day 13: decisions
A few weeks ago in meditation, prior to all this, I sent out a demand to the universe to be healed and put on my path. I had no idea that prayers could be answered so fast, or that my path would be so slippery when wet with the urgency of breast cancer.
The surgery date is moved to 28 February and I have two weeks to decide whether to have most , or all, of my left breast removed. The only certainty is that if I don’t have the whole thing off, I will need six weeks of daily radiation treatment on top of a surgical scar.
I imagine a better version of me existing in some ethereal cosmic communication network, who can advocate and make arrangements on my behalf – a kind of Cosmic Case Manager. I decide to give her every chance of winning the argument. I will starve the cancer to death. I will arrive on the day of surgery and the doctor won’t be able to find it. I will be a miracle healing case and spend the rest of my life eating superfoods and meditating.
Bargaining much?
Alternative herbal healing advice is offered everywhere I go. Mostly people are apologetic – ‘You are probably getting advice from everyone, but…’ I don’t understand why anyone would mind healing advice at this stage, so I say ‘no, go ahead, bring it on’. I listen carefully to everyone and spend the rest of my savings on powders, oils, goops, supplements, herbs and healings.
Some people are insistent yet helpful. I receive oddly timed sms and email messages with ‘urgent’ in the subject line alongside a diatribe about someone who healed themselves with yet another alternative medicine that has been quashed by the capitalist hegemony of pharmaceutical companies. Some people are scary, telling me the medical treatments I have been offered will kill me, or suggesting that unhealed trauma history is the cause of the situation. I learn to listen to music in my head at these times.
But for the most part it’s actually useful, and as the days go on my energy increases dramatically. It’s all about reducing inflammation and acidity, boosting the immune system and PH levels. This will starve the cancer cells which have been having a raging party on my fatty tissue and blood. Nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, meat, dairy, eggs, sugar and salt are immediately registered on the nutritional blacklist.
After a couple of days of guilty puffings and visions of suicide bomber nicotine molecules, R- says
“You just need to imagine you have a really good reason to stop smoking. You know, like…”
“Like having breast cancer?” I smile that new smile which stretches wide across my face and is accompanied by a little chuckle. Black humour they call it. And luckily, that’s the end of the cravings.
Each morning I swallow:
- pawpaw tea
- pure frankincense oil
- super food smoothie with 25 apricot kernels and heavily flavoured heavily with raw cacao
- 40,000mg of enzymes
- aloe vera juice
- herbs and bach flowers
- 4000mg of vitamin C powder, and
- a glass of bicarb soda in water.
I draw the line at coffee enemas. If I can’t drink it I’m certainly not putting Rosebank organics up my bum.
Lesson learned on day 7: vitamin C powder should not be followed immediately by bicarb. Think high school chemistry experiments. Think film footage of the Bikini Atoll. For the baby boomers, think ‘duck and cover’ educational films. My burps explode and echo around R-‘s flat like a drunken troll during a beer swilling contest.
The most healing experience is the love I am offered through kind and generous gestures, emails, sms and loving conversations. My boss, a self-confessed workplace sociopath is the wildcard in this bunch. He finds the time, asks loads of questions, is never patronising, and offers anything within his power to help out. Several friends help out financially and I am overwhelmed with gratitude. My yoga Guru provides a kilo bag of healing tea and tailors classes to relaxation, focussing on the breath and opening out the heart chakra. My parents visit with tears in their eyes and warm hugs that engulf me. R- cuddles, cooks, holds, drives, shares, cries and is basically my best friend.
Every time someone asks me whether I’ve made a decision about the surgery, I say I don’t know. But I do know – I’m just too scared to say it. I find all these reasons why I can’t make the decision. I even wish there was no choice, that they would just tell me what had to happen.
****
I meet up with J-, one of the most beautiful, feminine, intelligent women I know, and a breast cancer survivor. Somehow she gets me laughing about all the alternative therapies and my own self-consciousness. She has had a double mastectomy and no reconstruction – I had no idea. I take another look. Her whole being emanates health, love, vibrant life and beauty. A gleam of possibility enters this regimented mind, and I wonder if I can be that brave.
R- and I go for a second visit to the surgeon, and Dr S- explains that the amount of flesh removed will be five centimetres in length, and possibly as deep and wide. That’s 15cm all up. I wonder if there’s even that much flesh in my whole breast.
R- bargains for a while with Dr- S:
“But isn’t there some way to reconstruct after a lumpectomy…if it was me that’s how I would go, just to keep my nipple.”
“If it was you, you would have a mastectomy because your breasts are so small, you wouldn’t be offered a choice.”
Watching the two of them spar I see horned stags bucking and butting for dominance. But for once I don’t try to peace make the conflict. I am sitting next to the elephant in the room, invisible to everyone else. She stares at me silently with her sad, gray eyes, and takes my hand in her paw. A spoon sized tear falls down her leathery cheek.
“How long do I have to walk around with just one breast before I can have the other one off?”
Dr S- melts immediately and looks at me directly.
“About six months,” she says gently, “we need to allow time for other treatments, and we can’t decide on those until we have the results of the tests from what we take out next week.”
There it is – six months. The crux of the issue is out at last, and my elephant takes on form and colour. Tears are flowing and I know what I have to do. Everyone pushes tissues at me, but I am fine about the tears. Wait til I’m walking around lop sided and then we’ll talk about tissues.
R- barters for more time. Does she have to decide today? Dr- S offers a few more days, but draws the line at that. The Specialist Breast Nurse reminds me about prostheses and insert bras, but the issue for me is about having one breast. The weirdness, wonkiness, asymmetry and disgust I will feel at my own ugliness.
****
From somewhere in my belly comes a wave of certainty and calm, and I know I have everything I need inside me. I tell Dr S- to go ahead and arrange the mastectomy, and then we get the hell out of there as fast as the slippery slide will carry us.
We get home and work through the decision, R- crying in the kitchen and me finally the strong one. I get the sense she is still fighting this reality, as though there was a way to make this not be true. I read Jeanette Winterson’s Tanglewreck and imagine all the alternate realities: one where I have children, one where I’m an astrophysicist and a surfer. A journalist, author, space traveller and spy. But I can’t see a reality right now without cancer, without the mastectomy that’s coming next week, without the 6 months of one breast.
I check out The Scar Project, an online photo exhibition of female breast cancer survivors and their scars by David Jay. The frontispiece is an angelic woman huge with pregnancy and two simple scars on her flat chest. Air fills my lungs and washes out again.
That night I sleep all the way through and in the morning I’m back in the saddle again singing Lucinda Williams at the top of my lungs on the way to work.
“All the way to Jackson, I don’t think I’ll miss you much.
All the way to Jackson, I don’t think I’ll miss you much.
Once I get to Lafayette, I’m not gonna mind one bit.
Once I get to Lafayette, I won’t mind one little bit…”
