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Overview
She passes through the expected rites of breast cancer—diagnosis, surgery, and chemotherapy—but her responses are less expected: she throws a farewell party for her left breast, and rejects a “cranial prosthesis” in favor of using her bare scalp as a canvas for political messages. She insightfully criticizes the ad campaigns of cancer charities, the inept medical staff, and the inequities in the U.S. health care system she encounters as she navigates daily life with cancer and chemo. (There is much she disapproves of, from Brazilian waxes to books that blame patients for their own diseases.) Drawing on a wealth of personal, literary, and historical sources, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch creates an indelible image of a politically engaged, self-aware woman facing a daunting disease while examining her soul and society. (And riding the subway and teaching one-breasted.) It’s a thought-provoking memoir from a woman who questions everything and everyone, including herself.
This revised and expanded second edition features new observations and reflections from the author.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781948954938 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tortoise Books |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2024 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
THE ADVENTURES OF CANCER BITCH
By S.L. WISENBERG
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS
Copyright © 2009 S. L. WisenbergAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-58729-802-8
Chapter One
ABOUT THE BITCHMy friends say I shouldn't call this book Cancer Bitch because, they say, I am not now and was not ever a bitch during surgery and chemo. But I thought my blog should be called Cancer Something, and Babe was too young and Vixen was already taken. So I became the Bitch.
I added a few sections after the fact but didn't make anything up. A few names of individuals and their identifying characteristics were changed in the interest of privacy. There are no composite characters. The names of the coffee houses were not changed because they are independent and need the business.
No animals were harmed in the production of this book except a few mice, and they were home invaders.
In the back of the book you will find notes on sources, some explanations, definitions of foreign words, and a few updates. They're not footnoted, but are keyed to entry dates.
JANUARY 16. CELLS GONE WILD
It begins with a whiff of criminality: a suspicious place on a routine mammogram. Something fishy. On the film, a dark circle that doesn't belong there. There being my body. The body that has, perhaps, gone wild. On the cellular level. Cancer is overproduction, the assembly belt gone haywire, the sorcerer's broomwheeling out of control when the apprentice thinks he knows enough. Too much too much too many. The experts examine and pick and remain close-lipped. It could be something. Or nothing. But they say or nothing as an afterthought. Because they know it's cancer but they can't say it yet because Pathology hasn't said so. And then Pathology says so. And then the radiology Fellow says: It's positive. The surgeon says, It's in three places, not one, and we'll have to take off the whole breast, we can't conserve it.
It sounds like it happens fast but it doesn't. There is much waiting, in the hospital in a pale blue gown that's both too loose and too tight with those little blue ties that never match up. There are phone calls. The whole thing-is a relief in a way. Because with every mammogram I've ever had, I've gone through cancer scenarios in my head: all the way to whether I'll have an obituary in the Tribune written by a staff writer (a news obituary) or whether my husband Linc will have to pay for a death notice. I wonder whether he'll sit shiva (Of course not) or if my mother will (Yes, of course). And I worry about my papers. My words-my six tall file cabinets filled with finished and unfinished manuscripts, letters from the days when people wrote letters, accounts of dreams from the early 1980s. Where will they go? No archivist has ever come calling, asking for Everything. Or anything.
I know these questions are substitutes for questions about me, my Self. My body will go to Science. And then I will be gone from this earth.
MORE JANUARY 16. HEMATOLOGY
The day I went for the follow-up mammogram I also had an appointment with a hematologist because I have a high platelet count-high enough to be monitored but not to require intervention. The official name is essential thrombocythemia. Before the doctor came in, a fourth-year medical student interviewed me to practice his skills. He was nervous and hadn't read my chart. I was telling him about my long menstrual periods, which supposedly aren't related to the low amount of iron in my blood, according to doctors, but I think really are. I said, in explanation, I have fibroids. Oh, he said, I'm one of three boys. Pause. He mumbled: What did you say? I pretended I didn't hear him, but for a moment imagined the spectre of five sons, imagined them around me in the patient room. I explained: Fibroids. Uterine fibroids.
JANUARY 24. HOW NOT TO TELL YOUR CLASS ABOUT YOUR BREAST CANCER
1. Be grateful that during class you don't think about your cancer, except during free-writing, when they're making lists that begin with Because, using as a model a poem by Susan Donnelly called "Why I Can't". The title of your list is: Why I Don't Trust Doctors Who Are Very Good Looking.
2. Tell them as soon as you know, on the day you get your terse diagnosis from the Cold (and good-looking) Blonde at the hospital. Don't wait until you have concrete information that your students will need, such as dates of classes you will miss.
3. Wait until five minutes before class ends. While they are standing with their coats on, say that you have something to tell them. That you have breast cancer. Expect your voice to be calm. It will not be. It will break. You will be in danger of crying. Tell them you will find substitutes for any classes you'll miss. Tell them you're going to talk to a surgeon the next day, but be unable to continue, leaving them stunned. Then exit.
4. On the way home, think about how irresponsible you were.
5. At home, send an e-mail to all of them, telling them you're sorry if you freaked them out. Become paranoid when only one of them replies.
