Trixieland

You’re a cancer survivor – a bullet list

• One day you feel a lump in your boob. Machines create images, doctors test a chunk. It’s cancer.
• People say you’re a survivor the moment you announce your diagnosis. You think, “huh? What’d I do?”
• Treatment begins in early May and concludes in late December. Start the new year clean, you think.
• Through it all no one allows you to talk about the possibility of your death. It’s taboo.
• 6 rounds of chemo didn’t kill all the cancer, but surgeon got the last bit. Radiation to seal the deal.
• You think about what else the chemo might have missed. In places the docs aren’t looking.
• You move from the apartment you’ve inhabited for 10 years to a big house with a huge yard.
• Your brain feels foggy and you’re sure the cancer’s in your brain. It’s not.
• You finish Herceptin in April, and begin hormone treatment that will last for five years.
• Hot flashes ensue, along with joint pain that wakes you at night. Your knees sound like Velcro ripping.
• You gain 15 pounds from the sudden menopause. Dropping to 500 calories a day doesn’t help.
• You accept being plus-sized, and buy new clothes. Your age has made you invisible anyway.
• You visit the oncologist every three months for an injection that shuts your ovaries down.
• The joint pain is so bad your oncologist switches you to a different hormone medication.
• Your oncologist tells you the new recommendation is 10 years of hormone meds. Not five.
• Your joints feel better but you gain another 10 pounds in the space of two weeks. Right in the belly.

• You go back to college online and take on freelance work for the first time in a couple years.
• You get a rash on your “bad” boob and panic that it’s Inflammatory Breast Cancer.
• You consult your posse of  survivor friends. They reassure you, but tell you to go in.
• It’s not inflammatory breast cancer. Either the antibiotics or steroid cream fixed it. You feel dumb.
• You pass your first post-cancer mammogram with flying colors. You were expecting bad news.
• Of your survivor posse, one has stage IV, after “beating it” nearly three years prior.
• On next oncology visit you complain about weight gain. Obesity increases your chance of recurrence.
• Doctor switches you back to original meds. You don’t lose any weight and the joint pain returns.
• You pin all your hopes for the future and redemption for millennia of oppression on Hillary Clinton.
• On election night you go to bed with a mouthful of marijuana oil before all the votes are in.
• When you wake up and remember, you briefly consider suicide and settle for stopping your meds.
• You gain another 20 pounds in anger, disbelief, and heartbreak. You get a safety pin tattoo.
• In school you study psychology and plan to work with hospice patients and families.
• You apply to volunteer in hospice, visiting patients. Your Stage IV friend tells you it’s your calling.
• Your Stage IV friend asks if your brownie troop can come to her house and plant tulips.
• Before you can gather the girls for the tulip project, your friend goes into hospice herself.
• On the way to visit you think about what she’ll say. Maybe you’ll make a deathbed promise.
• She doesn’t speak or open her eyes. You brought a huge bouquet of tulips that seem cruel now.
• On your first day of hospice volunteer training, your Stage IV friend dies.
• At the funeral you connect with a coworker from early in your career. She’s a survivor too.
• That’s four of you, from just one small department in one company. Stats? Or the water?
• At home you casually talk about what you’d like at your funeral. Your youngest stares at you.
• You don’t think she knows that cancer kills people. You’d talked about sickness, but never death.
• After your friend’s death you go back on your medication. Because not to insults her memory.
• You take on tons of freelance work and study hard. You make money, contacts, and the Dean’s List.
• Math and a new full-time job defeat you at school and you drop out of college for the fourth time.
• You go on vacation and don’t take your medication. You don’t bother to start again at home.
• You move into your dream house in a Norman Rockwell neighborhood where kids roam free.
• Every night in the new house you dream about cancer. Here’s what you dream:
• You dream about sobbing and clinging to your mother as you say “Mommy, I think I’m sick again.”
• You dream about wasting away in a hospital bed, too weak to lift a book to read it.
• You don’t think you’re psychic or clairvoyant. But what if the dream is a message from your body?
• Twice, when you’ve dreamed your teeth fell out, you’ve been ill. Mono and pneumonia.
• A friend dreamed her dead mother told her she had breast cancer. And she did.
• You say, “I had a weird dream last night” “Was it about cancer coming back? I don’t want to hear it.”
• You can’t talk to anyone about your fears. You just wallow in it. Silently. Alone.
• You think about the new house and where you’ll convalesce. You buy a swing chair for the backyard.
• You plan how to turn your new library into a bedroom and how you’ll watch the birds as you die.
• You go camping to watch the total eclipse. You wonder if you’ll be alive for the next one.
• The chest pain gets worse. One day at work you find yourself holding a cold can to your chest.
• You have trouble catching your breath. You drive to the Emergency Room. You tell no one.
• Your EKG, blood tests and chest X-ray are all clear. You’re a fool. You’re a hypochondriac.
• You miss a big meeting, and confess to your boss you’re at the hospital.
• You don’t want him to think you’re a sick person. You don’t think he knows about the cancer.
• You’re already the oldest, fattest, most unsightly member of the team. You can’t afford more.
• Your job is stressful and your brain isn’t as sharp as it was. Is it ageing or chemo or both?
• Google tells you former smokers have an increased chance of lung metastasis.
• At your oncology appointment you tell him about your chest pain. He refutes your Google information.
• Your oncologist orders a CT scan to rule out pulmonary embolism and cancer. Refills meds.
• He emails you late that night to tell you it’s clear. There’s something in your lung, but not cancer.
• A regular doctor diagnoses an inflammation in the cartilage between sternum and ribs.
• Prednisone clears up the lungs, and your eczema, plus your joint pain. But only for a week.
• You feel relieved that the cancer’s not back so you go ahead with your plans to lead a new Brownie troop.
• You want to just LIVE, but it’s always there in the back –and often front—of your mind. Cancer.
• You wanted your life to be more meaningful, but you’ve quit school and haven’t done hospice work.
• This is how you survive. Living between the recurrence nightmares. Pretending you’re “better.”
• But deep down you’re convinced that cancer isn’t done with you yet.
• And the only way to prove otherwise is to die of something else.