Mortality, with Friends by Fleda Brown

Robin*:  This is really not a subject that I feel like I can talk
to non-cancer friends about.

I lift the shoebox from the top of the closet. It feels empty. I check to make sure before I throw it away. Wrapped in tissue paper is my wig. The really quite nice wig that looked just like my hair, that Jerry and my hairdresser had helped me pick out, trimmed exactly for me, that I wore during my entire hairless time. I feel some recoil, some tightening of the gut, now, seven years later. But then, here I am, petting it like a lost kitten come home. A tenderness, an intimacy, I hadn’t expected. The poor thing, what a hard time we had together. How we took care of each other.

As if one of us had died. Flashes through my head that if the cancer came back, my hair is now too gray for this wig. Flashes through my head that this time I’d just wear a scarf. Flashes through my head: this time. As if I needed to plan ahead.

You can’t help this. The shock of cancer is so great your entire body has re-set. It now operates on some sort of deep alert, below language. Your logic has met its match. It has learned to collude with magic.

…..Gail: There is a gap between my intellectual understanding of my situation, and deeper
…..psychological processing. I understand that my recurrence odds are high, but my brain
…..is protecting me from fully comprehending this fact. For better or worse, I don’t go around
…..thinking about it every minute.

I’m waiting to hear from the doctor about this year’s scan. My mind is off into another dream, triggered by the pain in my back. I’ve noticed that there’s not a heck of a lot of difference between awake dreaming and asleep dreaming: there is a tumor growing on my lumbar spine. There is cancer in my bladder, which accounts for my frequent need to pee. The doctor has not yet called because he wants me to be able to have a few precious hours of hope before he tells me there is none. Or, he hasn’t called because he’s not good at giving bad information. He’s putting it off.

I do actually have back pain. Last summer’s swimming made my back hurt. I would get a sharp catch every time I rolled over on the dock. I attributed this to my knees. My theory was that my damaged knees were no longer holding my body up straight, which was putting stress on my lower back. I bought even more expensive tennis shoes. I had my knees x-rayed. But no, it was my back. It has been so bad lately that getting out of bed is an operation involving a slow acclimation to the upright position, waddling to the bathroom holding on to the wall until the pain gradually eases up.

Last winter, a torn meniscus, and also, my father died, and also I had hernia surgery. I was depressed, wasn’t I? All winter. Then in July I got a horrible cold that turned so bad I had to have antibiotics. It didn’t really go away for three months,  until a few weeks ago. Coughing and hoarseness. Stress has caused the cancer to return.

The entire year after I was diagnosed with stage 3c endometrial cancer, I blogged every week. I talked about the fear, the details of treatment, my doctors,  what I was doing with myself while deadly chemicals were coursing through my body, while radiation was eagerly wiping out both the good and the bad. It has been seven years, or 84 months, or 365 weeks, or 2556 days,  or 3,680,640 minutes since then. Am I “cured”? Since then three friends have died of cancer after the five-year marker, one other is tentative. My step-daughter Pam has stage 4 breast cancer. In a toxic world, our immune systems are gasping, sometimes gasping their last. Is it too late for everything? For the trees, the birds? I think sometimes it would be better to get hit by a truck. To wait for immediate results is almost unbearable. But long-term is another thing.

…..Peggy: Every day, I run my fingers over my breast, first before I rise from bed and later when I’m
…..soapy in the shower. If I sleep in a way that puts pressure on the breast, the discomfort lasts for
…..hours. I worry.  Scar tissue makes it impossible to tell whether there’s another jelly bean of cancer
…..growing.  The oncologist’s PA says, “Just be aware of anything different.” I fret that I’m not
…..perceptive enough to notice each change.

Some medical person told me that the cancer cells are always there, but sometimes some of them go crazy. So I acknowledge what I carry. I try not to list all the possible triggers.

I wonder if anyone knows what “living fully” means. You could head for Patagonia at last? Finally see an opera at the Met? Get married or un-married? I got up this morning, did my stretches, meditated, ate oatmeal with raisins, as always. I suppose living fully means “with awareness.” I knew a woman who found out her cancer was going to be quickly terminal. She said life was wonderful, knowing how little of it was left. The increase of fear could spark the present moment. Or, the lack of fear, when there’s no hope left.