6. Have a friend tell you that it's all about what you need, so whatever you needed to do was OK. Know that she's wrong. Your job, in a way, is to protect your students from your own mishugas.
7. Post this on the class's website and see what happens.
JANUARY 25. SURGEON
The surgeon is warm but businesslike, a nice combination. She says the cancer is probably Stage 2, because the mass is probably more than 5 cm. But I thought it was 2 cm. She explains that now they're thinking of the three places as one big place. Surgery would be in two to three weeks. Without reconstruction, the hospital stay would be one to two days. With, four to five.
I tell her I don't want reconstruction. Because I've had two breast biopsies, the first more than 20 years ago; because I know women who've had breast cancer; because I know that it's an epidemic; because I've seen that poster of Deena Metzger naked with a tattoo over her scar, I've imagined how I would react to losing a breast. (But not losing two, that's too much to take in.) I've thought that I would be defiantly one-breasted. My breasts are small, too small for cleavage, growing from A to B only fairly recently, as I've gained some weight. I like them small. They make me look thinner and don't get in my way. The only reason for me to wear a bra is to provide a little uplift and to cover my nipples. They stick out all the time, like erasers on a pencil.
The surgeon says I should talk to the plastic surgeon anyway, just to see what my options are. And then suddenly, I, who'd imagined myself a fierce, one-breasted Amazon, find myself thinking: I would love to have reconstruction.
JANUARY 27. TANK TOP
Wendy has graciously offered to talk to me about the reconstruction she had after her mastectomy. She greets me at her suburban door in a red tank top with black bra straps showing. The top is tucked into white pants. In the midst of winter she's dressing for summer. Indicating her clothes, she says, I'm not wearing this just for you. Her treatments have zapped her into instant menopause and she's suffering from hot fl ashes. Her straight, black hair is swept off her shoulders into a loose bun. But why shouldn't she wear her tank top? She looks fine in it. And later, when she shows me both breasts, I see that they're almost identical, except for the long scar on top, across one of them. She lets me push a little on the new breast so I can tell that it's soft. She has silicone implants and praises her plastic surgeon to the skies: He loves women's breasts, she says. She also recommends her breast surgeon. All was done at what I'll call Plain Hospital, though she tells me you can pick and choose your surgeons and oncologists and pathologists, that they can be at different institutions. She sent her slides to a certain pathologist in Tennessee who she says is world famous. The idea of doing that seems daunting, but why not? She says that my hospital-which I call Fancy, because the first floor looks like a hotel lobby-misread her pathology report.
I've never before touched another woman's breasts. My idea of teenage-hood and life was much influenced by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, read at a very early age. I remember she talked about asking a friend if she could touch her breasts. Her friend said no. I thought it must be a normal thing to ask another girl. But I never did.
JANUARY 27. I LOVE PINK M&M'S
I love pink M&M's. I eat them every day. That's all I eat. If I eat enough of them my cancer will go away. Won't it? Isn't that what they promise? In the USA we like our news and our health and our donations sugar-coated. If I eat M&M's and if I go on the Avon Walk (Do I get a free Avon makeover before setting out; all those cameras, you see; I must look my best; it's important to look my best; that's why we wear pink ribbons in our hair and-oops-some of us don't have hair; then around our necks?) and if I sell Pink Ribbon Cupcakes and Support the Cause Brownies (Great for a bake sale or afternoon tea, the Pink Ribbon folks aver) then I will be in the pink. The ingredients for Support the Cause Brownies will make me healthy. If not, why would they be named after Susan G. Komen, who has a whole breast cancer foundation named after her? Oops-she's dead. She died of breast cancer. Maybe she died from eating these brownies. But how could that be? They're made with M&M's Milk Chocolate Candies Help Fight Breast Cancer, mixed with Snickers, and brownie mix (any brand-quick, here's an opportunity for another multinational corporation to hop on the Pink bandwagon) and a can of (your brand name here) chocolate frosting. What could be more natural for us girls? We're made of sugar and spice. Even our out-of-control cancer cells are nice. Because they're pink, like us. Aren't they? Remember to follow the recipe. We have to learn to follow recipes to be good cancer patients. And don't forget the final decorations. Decorations are important. Make a continuous ring of M&M's Brand Milk Chocolate Candies Help Fight Breast Cancer around the bottom of the brownies. Celebrate!
* * *
Or instead of baking, you could read a book, like Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy, by Samantha King, which says: As the Komen Foundation and its corporate sponsors continue to pump money into a research and education agenda that centers on uncritically promoting mammography, encouraging the use of pharmaceuticals to "prevent" breast cancer, and avoiding any consideration of environmental links to the disease, it becomes less clear whether or not they are not actually doing more harm than good....
JANUARY 31. PLASTIC SURGEON
I had an appointment with a plastic surgeon Wednesday afternoon at Fancy Hospital. He showed me before and after photos of patients. He said that reconstructed breasts are high and round and don't look exactly like breasts. Once he said that, I thought, Hey, they do look like orange halves. He recommended saline implants for me, even though their infection rate is 1:20. That's mostly for smokers and D-sizes, he said. As he left the examining room, he said I needed to have my picture taken (meaning pictures of my breasts) so that he could remember me. Les seins, ce sont moi.
