My story

I have a profound disconnect in my life these days:  This is not my story.  This is my story.

I was never supposed to get cancer, let alone breast cancer.  No one in my family has it: that's been my mantra for over 50 years.  This is not going to happen to me.  My story is going to be a heart story.  All my people die of broken hearts.  We are too ornery and emotive and crazy to stagnate into cancerous implosion.

This was not my story.

This is my story.

I can't say I knew it was happening, because I didn't.  I have always been lumpy.  I'm more so now after finally hitting menopause.  Since this was not my story, I didn't worry about it.  I was casual about making my mammogram appointments.  Not too casual.  Just like six months overdue casual. And when I got called back this time, that was OK.  I was called back once years ago, and it ended up being fine. And the letter said almost all call backs are nothing to worry about.  So I didn't worry.

I went into the call back and went through the second round of mammography. Then the ultrasound.  I got a little nervous when she stayed in one quadrant for quite a while.  Now that I'm a seasoned expert, I know I should have gotten even more nervous when she started checking out my arm pit. Who knew from lymph nodes?  This was not my story.

Then, finally, I got the information. There was something suspicious.  Five somethings suspicious, as it turns out. They said I needed to check them out.  They were able to do the biopsy immediately.  So we went ahead and did it.

At this point, I started listening very carefully to the words I was hearing.

They did not say they needed  to do the biopsy immediately.

They said they could do the biopsy immediately.

So we did the biopsy immediately.

It was not especially fun. And since it was a Friday, I had an entire three days to contemplate a whole variety of stories, none of which were light or easy.

Most of the stories I spun came out of a newly vivid contemplation of the Abyss.  The Abyss we all know about, and laugh about, and watch on TV, and read about in the news. I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but the Abyss is something I've only really contemplated in terms of other people. They die. I don't.  I'm the survivor, the rock, the machine, the invincible, the indomitable.  God would never let me die if only to continue fucking with me for as long as possible.

I am embued with superhuman qualities, I tell myself as I slog through my days. I'm a fucking STAGE MANAGER.  Stage managers never die; they just call another show. And they spend their days putting out fires, fixing problems, organizing the actors on the stage of life.  And I'm many other things.  I'm a writer, I'm an editor, I'm a wife, I'm a mother. I am a Hopi Kachina doll with dozens of little children perched all over me, waiting to hear my stories.  I am Artimis with a dozen breasts feeding the world.

And one of those breasts is sick of it.

So sick of it that I could be facing a place where I don't get to feed those mouths anymore.  I don't get to fix those problems any more.  I don't get to complain any more.  I don't get to work late any more.  So sick of it that I could be facing a place where I don't get to take any rare time off to stop anymore, either. No more walks through Descanso Gardens.  No more pursuing truth in the company of friends. No more opening nights at the Ahmanson. No more lunches at Rotisserie Chicken.

Not one more moment of being with my boys.

Not one more meal at that little Parisian cafe with Roger.

The Abyss just gets wider and wider.  More and more awful. Intolerably and inescapably awful. Suddenly this was my story.  Or my potential story.  It could be the Abyss.  Or it could be just fine.


I ran through the entire range over the course of the weekend. I ended up fixating on the just fine scenario.  We live in a world of for-profit healthcare.  I'm part of the machine now and they are going to play on my horror of the Abyss and over process me for awhile.  Take more biopsies because these were inconclusive.  Do more tests just to continue wringing more cash from my insurance company. That's what was going on, I convinced myself. Absolutely. I am part of The System and it will play itself out and it will be nothing.

But it wasn't.

It isn't.

What it was, was the biopsies testing positive for cancer.

What it is not, apparently, is immediately life threatening.  It looks like it hasn't spread to the lymph nodes.  This is a very good thing.  It looks like it is highly treatable with surgery.  Great: get out the knife.  It does not look like an emergency, or so they tell me.  I am getting the MRI done today and we will learn more.  One step at a time.  Bird by bird.

There's a ton to write.

There's a ton to do.

But this is what I'm suffused with right now: an overwhelming, palpable, almost euphoric sense of gratitude. The love that's been pouring out of the world towards me has been unbelievable. The support I feel from the small subset of friends and loved ones I have told is palpable. I am lucky and grateful for every day I get to slog.  I am lucky and grateful for the ability to have small talk and figure out who will walk the dog this time, where to put the spring color in the flower beds. I am lucky and grateful for an acupuncturist and friend who was moved to tears when she heard, and then set to putting her formidable skills to work to keep me alive. I am blessed with an incredibly wise and sensible and caring therapist who has been through more of these types of scenarios in a lifetime than anyone should be asked to think about.  I am lucky and grateful to Roger, my rock and lover and best friend and ally, who is taking over the role of being the level head in the family. I am lucky and grateful to my son who is going to take me to Whole Foods this weekend to help us stock up on healthy things to eat.  I am lucky and grateful to have another son who took me bike shopping yesterday, figuring (correctly) that riding good bike is as close to heaven as it gets on this earth (and as close as I need to get right now).

I am grateful most of all because I now am, finally, putting myself first in a lot of things. I am eating better.  I am exercising more.  I am going to yoga again.  Even after a few days, I feel absolutely fantastic in my body.

I am grateful, intensely grateful, that I am learning these lessons.  A tad later than preferable, but I'm learning them.  And I'm determined that these lessons will see me through for the next forty years or more.

So that is my story these days: Gratitude.

Intense.

Profound.

Gratitude.