The Jinx

I just turned 63 years old. 

I have had cancer three times in my life. 

This is the first time I’ve tried to write about it. 

Reasons I haven’t done this before: 

Who would care?  It’s not like I’m the first person to have cancer.

It’s actually pretty boring to talk about.  There’s not many ways to tell the cancer story and make it entertaining.  I mean, I make a lot of jokes about some of the things I’ve been through, and there have been some truly ridiculous moments on this journey, but 1) they’re only funny if you didn’t die and 2) lots of people know people who’ve died, and they don’t find it very amusing. Oh, and 3) one thing I’ve learned is that what I think is funny about my body trying to kill me, is often NOT what others find funny.  (My wordplay about boobectomies do not always land, for example.)

It isn’t a new story. I don’t have any epiphanies to share. I don’t know that I learned anything (and after three bouts, I’d guess that if I was going to learn something, I’d have done so).  The big lessons for me seem quite selfish:  1) If you want to be alive, it’s better than being dead and 2) don’t do stuff you don’t want to do; life could be over tomorrow. 

See, no epiphanies.

But.

Now that I’m getting old, I somehow feel like I want to at least put on paper (not that THAT’s a thing anymore), what this whole  experience has done to (for?) me.  I mean, I am still alive, and that must give me some license to be self-indulgent and think that someone out there might find this…interesting?  Who knows.  Since this is online, you now have the great option of simply clicking away to something better—there must be a cat video on Tik Tok that needs watching.

The cancer cells in my body first launched their attack when I was 35.  I’d just been admitted to a Master’s program in English, and was thinking that, slow starter that I am, I was finally getting my life in order.  That was my first lesson in the jinx.  Don’t trust life to go the way you want it to, and don’t trust good fortune.  Sorry, that’s a bit nihilistic, and despite my statement above where I said I didn’t really learn anything, I’ve definitely learned THAT. 

Hodgkins Lymphoma.  My first oncologist (whee, that’s fun to say, because there’s been others), said, “If you’re going to get cancer, this is the one to get.”  How do you take that sentence in, as you’re sitting across from him right after he’s just told you about the crazy shit the chemo will, and might, do to you?  It was hard to feel lucky in that moment.

I lived with my parents for 8 months, because they lived close to where I was getting treatments, and because I fucking needed them.  I will not bore you with the details, mostly because I don’t remember them that well, but here are a few clips:

Telling my mother to stop staring at me because “I’m not going to die in the next 5 minutes,” and then listening to her cry in the other room.  Cancer makes you mean.

Being alone for a weekend, after assuring my parents that I was feeling fine, but so anemic and weak that I could only just get myself off the couch to use the bathroom. Being sure I was actually dying and that I was doing it alone.

Crying on the table as the radiology techs first drew on my bare chest, and then tattooed registration marks so they’d know where to aim the radiation.  Those men (and at that time, almost all the techs were men) needed some training on how a woman feels when lying topless on a metal table while being discussed and ignored.

Finishing chemo and radiation, and being told, okay, you’re done, see ya later.  And feeling abandoned because…suddenly you’re being told it’s over, but even the ones saying it don’t really believe it, but you didn’t die, so now you have to go back to your life and pretend like it’s all good.  And it is.  But you don’t trust it. Not anymore.  It’s the jinx, waiting in the shadows.

I’d deferred starting the MA, but got back to it, and did the living stuff.  A few scary moments here and there, but clear medical reports.   

At 43, I got a promotion.  Bought my first house.  I really should have known better.  This time, breast cancer.  Big ole lump in the boob. Lots of lymph nodes involved, so back to chemo and radiation. (Quick science aside:  apparently this happened to women who’d had the kind of radiation I’d had for the Hodgkins, but I’m not sure how accurate that is.)

This time, though, I stayed where I was, got treatment at the local cancer center.  Kept working, soldiered through.  I wore my bandanas and scarves into the classroom and told my students it was no big deal.  Looked like shit but my friends pretended I looked fine. 

Was still mean:  told my mother she wouldn’t see me until I was done with treatment. I told myself I was sparing her having to see me look sick, but come on…I just didn’t want to see her trying to pretend that it was going to be okay.  Because I surely didn’t believe that.  Any time I’d heard that someone had cancer a second time, it was time for the goodbye tour.

But.  I made it through and once again was told to get on with it.  So I did.  And this time, it almost lasted 20 years. 

But this time I was ready for the jinx, for the other shoe, for fate or whatever.  I had announced that I was going to retire, and from that moment, I waited.  It only took a few months.  Bad mammo in September, both boobs off in December.

Slightly weird side note:  I was actually pretty happy that it was breast cancer again.  At least I knew what this one was about, and knew that, at 62 at the time, I wasn’t going to go through treatments again.  So, off with the boobs.  Cancer out. 

And here I am, again.  Getting on with it.