“Goodbye, Bikini – Hello, Ann-Margret” It was June and yet another graduating class celebrated the passage into reality. The ritual school year events had come to a confetti-festive conclusion and teachers were gathering their belongings and planning for a summer of travel or summer conferences, yard work or continuing education. Every day was a challenge – a hurdle – a monument to teenage angst. With a deep sigh and dreams of solitary bubble-baths, I drove slowly home from the commencement ceremony. Reflecting on the year, I had survived a mountainous and monstrous learning curve and vowed to move forward. Indeed, I had survived a stormy school year and the clouds were parting.Or, so I thought.
The weekend was a busy one, but one filled with relief at the prospect of a summer with a different pace. I took my time preparing for bed that Sunday evening, knowing that the alarm would not wake me at 5:30 AM that next morning. It was an easy Sunday evening. I stepped from the bathtub after a luxurious bubble bath and walked over to the closet, passing the mirror and glancing at my mid-life body.
The old joke about the woman’s doctor telling the wife she had the breasts of a 20-year-old came to mind. When she joyously shared the story with her husband, the old fool asked what the doctor said about her 40-year-old “ass.” She replied, “Your name was not mentioned!” That’s one of my favorites – but I digress.
Though I had not gained any weight because of the rigors of the final term at school, I had begun to outgrow the midsection of my skirts. So, with the thought, “This is ridiculous,” and with a turn to the mirror and pressure to my abdomen, I nearly collapsed when I felt “something.” White-hot fear shot through me; I felt light headed, faint, and clammy cold. While I knew nothing of what it might be, I knew with certainty – something was not normal.
That night, as I lay still in bed, I applied pressure to the suspect area, willing “it” to evaporate, disappear, vaporize, be an imaginary blip on the radar screen. However, when I awakened the next morning, the blinding fear was still with me. I went on into work, finishing out the paperwork for the school year and preparing for summer school registration. At work, I telephoned my doctor. Even his nurse was “certain that it was nothing,” but if it would make me feel calmer, less upset, I could “come in around 1 PM” and my doctor would see me.
Sitting undressed in an unfashionable, tacky sheet upon the examination table at the gynecologist is plainly cold and nerve-wracking. I was somewhat calmed when the doctor and his nurse came into the room and assured me that “it was probably nothing” because I had always been faithful and regular in my check-ups. But, when I lay back and he looked at and pressed on my abdomen, his face paled. I was quickly scheduled for an ultrasound and then tenderly escorted into his private office.
Even as I write this fourteen years after the event, the moments are clear enough to make me want to skip writing about them. However, for you, gentle reader, I persevere. Recall if you can Lily Tomlin <a href=http://www.lilytomlin.com >movie star </a> in the movie, “The Incredible Shrinking Woman.” If you know the movie, then you recall the image of a woman experiencing “shrinkage.” As the doctor talked to me, I wrote the words “complete hysterectomy,” “CA-125, blood test,” and “granular, some fluid filled” and then “strange word with -onoma as a suffix.” <a href=http://www.ovariancancer.com > disease </a> I was told I would know more when the blood test results came in the next week, but the news did not seem good. I was literally and figuratively shrinking and sinking into the brown overstuffed leather chair in his office. My vision became fuzzy; my hearing was distorted by the ringing in my ears. What I was trying to comprehend would change my life forever, and the lives of my family and friends.