…..Joan: People I know who’ve had, for instance, breast cancer, talk about the statistics and analyze
…..every aspect of themselves that might make a difference. But the cancer I had is so rare, and
…..survival so unlikely, that there aren’t sufficient statistics on which to make a prediction. In a way,
…..that’s liberating.

 My oncologist told me the statistics for five-year survival for my cancer, which were dismal. “Disregard them,” he said. Might as well have told me to not see an elephant when someone says elephant. He said, though, that research is making giant strides, and these numbers were out of date already. He also said, “You are not a statistic.” My brother-in-law, a mathematician, explained the difference between average and mean. It looked considerably better his way. I am past the five magical years. I have a friend who died in her sixth year.

…..Linda:  My wife has had cancer six times. Only one of these was a recurrence. We don’t talk much
…..about her nine year remission, but it’s there every time we set the table. We use the prettiest dishes!

That’s the thing. One cancer can go away and another, seemingly unrelated one can pop up. If the body was a breeding ground before, what’s to say it isn’t still? And now it’s damaged with radiation and chemotherapy, so it’s more prone than ever. Green tea. Drink green tea. Eat well. Meditate. Live well. Have loving friends. Practice tightrope walking.

…..Mark: The subtle pull, as if a rat was pulling on my pant leg, is always present. Everyone says I
…..look great, remark on my energy, make kind statements about continuing creativity, etc. But every
…..time I have trouble swallowing (I was radiation- zapped for cancer of the tongue), or wake in the
…..middle of the night with dry mouth, or feel tired or depressed (which is rare) I think – ah! Cancer.
…..And I know it is less likely every day that it is the cancer I came in with, and I know the statistics
…..are ever more leaning in my favor. But there it is: cancer, the unwelcome visitor, was beaten back
…..by very difficult treatment, but beaten? I don’t know.

Twice some small body-message convinced me the cancer had returned. The kind of convinced that feels the way it did a long time ago when I pulled out in front of the Karmann Ghia in the rain. Suddenly all is  slow motion. The thinking mind shuts down and watches, almost dispassionately, the coming thud. “This is the end” doesn’t arrive as a thought, more like being submerged in a wave. I carried that terror with me, not saying anything to anyone, until I couldn’t carry it alone. I told Jerry, who then had cancer with me. Until we didn’t, until all was well.

I’m 75. I’ve had my share of life, I say to myself. I can feel my life, even in good health, slowly, inexorably beginning to wrap up. Spotted skin, deep rivulets of skin on my arms when I hold them up, arthritis. What if I were 40? What if I had small children, as my step-daughter did when she was first diagnosed? That’s one of the mind-games. There’s always someone worse off to compare to.

…..Carol: In the years I took Arimidex, it was on my mind every day—just the act of taking the pill,
…..and the menopausal side effects kept survival on my mind. I used all the cancer insurance money to
…..redecorate the house, something I had been putting off for years. I thought it was foolish to wait
…..any longer. We called it my Martha Stewart phase. All the compromise beiges my ex-husband and
…..I chose were transformed into peach, and green and even red. I redesigned a bedroom during one
….of my 45 minute MRI scans.

You might think you’d turn toward spiritual things. You might do that. So, what’s spiritual? Is prayer or meditation more spiritual than redecorating the house? All things are of the spirit, is my take on it. It’s only when we separate mind and body that the precious objects go dead, quit talking to us, quit inspiring us, i.e., filling us with spirit.

No one understands spirit. Understanding is something the rational brain does. “I thought,” “I thought,” is what we say, after what we thought is no longer relevant and maybe never was. The mind tries desperately to organize, to settle this thing into some sort of controllable formula.

…..Paula: I can’t shake the irrational fear that every bump or pain or bruise means the cancer is back.
…..It’s a side effect no one really talks about.

In the bottom of the plastic bin where I keep out of season clothes, I have packed four or five cancer hats. One is an absurd one a friend knitted me, green, that comes to a point like an elf’s hat, and is way too big. I keep these, plus a stack of How to Eat With Cancer books. I dare not get rid of them. Joan Didion called it “the year of magical thinking,” the year after her husband died. I have been re-born into the life of magical thinking. Getting rid of these artifacts would be dangerous, would tempt the gods, I think. Not think, but feel. And supplements. Who knows if supplements make a hill of beans difference? They are my communion wafers, my hedge against hell. I am living Pascal’s wager.

