do some donuts – as I get off the elevator on the third floor at the Jordan Center for Gynecologic Cancer.

Anyone care to join me?

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less is more

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Emily

Sometimes, writing is not the answer. Sometimes, there is nothing to be gained from stewing in my own juices, mulling over the things which tripped up my cancer “kitty switch” today. It is what it is. Life is complicated in ways I never thought it would be. It’s hard.

Still, there’s nothing a good run and a new vacuum cleaner can’t fix.

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