My Great Breast Cancer Adventure

Hidden

Here's a short piece that I wrote by combining some of my earlier blog posts (back in Nov/Dec of 2005), written shortly after I was diagnosed, when I was in the midst of preparing to do chemo:


Lenore wanted to write before breakfast, but first she had to find the adaptor cord for her laptop. Where had it gone to? She couldn't find it anywhere, not in the box, not on the shelf, not in the trunk or the bottom of the rolling file cabinet. Maybe she needed a new spiritual practice, something that would help her get better at searching for lost objects, say, a heart meditation that would alleviate her impatience, help her find the fruitful side of her snarling, nipping anger.

She took her search to the kitchen, where the morning sky dilated as sunlight streamed in over the vitamin bottles on the counter next to the blender. The wind coming in through the window picked up the scent of omega-3 fish oils. Yes, she had added cod liver oil to her medicinal arsenal.

Where was the damn adaptor cord? She didn't know, couldn't answer that question. Things happened, got lost. She was not much of meditator, but even so, she had to ask herself, Was there some other way of seeing things, something deeply hidden in the obvious?

No adaptor cord in the kitchen.

She stormed into the living room, looked behind the drapes, in the side table drawer, under the coffee table. It had to be somewhere. She could not not not find it. Nor could she find the answers to any of her most pressing questions. She couldn't say where she went in the dead of night, for example, and she didn't know if dead people turned into angels, and she wasn't at all certain that the naming of a disease served any useful purpose.

Maybe she needed to buy a plant, or repot the old one on the foyer table. Would this qualify as a meditation? What made for a good meditation? Would it be cheating to take up a spiritual practice solely for the purpose of locating a lost adaptor cord?

She made her way back to the kitchen, turned on the burner under the tea kettle, and reached for the dark brown glass dropper bottle filled with a Chinese herbal tincture. Four droppersful, three times a day, in hot water.

She waited for the hidden whistle to come blasting out of the tea kettle, all that pent up steam so anxious to escape.

Everything in the world had a hidden meaning now. When ants wandered into the sugar bowl, she saw tiny black angels. Houses, cocks, hats, skies. Tapioca. Desert flowers. They were all hieroglyphics. Undecipherable. Filled with hidden meanings. When she looked at her cancer, she saw fragments of poetry, she saw where everything had fallen apart, and how it could all begin to come back together. She saw a crack between then and now. She saw a realm where many things needed unraveling.

Yes, hidden was the operative word. The cancer was hidden. The path that would lead to the destruction of the cancer was hidden. Where oh where could the cancer cell be, oh where oh where could it be?  This was the question in her little song, to which, of course, there was no answer. No one knew. Not her surgeon. Not her pathologist. Not her oncologist or her acupuncturist or her radiologist.

Things hidden were rapping at the doors. This was the theme of her life since the diagnosis. So many hidden things. Antioxidants hiding in the blueberries. Maitake mushrooms hiding in the vitamin bottle. Bunches of scarred up tissues hiding inside her armpit, making it difficult to regain her full range of motion. It hurt when she reached for the milk in the refrigerator, hurt when she brushed her hair, hurt when she stretched her arm to turn out the bedside light.

And then there was the problem of finding the right doctors. Doctor, doctor, where was the doctor? Who was the doctor for her? She needed more than one, it seemed. A "team." She had never dreamed it would be this hard.

She swallowed her first fistful of pills. Her upper arm was still numb and sore, three months after the removal of the lump and nodes. The pills would help to heal the nerve, scar and tissue damage.

When the kettle let out its whistle, she poured the water into her rose colored cup and lifted the bitter brew to her lips. The urine-testing kit that would measure her iodine levels sat on the kitchen table, waiting for her to decipher its confusing instructions. The blood and saliva kits were still in the large wire bin she had designated to hold all the medical papers until she could get them filed into the as-yet unlabeled folders.

Her knowledge of medicines and science was growing. Yesterday she had learned the difference between a "pharmaceutical" and "pharmacological" dose. Today she would begin taking the steps to get an MRI followed by a blood test that would measure her tumor markers. The cat, curled into a ball at the end of the couch, snored a tiny whistle of a snore.

