On Saturday July 26th, 2008 at approximately 4:00pm, Mary died.

Dear Mary,

There were still things to say, hugs to give, laughs to share and at least one more “I love you,” but, as it turns out, tomorrow never came, and now it’s too late.

I have a lot of thoughts running through my mind that begin with “I wish I had,” and I regret that I didn’t, but we know that you knew we all love you, so I’ll let it go.

We miss you.

With Love,

Joey

Dear Mary, Life Is Unfair. (I Love You)

Imagine your life as it has been for years, moving along like everything is just fine, wandering through your little world in a haze of several hundred tomorrows, all filled with the smiles and faces you know and love. The flowers are there and, sometimes, you stop to admire them.

Imagine all of the things you want of yourself – the things you want to do and see, the places you want to go, the things you haven’t had the courage to say… yet… and the things you aspire toward. The list is huge, and some things are crossed off, but other things have been pushed into the margins somewhere, waiting for the “right time” or the “perfect place” or some motivation or ambition or sequence of events or something.

Imagine that , suddenly, you discover that your world has been infiltrated and is being quickly taken over. When you look through the window you can see the onslaught with utter clarity – the towers and rooftops are burning, glass is shattering all around, the structural supports are crumbling away and all the little civilians down below are being beaten, raped and brutally murdered. You want to help them, fix it and make the aggressors disappear – but there is nothing you can do.

There is nothing any of us can do…

except cry.

Expedited Processing

When my mom was a child she used to go to the soda shop down the street from her house and order vanilla soda; she loved vanilla soda. She tells me that it both soothed her stomach with its light, bubbly sweetness as well as her senses with its warm, comforting scent. Recently she has been scouring store shelves in various grocery stores hoping to find her childhood love in a canned, processed form, but to no avail. She changed her tactics to searching for a vanilla flavored syrup like the ones they use at Starbucks, but, again, with no luck. So one day when she asked me if I had any idea where she could find some, I recommended that she make it herself and then explained how she might do this.

Unfortunately that didn’t work out so well for her, so when I went over to her house this morning I decided to try to make some before I left for school. Now, mind you, I had never done this before, but it seemed to be turning out alright, so I went for the club soda to give it a try. The bottle of club soda I picked up was a sealed bottle, and when I broke the seal it became apparent that it was a sealed bottle that had been shaken or dropped, because it sprayed everywhere in the one second that it was barely open. My mom and I were dripping with club soda, which my niece found hilarious, and as my mom threw me two towels, one for myself and one to mop up the floor, the phone rang.

My mom picked the cordless phone up off the table, groaned, hit the “talk” button and handed it to me as I looked up.

“Hello?” I said uncertainly, only guessing who the entity on the other end of the phone was.
“Hi, is Joanna there?” came a familiar female voice.
“This is Joanna.”
“Hey Joanna, it’s Angie from the cancer center,” she told me almost apologetically.
I breathed in deep and turned away from my mom, “Hey Angie.”
“Dr. Chirayath wants to talk to you about your ultrasound and mammogram results,” she told me. I closed my eyes and braced myself, knowing what it meant. “I don’t know what your schedule is like today,” she continued, “but you could come in at 3:30, or if today isn’t good for you you could come in at 1:30 tomorrow or a little later at 2:45.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head even though I know she can’t see me, “I’d rather come in today.”
“I thought you probably would,” she answered with something like sorrow in her voice. “See you at 3:30.”
“Ok, 3:30,” I said and hung up the phone.

I turned around and immediately started explaining to my mom how I needed to call Bryan to ask him to get my professor’s cell phone number out of my notebook so I could call him to let him know that I wouldn’t be able to make it to class, and as I was stumbling over my words and fumbling with the phone, making some haphazard attempt to put it in an occupied space on the table, she grabbed me and pulled me into her, hugging me, and I went completely silent. We just stood there like that for a minute until Emma, who was sitting in her highchair eating and could clearly sense the sudden change in emotional atmosphere, made a very loud noise, breaking the silence. We both released and turned to see her staring at us with her beautiful blue eyes wide open and a look of concern and bewilderment on her face.

I went outside with a pencil and a piece of paper I took out of the garbage. My fingers clumsily scrolled to Bryan’s number and hit the “talk” button. There was a lot of noise in the background when he answered, indicating to me that he was nowhere near my notebook. I told him what I needed and he said he’d call me back with it in a few minutes. I sat in the sun on the front porch with the towel my mom had thrown to me slung over my shoulder, waiting. I felt myself shake inside and I closed my eyes and breathed in deep to keep myself together; behind me I heard the door open. “You have to smile now,” I thought, and wiped the corners of my eyes. Mom sat down next to me and Emma leaned toward me with her arms open wide, seeming to sense that I needed a hug and knowing that she could make me smile.

I called my professor but he didn’t answer, so I sent him a somewhat long and rambling e-mail starting with what I have been doing concerning my research project for class and then detailing the events in my life over the past two and a half weeks. He called me about 20 minutes after I sent it and told me that it was quite possibly the most amazing e-mail he has ever received. He said that I shouldn’t worry about missing class, that he couldn’t imagine me making any other choice, and that I also shouldn’t fret over my project. He ended the conversation by telling me that I’m a wonderful student and that he is very happy to know me. It made me smile.