* * *
Just a few minutes ago my computer told me that Molly Ivins is dead, at 62. Of breast cancer. She had Inflammatory Breast Cancer, which is not what I have. (Whew. Knowing it's selfish to be relieved.) IBC is less common than what I have, and has very different symptoms. It is amazing that she wrote almost up until the very end, which is what I plan to do.
MORE JANUARY 31. FREE DINNERS
Linc has noticed that everyone wanted to give us free dinners. Our second one was with our neighbor Anand. He and his wife are what the French call les voisins de palier, meaning neighbors on the same floor. I suppose there were more apartment buildings earlier on in France than, say, England, and thus the phrase was invented. I don't know if there are equivalents in other languages spoken in densely populated cities. We ate at the Neighborhood Veggie Place Where Not Enough Is Organic. We got to talking about nipples. I said mine had to be removed in the mastectomy, because there might be disease in it. Linc said it was preserved, that he was paying attention to that part of the surgeon's talk. What did he think, it can be moved around like a maraschino cherry on a sundae? (I looked it up later. It can be cut and replaced in some surgeries, but not at Fancy Hospital, according to the pink handbook the hospital gave me which is the size of the original Our Bodies, Our Selves, and I pasted a medusa over the pink rose on the cover.) We were also talking about donating bone marrow, for some reason. Anand has plans to see if he's a match for someone who needs a donor. Linc said he had been planning to donate marrow or plasma to a woman in his office, but ... she died. Oh, I said, pretty sure I knew who he was talking about, of breast cancer? Yes. For some reason I started laughing. Then I told Anand how my friend Peggy had offered to loan me books, one of which is The Cancer Journals, by Audre Lorde, who died of breast cancer. I don't want books by people who died of it. I thought that was very funny.
I also told Peggy a few days before how I was inwardly scoffing about someone who recommended Plain Hospital, because she'd gotten a biopsy there. A biopsy? That's bupkes-nothing. I said it's the way Holocaust survivors have a hierarchy. The ones who survived Auschwitz look down on the ones who were only in concentration (not extermination) camps, and the people who were in the latter look down on the ones who were only in labor camps, and those people look down on the ones who spent the war in hiding. So the friend who had the biopsy, I said, it was like she was hiding in a barn the whole time. A nice barn, out of the way of soldiers and hostile peasants.
And the ones who died? Peggy asked. Where would they fit in?
FEBRUARY 3. WHODUNIT: TWO HOUSEHOLD MYSTERIES
1. The plumber came to figure out why water leaked downstairs when I took a long shower. After running the water and going downstairs and back, he couldn't figure it out, because of course it didn't leak when he was here. It could be that the water had splashed on the tile and there was a hole in the grout.
2. I have breast cancer and no one knows where it came from. Pollution and pesticides? What about all the other people who didn't get it and live in the same environment? Additives in cosmetics and creams? See previous. Genes? No first degree relatives-mother, grandmothers, sister-have had it. What is the history of breast cancer? The first patient described (as a young woman) in Freud and Breuer's Case Studies on Hysteria lived into her seventies and died of breast cancer, in 1936. That's as far as my knowledge of the history of breast cancer goes. There must be histories of it in ancient Egypt, Rome, etc. Nothing in the Bible as far as I know. (Pause for Google search.) I find a recent book, Bathsheba's Breast: Women, Cancer, and History, by James S. Olson. From the book description: A horror known to every culture in every age, breast cancer has been responsible for the deaths of 25 million women throughout history. An Egyptian physician writing 3,500 years ago concluded that there was no treatment for the disease.
MORE FEBRUARY 3. TEAPOT/SOCIÉTÉ ANONYME
Our third free meal was with our good friends Posey and Marv. They have Italian ceramic dinnerware, as we do, but in a different pattern. They have mostly Raffaellesco, with a yellow dragon in the middle, and we have a mix of Veccio Deruta and Arabesco. Last year my friend Garnett gave me a Raffaellesco teapot. At dinner when Posey and Marv were in the other room, I whispered to Linc that when I'm gone he should give them my teapot. Gone, as in dead.
Do I really think I will die soon, before Linc, before Posey and Marv (who are about 15 years older than I am), meaning, that I will die from this? No one dies from breast cancer, as long as it stays in the breast; you die from the spread of the breast cancer cells to other parts of your body. There's no sign-yet-that it's spread. I've thought about death a lot, from early on. I've had asthma since babyhood; if you have trouble breathing, you're bound to imagine what it would be like to stop breathing for good. I read Anne Frank's diary when I was eight, and I would picture the Nazis coming to get us. My sister and I would pretend that we were teachers and secretaries, like our other friends did, but we also would sit hunched and whispering in our pink walk-in closets in Texas and pretend we were in hiding from the Nazis.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE ADVENTURES OF CANCER BITCH by S.L. WISENBERG Copyright © 2009 by S. L. Wisenberg. Excerpted by permission.
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