Damn, the heater thermostat wasn't working again. Her fingers were so cold. You couldn't see the half moons on the nails. This was a sign, she had read somewhere, that her body lacked oxygen. Cancer hated oxygen. Another fact she had just learned. She needed to work on regaining the half moons. She needed to make them come back. She would add that to her To Do list: Get half moons back.

She thought of the three male oncologists she had seen so far, and tried to imagine each of them as her next door neighbor — just a regular person dressed in baggy shorts, a tee shirt, and floppy old shoes. She was several years older than two of them, and around the same age as the third. Her life experience was just as valuable as theirs, wasn't it? Her wisdom, her opinions, her assessments, her questions were all just as valid, just as meaningful, just as necessary to the process of her healing. "What does that MEAN?" she had said to doctor after doctor, interrupting them when they patronized her, and cutting into their precious time with her unexpectedly detailed questions.

The revelation was growing on her, overwhelming her with its shocking message: These doctors, these men, were not her father, her boss, or her god — they were ordinary everyday people! In most ways, they were her peers. She didn't know whether to succumb to terror or celebrate her newfound power.

What if she were to get to know these three doctors in an "everyday" context, when they weren't towering over her in the examining room or office filled with fancy medical diplomas on the wall? What if she talked to them every day over the fence, about weeds in the yard, sprinkler systems, broken dryers, taking out the trash, the next block party, the last divorce, the wayward child?

She had met three people, three strangers, who held the title of doctor. Some doctors were, of course, extraordinary people - wise, brilliant, visionaries, geniuses. But only a few. Not all. Never all.

Doctors could be wrong. They could be screwed up. In addition to being admirable and courageous and giving, they could be exhausted, overworked, distracted, arrogant, patronizing, egotistical, sloppy, careless, inconsiderate, rude, narrow-minded, sad, hurting, jilted, grieving, and angry.

They could also be confused. About their jobs. About their ethics. About their patients. About their treatments.

It was looking as though she would have to meet many more than three oncologists in order to find the right one. None of these guys filled the bill. She took a deep breath. Then another. Then she reached for the bag of coffee beans

As she scooped the dark French roast out of the bag, she heard Jack's footsteps coming toward the kitchen from the bedroom. He walked in, put his arms around her waist, gave her a light kiss on the top of her soon-to-be-bald head.
   
They drifted over the coffee for a while, keeping the torment of hospitals and needles at bay a while longer. They were all alone together in the middle of a beautiful city. He took excellent care of her. Sometimes the truth seemed so small, a speck at the bottom of a canyon, she could pretend it wasn’t there.
   
"What kind of eggs do you want?" he asked.
   
She couldn't think what to answer, couldn't make the fear disappear, saw the rest of her life spent in a limbo of pros versus cons, risks versus benefits, survival versus quality of life. Her upper lip twitched. Everything shook, inside and out, but yes, it was so. You were given that which you most feared, up to the point where you could handle it, whatever that meant.

"What are you thinking?" he said. "Is something the matter?"
   
"I'm just  thinking about eggs," was what she said.
   
What she didn't say was, I'm thinking about how to proceed for the rest of forever. I'm thinking about what blood type I am, what a thin line we walk. I'm wondering why the nerves in my arm are acting up again, sending those streaks of pain down toward my hand. I'm thinking about the blood in my veins, and the body of god. I'm thinking about stage two, ductal and lobular, intermediate grade carcinoma.

"Well?" he said. What was it gonna be, scrambled or over easy? Life was trotting along from Tuesday to Wednesday.
   
She wanted to blurt out that her left arm was still numb and hurting. It seemed to be getting worse again, in fact. What awful new side effect was on the horizon? And from everything she had heard and read, this was nothing compared to what was still lay ahead. But what she said was "Scrambled."
   
After breakfast she went to the bedroom to get dressed, and was looking for her shoes. They weren't in the closet. They weren't next to the chair. They weren't under the bed. . . but wait a minute, there was the adaptor cord. Right there. Under the bed. Exactly where it had always been.

