Ann’s Diary: Angelina’s Decision

One of the hardest things about this cancer journey is realizing my immature behavior. Please know I am not proud of what I’m about to admit. And understand that I write this down for the world to read if only to look at it myself and try to understand it. And that’s just so that I have a shot at getting passed it and through it, so that I can stop feeling like this…

I’ve had numerous people ask me what I think about Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a prophylactic mastectomy because she has the gene that predisposes her to breast cancer. And I have to tell you each and every time I get asked it’s all I can do to not say “Who cares?”

Now of course I don’t truly feel like that about Angelina Jolie.  I wish her health and hope always, as a woman. As a mother. As a wife, as a daughter…etc. What’s truly going on for me is this: I feel angry about the world’s attention to a starlet who has every opportunity to tell her story, via a New York Times Op-Ed piece, interviews that will definitely be coming on Oprah, and every single magazine cover in the market today including TIME magazine. I am jealous and upset at the attention her “brave” choice–that’s what the headlines are calling it–is getting.  And why is that?

Because: this whole thing crashes up against the reality of my life as it is now. I’m a nobody who can’t get even one speaking engagement unless I happen to be receiving an award at the event.  I’m a person who’s been forced to make dozens of “brave” choices for the last 9 years and it’s all I can do to update my website with photos of me and 6 local girl scouts. Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie makes a non-life-threatening decision based on personal medical history and the spotlight shines on her in ways I would give my teeth to have. And what’s ahead? I’ll call it now: Angelina Jolie will be deigned the “woman who helped save millions with her “brave” decision” to remove her breasts and have them replaced. And I’ll be lucky if the folks at the dry cleaners give me back the right shirts.

I know life is not fair. I know it’s not important to be a celebrity. I know this is how society works–what glitters gets attention. And I realize I have helped hundreds of folks in my own small, tiny, itty-bitty  way–and with luck I will keep doing so for many years to come. But I am inwardly outraged at life as it is playing out now in the cancer headlines and it has nothing to do with Angelina Jolie the future cancer survivor.  Many will listen to her story and read it and absorb it and maybe duplicate it–and save their own lives.  Bravo!  I am thrilled! How could I not be–it’s exactly what I’m doing.  But damn, she sure jumped waaaaaay ahead of me in the make-a-difference category.

So if you ask me about Angelina’s decision to take off her breasts prophylactically and I reply thoughtfully, “It’s her decision. I applaud anybody’s choice to get to their own path of health,” just smile and believe me.

And I will work hard to start to believe me too.

Posted May 20th, 2013 by
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Ann’s Diary: Spinning Out

Some days I swear I’m moving backwards in time.

I don’t mean health wise–as in when I was cancer free and never dreamed I’d get it.  That would be a nice problem to have–but no..

I mean emotionally.

Lately I have been strangely pubescent in moods.  I’m fine.  Then I’m sad.  I’m happy.  Then I’m upset.  At whom is usually the other crazy thing–at people whom I love and who love me.

People who have been nothing but generous and kind, thoughtful and helpful.  Folks who have my best interests at heart 24/7 who, if they knew they’d offended me, would be devastated.  I look at these folks and think, “Ann, all is well. There’s nothing wrong here. It’s just your life. Your life is f-cked up with this cancer and you can’t possibly expect smooth sailing all the time.”

And I reply, “I know, I know–but why can’t I stop feeling like crap?”  And I say back, “I don’t know but get a grip.  You must.  So maybe your peeps make minor verbal faux pas’ that they don’t know bother you.  Tell them and they’ll stop.”

“No, I can’t,” I retort, mad at me for not understanding this cancer space I’m stuck in that forces 95 percent of this awkward, awful headspace into my brain. “I can’t say anything because a) I don’t understand it myself and b) if I try to explain then my pals will walk on egg shells around me afterwards, worried they’ll mess up.  I can’t have that–that’s like another kind of cancer, a social cancer, where you’re something nobody wants to be around.”

“Alllrighty then,” I stare at myself, one eyebrow up and the other hovering over my other disbelieving-what-it’s-hearing eye. “I think you need to take a holiday. Step off, step out–get away from yourself for a while.  You’re going crackers.”

“Yeah, that’s genius,” I think sarcastically.  ”Thanks for the hot tip. Like I didn’t know that.  I came here for answers.  You don’t have answers, you have observations.  I already know I’m spinning out.  I need help to slow the hell down.”