I lost my innocence when I heard the words “ovarian cancer.” Even at that point, I knew nothing of Gilda Radner’s <a href=http://www.gildaradner.com > television star </a> struggle except for her character’s struggle to make Chevy Chase understand her position on very important issues as ‘Roseann-Roseannadanna” on SNL <a href=http://www.snl.com > television show </a>. – “Never Mind” that I had no comprehension of the road I would be traveling, nor did I fully grasp the horrific seriousness of what was presenting itself in my life. I did feel that I would be losing everything within me that was associated with femininity, with being a woman. A complete hysterectomy was ordered and scheduled along with a CT scan, a MRI, and X-Rays. The life of a completely healthy 44-year-old vital woman with a child who just turned 4 years old was changed beyond recognition. I became too quickly a woman owning a life-threatening disease that had come upon me with no warning. Vaguely I recalled a precautionary statement through customary dialogue over 15 years ago. Cancer can occur in women who take fertility drugs <a href=http://www.fertilitydrugs.com > perscription drugs </a>, in women who bear no children. After years of trying to conceive, we had adopted two infants, the last mid-way through my 40th year. I had become a player in a statistical game of chance. I had “given the Wheel a final spin” and had hit “Bankrupt.” The pea was not under my shell. “Snake eyes” had turned up and the player went “bust.”
That June I had surgery, stayed five days in the hospital, and began chemotherapy. I saw interns whose youthful appearance caused friends to tag them with nicknames such as “Doogie Howser.” I would go to sleep praying and wake up praying. I vaguely recall the television scenes and the nurses’ discussion of OJ Simpson’s van on the Los Angeles freeway in June, 1994, but I was one who could honestly say I was unaffected by Nicole Simpson’s murder. <a href=http://www.ojsimpson.com > football legend </a> My own life, I felt, had been stolen; in a bizarre way, I too, had been slashed and the life I had envisioned and dreamed of having was taken, just as her’s had been. Something vague and protective overtook me as I determined what course I would take. Remaining stoic and resolute seemed the best management technique. Basically, I chose to remain somewhat ignorant of the full implication of the diagnosis. It was far too bleak a picture, too fatalistic an attitude for me. I put on blinders and plowed forward into ground for which I had only one plan – survival.
I lost my naïve understanding of the world, however. I struggled through multiple recurrences, years of monthly and/or weekly chemotherapy, and stuffed medicine cabinets with samples of anti-nausea drugs, none of which worked. I could walk into the clinic and become violently ill. I prayed to live long enough for my 4-year-old to become more independent. I also prayed that the chemotherapy <a href=http://www.chemotherapy.com > cancer fighting drugs </a> could be administered in such a routine manner so that I could remain the hub of my home – for my children to enjoy a relatively normal life. I was actually hoping to receive chemotherapy treatments as a diabetic receives insulin injections. What I did not fully appreciate was that chemotherapy is poison; it kills and destroys. How innocently ignorant I was about it all. Insulin is life saving for those who require it. The dosage in chemotherapy must be carefully measured so that it will not kill the patient. It will either kill or in its pharmacology, will target and destroy every cancer cell even though it also kills multitudes of good cells in the body. A person can not survive and continuously have poison pumped through the blood, month after month and year after year. Surviving chemotherapy is as vitally important as surviving the disease itself.
One of the first embarrassments of the cancer treatment process occurred when I went to select a wig. I would, indeed, lose my hair <a href=http://www.hairloss.com > side effect </a>and look like the inspiration for the song “Witchy Woman.” The owner of the shop was so very kind, but asked if I were there for breast prosthetics. How sad is that. I had lost enough weight at that point that she thought I’d had a mastectomy. I never had a movie-star bust-line, but, I did not think “the girls” were non-existent! Regardless of the faux-pas, I simply laughed at the mistake, saying I wish I could take some “butt cheeks” and add to the top half of my body. I chose a glamorous wig in about the same reddish brown color of my hair. I was wearing my hair longer, so I decided to go with the “Ann-Margret” look. Though I named the wig “Mildred” after my grandmother, the natural-hair wig was anything but dowdy. Experiencing the loss of a woman’s crowning glory offered a great deal of opportunity for humility. Gaining humility, understanding that life comes to everyone in the same manner, sparing no one from all its elements, is one of the greatest gifts I received – a great and wonderful loss. In addition to humility, I gained a much softer heart and surer belief in the vitality of the human spirit that sustains us. The old wineskin was lost and what was found/discovered was a new and improved model – a girl with more compassion and sensitivity. What I lost was replaced by what God alone can supply. Next: You Have To Go To the Matresses!
