Posts Tagged ‘pink tips. breast cancer advice from someone who’s been there.’

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: 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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Ann’s Diary: Yoga Fail

I remember the day news anchor Katie Couric looked into the camera on the day she’d returned to work after losing her husband to colon cancer and said something like this:

“And to all of you who endure inconsolable loss and stand gaping as the world keeps moving on without you I say this: I understand.”

That was 15 years ago, and today not only do I remember those words, I live them.

This morning I was ready for yoga.  I haven’t done it since the “big news” of my brain/liver/lung metastatic breast cancer 3 weeks ago–mostly because I haven’t had the time. I was on that treadmill of “what do I do NOW” and busy getting it done. Now that I’ve done the brain radiation, the port, and am on chemotherapy round 2, I was ready this morning to get back to 9 a.m. yoga.

But driving there, I got in a tiff with someone. Then I got bad news about stuff on the homefront. NOT medical. But personal stuff–you know, in the running-of-the-house-and-family category that encompasses but is not limited to bills, kids grades, broken appliances, etc.  Or as I like to call it, the” we-know-it-doesn’t-matter-in-the-scheme-of-things-but-day-to-day-you-can’t-avoid-it-in-real-life”–

until you get a diagnosis like mine and that entire category of life blows up.  Paying off a credit card bill is not as important to me now as planning a family vacation–which puts yet one more emotional divider between me and the non-sick world.

So back to yoga–

there I was, trying to get into the class, but dealing with this “day-to-day” junk that was important and not important at the very same time. The yoga instructor said “grow your breath” but mine stuck in my throat.  She said “jump to the top of the mat” and my feet dragged like logs. “Think of someone you need to forgive” but there were too many choices in my head and I was the biggest one. Then I started feeling sorry for myself. That is the classic sign for me to abort the mission. If I’m going down that road I know I’m losing ground. I rolled up my mat and left the class. No yoga today.

I had prepared myself for possibly leaving yoga but not for emotional reasons. I thought the chemo might make it tough to stand the high heat in there. But It was heat of another kind–the unexpected–”the head trip of life as a woman who may or may not see her kids graduate high school”–that’s another way to put it–that got me. I drove away cursing.  I had so wanted to do yoga.

But as Katie Couric so prolifically said to “me” all those years ago, regardless of my situation life will go on around me–even as my world spins in and out of control.  Some days I’ll handle that motion, and other days I won’t.

Here’s one thing I know: there’s a yoga class next Wednesday at 9 a.m. with my name all over it.

Posted March 27th, 2013 by
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Ann’s Diary: Charlie’s Strongest Angel

Last Thursday I had this thing…

screwed into my head like this…

 

 

 

 

 

 

so I could go into this machine …

and get my brain radiated to burn out the small breast cancer tumor that somehow got in there.

Friday, I got a port put into my chest….to save my arms from becoming a human pin cushion…

 

 

 

 

….so that Monday I could start chemotherapy to beat down the breast cancer that thinks it’s got any right to be not only in my lung but now my liver.

As you can see, I don’t take things lying down and I sure as hell am not going anywhere…Charlie’s Chemo Angels (me and my peeps at chemo 3 days ago) GOT THIS. 

So if Charlie calls, tell him I said cancer can kiss my ass.

 

Posted March 20th, 2013 by
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Ann’s Diary: Red Carpet Evening

Many of my friends watched The Oscars.  I didn’t, and I don’t.  I used to watch when I knew what the movies were and who the celebrities are–but lately I never see movies and I don’t watch any television and I have no idea who’s on the cover of People Magazine.

Cancer ruined it for me.  There; easy to blame someone who’s not in the room–or can’t defend itself.  Finally I can pull a fast one on cancer–Lord knows it’s pulled a fast one on me.

What I mean by “cancer ruined it for me” is that ever since I got sick, I can’t watch anything over-the-top. For example: I can’t see people murdered–even fake people, like in CSI; or lied to, cheated, disillusioned, kidnapped, drowned–and God forbid anybody is dying of a disease. I also can’t watch “reality” television, people pretending to survive in the jungle, celebrity “news” and the like–basically anything that reeks of excess: money, glamour, violence, sadness, suspense or fear. Maybe because I have enough of those last three in my world as it is, and the other stuff just doesn’t do anything for me.

And I don’t think this is natural or normal for someone with metastatic disease—I assume many fighters watch fantasy, “reality”, the Oscars, whatever–and are just fine.  And good for them. I think I’m the freak. Something like the Oscars, while much of it smoke and mirrors, is all good fun.  And that line makes me think of the Wicked Witch when she told Dorothy, all in good time, my pretty, all in good time…

And maybe all in good time I’ll care about watching the Oscars again. And the movies. Or reading books where someone has something horrible happen to them and has to dig themselves out of an emotional-wreck of a hole. But not now. Not today. And likely not tomorrow.  Maybe I just will never again be able to watch someone else’s fairytale life while I’m living such a nightmare.

On Oscar night I did not see anybody get their just rewards for work well done on the silver screen. I didn’t see any pretty gowns or gorgeous tuxedos, and there was no red carpet for anyone to walk in my world. But I did something fun just the same. I snuggled up with my daughter  in my bed and we read a book. No high drama, no good outfits and no high heels–no lights, camera or action, either.

But to the Academy of Ann, it was an award-winning night just the same.

Posted March 6th, 2013 by
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