“Well,” I say out loud at me, taking stock in the fact that I’m actually talking to myself–”if I don’t have the answers, who does?”

Of course there is counseling. Of course I will figure this out, eventually.  But lately, this maze of myself has been a hard puzzle to move through–and that’s where the conversation ends today.

And that’s where it begins all over again tomorrow.

 

Posted May 13th, 2013 by
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Ann’s Diary: Boston Strong

I am not typically political, but today is different.

So much has been going on in this country, in the world and in my life this past month that I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight in my head, never mind write anything down coherently here. The dust is settling and I’ve found a quiet moment.  My mind is still spinning but my fingers have found their way to the keyboard.

What really overwhelmed my ability to write this last month was the Boston Marathon Bombings.  Just the thought that people from another country would come to the United States and use the system here for their own benefit and then attempt to destroy it drives me insane.

I have a lot of friends who find fault with the United States and its political decisions; I have a lot of friends who are from other countries.  I know people who live in countries where suicide bombers exist and detonate themselves in the name of God. Or politics. Or both. I love my friends, they love me, and neither of us like the violence: but my friend is used to it, because it’s what happens where she lives.

I know people who have started recent conversation with, “well this happens in (pick a country) every day, why do the Americans make such a big deal out of it?” My answer is: because we don’t do that here. It’s not our style as a civilian country. We leave the politics to the politicians, whom we voted for–because we get to vote in this country in the first place, by the way. And I know no one in my world who is so short-sigthed, so arrogant, so ignorant and so reckless as to think that terrorism does any good, never mind change anything that the terrorist is trying to change. All it does it make us afraid.

But I do know some amazing people in this country: take all those amazing people, runners, bystanders, medical people, police, fire, rescue–all of those humans who jumped in to help on Marathon Monday in the streets of Boston, my old stomping grounds. I was so proud to be from the Boston area, more proud than I was ill at watching the spectacle from so many miles away–and that’s saying something, because I felt ILL.

I know people who don’t understand “it all” but when they don’t get it they either write a letter to congress, start a campaign, run for office or sit back and shut up.  I know of no one who thinks that because others in other countries blow people up to make their point that this country shouldn’t be any different.

This country IS different.  That’s one of the many reasons I am proud to live here, to work here, to raise my family here and to be an American, even with all the wrongs and mistakes and history that this country has, good and bad.  I love this country. And if I didn’t, I wouldn’t blow anybody up.  I’d just pick up my suitcase and leave.

Which is what I invite anybody who doesn’t like it here to do: just leave. Nobody’s making you stay here.  But blowing people up and killing in the name of anything is just plain evil.

As a breast cancer fighter I fight for my life every day. I am horrified that anyone would be so arrogant as to think that stealing a healthy life–or 4 in this case, and maiming and/or mentally scarring 173 others–has any place in this country, never mind this world.

It shouldn’t happen in other countries, either–but this is my country. This is my home. And I am proud to live here.

I thank each and every person out there who had anything to do with showing the world that in the worst of circumstances, the city of Boston and all those who traveled there that day were and still are “Boston Strong.”  That’s the term that’s being used to describe the city in the days and weeks after the devastating violence: BOSTON STRONG.  I love that.

It’ll take a long time for the city to heal from this nauseating robbery of faith, hope and life, but I know Boston will get there. And as one of the city’s biggest fans, I’ll be cheering the city on from my chemo chair. Because as I punch away at my own personal terrorist, metastatic breast cancer in the brain, liver, and lung, I know I can do this: I know I can win.  I have faith in myself,

after all, I’m from Boston.  And I’m Boston Strong, too.

 

 

 

 

Posted May 1st, 2013 by
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Ann’s Diary: About Being Bald

To all my people:

When I wrote ‘pink tips’ it was to help a person dealing with cancer: my fifty tips on what helped get me through.  Since it was published two years ago I’ve been told that there’s another category of folks who get something out of ‘pink tips’: everyone else.

Whether you are  dealing with disease, a friend of the person dealing with any disease, or whether you are dealing with something traumatic of your own that has nothing to do with disease, people tell me ‘pink tips‘ helps. Cool deal. I am humbled, and honored.

Going through my latest hell of losing my hair to the chemotherapy associated with metastatic breast cancer in brain/liver/lung, I flipped through my own book this week.  I know I wrote the thing but honestly I’m going through hell and I need some help.  This Ann Murray Paige lady might know something I’ve forgotten.

