III.
Never in a thousand years would I have thought I would get a tattoo, but here I am, lying on my back while a needle is pricking me and black ink is marking me in four tiny spots on my breast. Yes, I am being marked for a tanning session, in fact, thirty-four zaps of radiation to rid myself of that insidious disease called cancer. This is another phase of what I have to do and I feel helpless, angry, afraid, and hopeful. The nurse explains: "You will come in every morning during the week, Monday through Friday, at 7:15. Here in the dressing room, you take the top part of your clothes off and put on a gown." I then join the rest of the cancer patients patiently waiting for their treatment of radiation rays to penetrate different parts of their body to zap that disgusting disease.
How strange. I enter one door, leaving the whole, the healthy, and walk through another door to join the ill, the sick, the survivors in a war, fighting to win a battle. The nurse continues her informative syllabus but I do not want to be listening to her dissertation relayed to me in an unemotional tone, as if she has spoken these words millions of times before. She answers questions that have been asked before and tries to sound professional, interested and caring. The doctor enters to reaffirm what I have just heard, makes it sound scary. "Many things can go wrong, not that they will," he reassures, "but there is always that possibility, and would I sign that I understood that my lungs could get scarred, that sometimes the breast gets a burn, may change color and it may be painful." Serious thing this radiation treatment.
I was at their mercy. They would do what had to be done and I would accept it because I am not a gambler when it comes to dealing with my life. I should consider myself lucky. It could have been worse. It could have spread. It could have been somewhere else. It could have been much, much worse. But, somehow, I don't consider myself lucky because I have the capital "C" word, the word that brings fear and desperation to all that hear that they have it. The puzzlement is that I feel so healthy, so full of life, so alive, and yet, I have to have something done to make me feel ill, or burned, or tired, to try and get rid of something that may or may not be hiding in my breast.
I find that hard to accept. I find that hard to believe. I just find it hard. So, every morning, I look at the beautiful sunrises, the orangepinklavender skies and I thank God for giving me another day to enjoy. I am getting used to driving to the treatment center, the quick, seven minute treatment that will destroy any cancer cells lurking in my breast but I also know it is destroying my good cells and that makes me sad.
The nurse and I chat. She tells me about her life. I tell her about mine. I see other patients faithful in attending to their needs but some have no hair, some are on crutches, one is in a wheel chair and I feel lucky. Strange, all things are relative and the old saying about hanging on to your own sack of problems because you know what they are, is so true. At this point, all I want is to finish the zapping and go on with my life. Mondays I talk with the doctor, Wednesdays I am weighed and every day, except weekends I am stretched out on a bed that quietly rises, my arm at an awkward position, hanging on to a rolled cloth, so only the tattooed breast is exposed. I am shot with invisible rays. I am slowly raised to the machine, like an Aztec maiden being sacrificed to the Radiation God. Same routine for thirty-four days. Then what? Will my life return to normal?
The only time I have any control, is my choice of picking out a robe to wear into the radiation room. Blue and white stripe. Blue, white, coral and green stripe. Or blue, white, coral, green sperm figures with tiny white dots. Yes, it's pretty exciting deciding which robe I will put on to cover my nakedness from the waist up. Soon, my shoulder and boob are exposed and it is time for the machine to roll over me and to hear the buzz for one whole minute that seems like an eternity, while rays are shot into me once again. In ten minutes I am back in the dressing room, taking off the robe, tossing it into a soiled-linen basket already filling up with someone else's used choices.
I look in the mirror and see my breast, larger, hotter, redder than its mate and I know I have nineteen more sessions to go. My breast has a life all its own for everything revolves around it and no matter how hard I try to forget there is always a peculiar pain, a burning, a needle like pain, a soreness to remind me that it is not well and it it still needs a lot of attention.
Sometimes, I get sad, on the verge of depression, knowing I am tainted. But, other times, I feel lucky, and I know I can handle the inconveniences because I will soon be complete, a whole woman again, or will I?
IV.
Seventeen years have passed since my ordeal and I feel fortunate the cancer has not returned. Maybe I never had it, maybe it was all dug out of me, and maybe I will never have to worry again. Yet, some where stuck in a wrinkle of my brain, there lurks a shadow of apprehension. Anyone who has been told they had cancer is never completely at peace that it is all gone. Lately, three persons I know were told they had cancer. One died. Makes the fear return and makes me think about my bout with the disease. What can one do? Think positive, repeat affirmations, pray, believe, really believe, that all cancer is gone and try to live a healthy life.
"I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some from behind.
But I've bought a big bat, I'm ready you see,
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"
Dr. Seuss
No comments:
Post a Comment