I worked out last night. It was the first time in a while and I'm feeling it. I came home and told my husband about my work out and my encounter with a young woman at the club. Today he wrote about it. Just when I think he can't possibly understand what's going on in my head, he proves me wrong. Here's what he wrote:
Excuse Me, Ma'am
by Chuck Stromme
“Not bad for an old lady” she thinks, smiling, toweling off the sweat. It's hot in her exercise club.
It's been a hard year. After a good start – a two week trip overseas, a lovely early spring, a flowering garden – she had found that lump. That damn lump. Spring flowers gave way to a lumpectomy, gardening to chemo, harvest to radiation. Now it's winter again.
She's always been secretly proud of her breasts and her once copper-penny red hair. I mean really, who wouldn't be? Her breast is, well, different now. Her hair fell out. Again. There are new scars. Getting old sucks, she thinks. Well, OK, the hair is coming back at least but the rest of growing old still sucks.
But today, today is one of the good days. She's working out with her buff and younger masseuse friend. Even keeping up a little, sort of. Stretch this, lift that, faster pace, smile through the muscle strain. That kind of good day. She's wearing one of her breast cancer shirts.
“Excuse me, please.” Who... oh, a kid needs to get by. “Oh, sure, no problem.”
A moment later “Excuse me, ma'am.” She looks, sees for the first time. A very small, severely handicapped, twenty-something young woman is shyly trying to get her attention. The woman, not much more than a girl really, has one of those pink tied-ribbon shirts on. She says, in not much more than a whisper, “I had breast cancer, too.” Then, “I lost my breast.”
Life, of course, isn't fair. For each of us who is fortunate, there are those less fortunate. For each of us who are multiply blessed, others are multiply afflicted. We don't see the others very often, mostly because we don't choose to, but sometimes we encounter their reality. Sometimes we have no choice. Sometimes it taps us and says “Excuse me, ma'am.”
No one is ready for that kind of reality. We're not ready for harsh or cruel. We forget they exist while we're basking in good and fulfilled. We don't know what to do when we meet the others.
Only one response will get you through a time like this. Take in the reality. Embrace it and let it affect you. Know it and make it a part of you and only then can you grow from the experience. Don't shun the afflicted. They've had too much of that. Smile, engage them, touch them if it's appropriate. You can acknowledge that you're both fruit of the same tree, then each can go on her way without pity or envy.
Merry Christmas.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
CAST ADRIFT
Since my treatment ended in October, I have felt cast adrift. I haven't blogged because I have had nothing to say that didn’t seem pessimistic or worse. Even the recent articles about recommended later and fewer mammograms didn’t anger me enough to respond.
What has angered me is the added recommendation that doctors stop teaching women how to do self exams on their breasts. Really?! What could be more benign than that? At first I thought it was a mistake; but no, it’s part of the recommendation. The underlying purpose is simple. If women examine themselves, they will find lumps. Most of these lumps are made up of benign tissue--lumpy breasts, fibrous breasts or just plain random deposits of tissue that is different from the surrounding tissue. All of these can lead to tests and procedures and, of course, anxiety. The tests can be expensive and the anxiety is “bad” for women. Therefore, it would be better if all these false alarms could be avoided. Of course that would also mean that early detection would be avoided as well.
The question then becomes, does early detection really make a difference? A recent article in the Fall, 2009, issue of Cure Magazine questions the value of routine screenings. The article compared cancer to an asteroid hurtling toward earth. If the asteroid can’t be stopped, does it really help to know three months or three years in advance that it is on the way? The end result is the same. On the other hand, if there is a way to destroy the asteroid before it arrives, the earlier it is detected the better. The point of the article is that all too often detection and treatment does not add significant time to the patient’s life expectancy and frequently reduces the quality of the time remaining. Findings indicate that this is particularly true for prostate cancer. Men can live for a number of years with this slow gowing cancer while the treatment can significatly impair their general health. This may be the case with other types of cancer as well.
However, the fact that it might rarely make a difference in the final outcome doesn’t matter to those “exceptions” who are still alive years after diagnosis and treatment. Most of them are convinced that they would be dead if they had not discovered and treated their cancers.
I am certainly convinced that my bout with uterine cancer in 1996 would have killed me if I had not had surgery, chemo and radiation. How can we ever be sure though? If this Triple Negative breast cancer is going to ultimately be the death of me and my treatment was all for nothing, maybe I would prefer to have the six months back and go on a cruise instead. How can we dare to make such choices and leave our loved ones wondering if we abandoned them without putting up a fight? For me, that's the toughest question of all.
.
What has angered me is the added recommendation that doctors stop teaching women how to do self exams on their breasts. Really?! What could be more benign than that? At first I thought it was a mistake; but no, it’s part of the recommendation. The underlying purpose is simple. If women examine themselves, they will find lumps. Most of these lumps are made up of benign tissue--lumpy breasts, fibrous breasts or just plain random deposits of tissue that is different from the surrounding tissue. All of these can lead to tests and procedures and, of course, anxiety. The tests can be expensive and the anxiety is “bad” for women. Therefore, it would be better if all these false alarms could be avoided. Of course that would also mean that early detection would be avoided as well.
The question then becomes, does early detection really make a difference? A recent article in the Fall, 2009, issue of Cure Magazine questions the value of routine screenings. The article compared cancer to an asteroid hurtling toward earth. If the asteroid can’t be stopped, does it really help to know three months or three years in advance that it is on the way? The end result is the same. On the other hand, if there is a way to destroy the asteroid before it arrives, the earlier it is detected the better. The point of the article is that all too often detection and treatment does not add significant time to the patient’s life expectancy and frequently reduces the quality of the time remaining. Findings indicate that this is particularly true for prostate cancer. Men can live for a number of years with this slow gowing cancer while the treatment can significatly impair their general health. This may be the case with other types of cancer as well.
However, the fact that it might rarely make a difference in the final outcome doesn’t matter to those “exceptions” who are still alive years after diagnosis and treatment. Most of them are convinced that they would be dead if they had not discovered and treated their cancers.
I am certainly convinced that my bout with uterine cancer in 1996 would have killed me if I had not had surgery, chemo and radiation. How can we ever be sure though? If this Triple Negative breast cancer is going to ultimately be the death of me and my treatment was all for nothing, maybe I would prefer to have the six months back and go on a cruise instead. How can we dare to make such choices and leave our loved ones wondering if we abandoned them without putting up a fight? For me, that's the toughest question of all.
.
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