My doctor’s nurse calls. Your scan is all clear, she says. “Hooray,” I say!  Even though years back, my oncologist said he doesn’t even bother to do yearly scans after the first five years, because nearly all recurrences are found through symptoms, not through scans. It’s my primary doctor who wants them done. Okay. Here’s the thing: I have a huge sense of relief. I am okay. Give me a scan every month. That would be okay. I would be okay every month. My mind is ravenous for facts. The doctor, the x-ray technician are scanning my scans. They are studying my scans, looking for the slightest anomaly. They have enlarged the pictures. They are tracing their fingers along the spine, along my shadowy organs. This is a fact. Nothing has been found, again.

I have to say, the scan process itself leaves plenty of time for the imagination. You are a technician of yourself, mentally tracing every peculiarity you can remember.  You sit in the radiology waiting room for two hours, drinking two bottles of something clear that has contrast dye in it. Then you are called back into the room to lie on the bed that will send you into the large white tube. First the nurse tries to find a vein. Then she tries again. You’ve had so many needles in veins, they’re full of scar tissue. Then she calls for the expert vein person. She comes with her hand-held sonogram machine that can locate veins. She uses a child-size needle and succeeds first time. She injects the other dye, the intravenous one that apparently shows up something else.

This is not you after all. This is me. Yours might be different. But they are the same in this way. You are asked to hold your breath, then release. You have been holding your breath for two hours. You have been holding your breath for a week, two weeks.

…..Gail:  A pattern seems to be emerging: for several days after I get a good scan result, I feel
…..incredibly happy, almost euphoric. When the high wears off, irritability kicks in. Little things get
…..on my nerves. Lurking beneath the crabbiness is a simmering anger: anger that I have to be on
…..this emotional roller coaster. Anger that these scans are part of my life from now on. Anger that
…..this happened to me at all. Eventually the anger fades and my mood returns to its baseline —
…..optimistic, a little worn out by life’s demands — until the next scan rolls around. 

Irrational. I know it is. I know that my body does not begin cranking up cancer as scan-appointment nears. I know I would have noticed something. I am noticing something. I am noticing everything. I am a walking time-bomb.

I am exaggerating all this. Maybe. Don’t misunderstand me: I am not terrified of dying. Dying will be okay, I think. When I was starting treatment,  I finally quit being brave and started sobbing, holding Jerry as we lay in bed. I was so sad for myself, for him. I did not want to end this life. I love this life. But when I know it’s over, my hunch is I will adjust without resorting to platitudes or fervent prayers for miracles.

Sure, we all started living with death when we were born. It was in us, but we were climbing uphill toward our full height, our lovely arms and legs, our desire finding itself, our intellect full of surprises. Death was in us but had nothing to say. Until it did.  Then life began to glow with what you might call a gorgeous sunset light. How beautifully clothed the ending can be! Unless it isn’t.

Death, or the idea of death, is like a wall. No, it’s like a nothing. You can’t see ahead. You’ve never been able to, but you could imagine. You could imagine streets of gold ahead if you wished, but you know perfectly well that’s your imagination gone wild.

Where am I now? I’m writing today sitting in the auto stereo store while they install my remote car starter. Today we woke up to snow, too soon. Before Thanksgiving! I’m looking forward to being able to get in my little Prius, all warmed up for me. Here in the showroom is an old VW bug, the authentic kind my first husband and I had. I walk around it and look at its flat dashboard barely more than a foot from your face. You could slam into it in a second.

Those of us who feel the risk daily don’t feel it daily. Not usually. We have remote starters installed in our cars. And, personally, I am dreaming of our old VW, with a cardboard box in the back to hold the baby. To hold Kelly, who mercifully survived without a fancy infant car-seat. We have all mercifully survived this long.

* Robin and others are Facebook friends who answered my request for thoughts about their own cancer survival.

Fleda Brown’s tenth collection of poems, Brief, won the Hollis Summers Prize and will be published by the University of Ohio Press in 2021. Many of her earlier poems can be found in The Woods Are On Fire: New & Selected Poems, 2017. She was poet laureate of Delaware from 2001-07. This essay will be the title essay in a new collection (just now looking for a publisher).