Later on my mom, sister and I sat in the Cancer and Blood Disease Center talking to Dr. Chirayath. She said that the ultrasound report said that the lump is definitely solid, thus not a cyst, and that the margins are irregular, which is bad. The mammogram report said that the lump is definitely solid, but with no detected irregularities, which is good. Unfortunately, the two reports are conflicting on the irregularity standpoint, and even less fortunately, the ultrasound got very good pictures. Dr. Chirayath suggested that I do one of the following: 1) I could get an ultrasound guided core needle biopsy at the center, because while the lump is small, the ultrasound got “very clear, very good pictures” and would allow for a good sample or 2) I could have it removed by the surgeon that did my lumpectomy, Dr. DuPont, and then analyzed.

I have an appointment with Dr. DuPont at 4:15 tomorrow afternoon.

On Having a Great Support Group

You know what I haven’t done yet? I haven’t said “thank you,” so I thought I would stop and say, well, thanks.

Thank you for your words of encouragement, your humor, your cards, the angel Christmas tree ornament (it’s hanging in my kitchen, Trish!), the hats and scarves, the calls, texts, the e-mails, messages, post responses and cancer jokes (hey, I have cancer and laughter is the best medicine, why not combine the two?). They have all added enormously to my ability to cope with and laugh about all of my breast cancer ailments, which at times have been quite difficult to deal with.

And thank you mom and dad, so very, very, very much, for dealing with all of the insurance agencies, social workers, political representatives, Medicaid problems (because that’s all they really want to give you), hospital/surgery/scan/chemo/doctor bills, collections agency notices/calls, and everything else money related, because I know that at this time I simply cannot deal with all of that horrible money related stress, pressure, anxiety, tension, arguing, fighting and ALL THOSE CALLS. Just looking at some of the papers lying about the house and hearing you or dad say “collections” makes my blood pressure go up (which is kind of ok because it’s low anyway).

Where would I be had I not been surrounded by kind, caring, thoughtful, good humored family and friends? Honestly, I would probably be completely uninsured, beaten into submission by Medicaid’s minions, tired of fighting and lying in a ditch with cancer taking over my body. And not laughing about it. At all. Cause it wouldn’t be funny.
Instead I find myself in a warm home with a lovable puppy, a wonderful support system and only minor financial ruin. Yay for me!

But, most importantly to me, Yay for all of you!

One and Two and …..

Bad things happen in threes.

I got breast cancer.

My brother flipped my mom’s open top Jeep while NOT wearing a seatbelt, broke the windshield with his head, broke two vertebre and fractured his tail bone in two places.

This leaves me worried about lucky number three.

On Getting Buzzed

On Thanksgiving eve of 2007, my hair started falling out.

This is, of course, to be expected, mostly because all of my nurses and doctors have told me that it WILL, without fail, fall out within 2-4 weeks of my first treatment. Mine was within 15 days.

I’ve said all along that when my hair started falling out I would simply shave my head and be fine with it. I was resolved to take it in stride, to brush it off like it was no big deal and not let it bother me. I told everyone that I would be a-ok and that it didn’t matter and that all I really needed to do was prepare myself for the event by cutting my back length hair very short, which I did… twice.

The thing is that it is a very unsettling moment when you run your fingers through your hair and come up with an unusually large quantity of it in your hand; in that moment even the most determined heart suddenly falters, for it is in that moment that all of the inward feelings of sickness are prominently and violently expressed in a physically outward manner that causes the brain to almost shriek, “Oh God, I’m actually as ill as I feel.”

So at first I was a little upset. Within this upset, however, I found new energy which I used to empty the dishwasher, do the dishes in the sink, make corn bread for my stuffing recipe and mess up part of another recipe. As the adrenaline high wore off, though, I resorted to calling my mom.

I couldn’t stop running my fingers through my hair and then looking to see how much I’d collected, though, and so while on the phone with my mom I decided that I ought to put my hair in a glass to help keep it from getting into everything. So for about an hour I sat on the phone with various people while running my fingers through my hair and placing all of the loose strands in a cup. Now, while there is something absolutely mesmerizing about effortlessly taking the hair from your head and placing it in a cup before you, it is equally disconcerting and has the ill effect of causing a resolute mind to crumble just long enough for the affected soul to release her frustration in the form of unwanted and demanding tears.

It is in this confusion of weakened resolve, frustration and strangeness that I found myself desperately wanting a razor to rid myself of the increasing burden of my hair. Unfortunately no one had a functioning electric razor in their possession at that time, and it was late and I was tired and at least 20 minutes from the nearest 24 hour Wal-Mart; thankfully, however, I have been incredibly fortunate to find myself in the company of amazing family and friends, and my mother and father drove to Wal-Mart at 10:30pm, bought me an electric razor, and then drove 20 minutes each way to leave it in my unlocked car so that I might use it in the morning.

The next morning Bryan and I stepped outside and unceremoniously shaved my head.

And so it came to be that on Thanksgiving 2007, I sported my new buzz cut with bald patches at two family dinners, was thankful for my friends and family in a whole new way and minimized the amount of hair in my stuffing.