Sure enough, ‘pink tip’ no. 47 stared me in the face. GPS Yourself.  What that means is find out where you are in your mind on any given day and go from there. In trauma, some days you’ll be down and out, other days you’ll come out swinging. Find out whether you’re sinking or swinging and help yourself get through it.

So I did. And here’s what you need to know about me this days: I am bald, and I hate it.

I don’t love being bald.  I have to be bald.  I resent being bald.  It’s not a “new do” or a cool fashion style.  It’s a robbery.

To see me bald,  you may feel like you have to make me feel better about it all. But you don’t. I want you to treat me the way you always do–like amazing, fantastic, supportive, kick-ass friends who know I’m riding this bucking bronco and holding on for dear life and that it may look easy but it’s hard as hell.

There’s more. I will be a bit off center for a while as I get used to all this bull shit.  And I just want you to be aware of what’s happening so that I don’t mistakenly confuse, insult or otherwise hurt your feelings. I have been getting a lot of “You’re beautiful bald!” and “You have the best-shaped head EVER!” Thanks, but right now I would rather have a healthy body and hair than a good-looking skull.

To everyone in my corner: I love you and I do not hold anything against anyone who gaffs or says something inappropriate as they reach for anything to say. I know this is awkward for all of us.  I get that.

But if you see me around with my hairless head covered in a cancer chapeau with my ears sticking out a-la “Herbie-doesn’t-like-to-make-toys,” just give me a hug.

That’s what I need right now.

Posted April 6th, 2013 by
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Ann’s Diary: Yoga Miss

So I didn’t make it to yoga today, like I’d hoped….but not for the reason you might think.

I didn’t go because I was in the company of two amazing friends who’d traveled thousands of miles between them to come visit me and bring me their best wishes of health and support. And I was blown away not just be their clear desire to help me feel better amid this metastatic breast cancer bull sh-t; but also by how wonderful I felt just being in their midst.

Chris, Jen and I grew up together; back in the 1970′s when hanging out meant bell bottoms, Nikes, Danskins and spoons-in-dirt for backyard toys. We had no internet, no cell phones, no texting, no computers–hell, I barely had a bike, since I had to wait for a sibling to outgrow his or hers until I got it.

We did stuff on weekends that was all our own: we made up plays.  We acted out shows.  We did a rousing rendition of “Three Billy Goats Gruff” that knocked the Neighborhood Labor Day Picnic of 1972 on its backside.  We marched in town parades dressed like colonials in 1976. We bought lime rickeys at the Center Dairy Bar and watched “Creature Double Feature” on rainy Saturday afternoons with our hands in front of our faces in case something freaked us out.

We shared schools, snacks, pets and parties. We went trick-or-treating dressed like tigers, gypsies, ghosts and maids. Our parents threw cocktail parties that we went to–because they were out in the collective back yard with the sun shining and we could play and listen and laugh along with the grown ups.

We share memories: I remember the night their grandfather died on Christmas Eve.  I went to the junior prom with Chris–wearing his mother’s dress. I had my first hair style “bun” made my Jen’s mom. And I still can’t watch “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” because of the creepy child-catcher hide-and-seek game that we made up and played in my parents’ dark basement.

As adults, we grew up and away from each other–only connecting on random home-for-the-holidays when one of us would be out walking and see the other one coming from a distance. The “oh my word, how ARE you?” would open up the back story of our childhood and eventually we’d be talking old school, thrown backwards 2 or 3 decades to the days when knocking on each other’s back doors’ was the beginning of a weekend’s worth of non-electronic adventure.

A few weeks ago when I got Chris’s text I thought I had been mis-texted:  it said, “Jen and I want to come and visit you on April 1.  And this is not a joke!” I looked at the number a few times before I realized it was my old pal, visiting his sister and wanting both of them to come see me.  I couldn’t believe the effort they wanted to make.  I was humbled.  And happy.  And having been down cancer’s road once already I knew enough not to put up a fuss.  ”Yes!”  I quickly typed back.

And so they came.

Which is why I was not in yoga today.  I was not down-dogging myself into a peaceful zen room of hope and love this morning as I face my new cancer battle.  But I was in an equally wonderful place: ensconced in a comfort zone that comes from the good fortune of growing up on a street in a small town with kids whom I always loved to be with and who always loved to be with me…

..and apparently, still do.

 

 

Posted April 3rd, 2013 by
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