--

 

The Delicacies

    Three times a week, Lenore took a new disposable syringe out of the kitchen drawer where she kept her medications, and prepared to inject the mysterious mistletoe extract into the fat of her abdomen. She wanted to live. She couldn't help it. Memories of green always brought tears to her eyes. Ridiculous melancholy. Piano riffs, the sound of rain on the skylight washing away not all but at least a big hunk of several decade's worth of self-deceptions. Nobody is in here, she thought. I'm alone. Here. Locked in the center of a massive rock that no one else can enter.
    She put on her lime green, leaf-woven capri pants and rallied onward. Her eyelids felt heavy, her brain hurt from all the commotion that was always going on inside it. Birds thundered by outside the window.
    Any minute another sorrow bomb could drop. Any second she could drown in memories that were only that, nothing more. Last night she had dreamed she was sitting in a straightback chair, flying along at an altitude of approximately fifteen feet above the Valencia Street shopping corridor. She had known where she was going and why. But then she had awakened to find herself on the couch where she had fallen asleep, and gravity had resumed its hold.
    She turned her back for one second, and the dog stole one of the carrots off the kitchen counter and carried it off to the yard, so happy. This made her smile. She could never stay mad at the dog. Who could she be mad at, then? She felt determined to be mad at someone as she licked the butter off her fingers and scowled at her fate.
    She swallowed her last bite of toast, swigged down the last inch of lukewarm dark French roast and felt the pull of the delicacies, which was how she referred to her teeming army of waking dreams and imagined images, conversations, scenarios, surprises, disasters, ecstasies and possibilities.. In the bathroom when she leaned over the sink to spit out her mix of cinnamon toothpaste and blood, she felt that special, private pain made entirely and solely for her. She stared down at her shirt stained with yesterday's beet juice, and remembered that once again she'd forgotten to check her breasts for lumps while taking her shower.
    After brushing her teeth she recalled that she'd forgotten to take her pills, pills that were meant to keep the wolf, with his big, sharp, raving, rabid, cancer-carrying teeth, away from her door.
    Too many people had been making demands, causing her adrenalin to flash in gaudy neon. Clients and co-workers ached inside her neck. She'd had enough. Her arms itched. Her chin tingled with a bursting garden of tiny black angers. She wanted to sip a slug of whiskey out of a coral colored trumpet flower.
    How fine it felt to once again be falling under the spell of the delicacies, inflamed, on edge
    When Paul sauntered in through her forehead chakra, she ran a bath and immersed herself in a time when time had stopped again and again. The woodcutter had held his ax suspended in midair, where bees hovered half way between nectar and hive, and she —– Paul's princess, his queen — had  held her breath on the verge of orgasm.
    One by one, the second, third and fourth in a stream of magnificently inappropriate ex-lovers arrived to cast their temptations. Lenore absorbed their familiar voices through her tear ducts. She had no choice but to listen.
    "Just receive me," said Paul, cupping both her cheeks in his hands. "That's right, Lenore. Open yourself up and let me in. Here, now and forever."
    She crooned a rainy day ballad to the passing, pressing hours, and as the cat commenced to snore on the green and white checked duvet, was overcome by a buzzing delirium of delicacies.
    She wanted to stuff her mouth with a dozen cinnamon donuts, one after another, with big gulps of cold, cold milk in-between. By god, she would find a way to get back to the taste of sugar, the thrill of carbs. Warm, just out of the oven. Soft, melt in your mouth cinnamon donuts, infinitely wrong, infinitely desirable. She knew she would go insane if she didn't get something wild back.
    Maybe she could be mad at Jack. Maybe that would work. Oh what a despicable thought! Thank goodness he wasn't at home. Thank goodness he had gone to see a man about the truck. Some guy had backed into the side of his precious Toyota Tacoma and made a big ugly dent. The insurance company wanted him to get the half-assed, cheap repair, but Jack was insisting on having it done right. This was a man who loved his truck. Lenore had to agree that if anyone had ever deserved a proper repair job, it was Jack.
    The joints in her ankles and knees were killing her. What did that signify? Another possible sign of death creeping too close, too fast? She spent whole nights listening to mysterious clunkings, or wandering lost and unenrolled on college campuses, or running from nasty tidal waves. Every morning she struggled to swim up from the murky bottom, to get herself back up into the light of coffee. Who knew? Death and disease had the whole world stumped. Her breast continued to twinkle with twinges and aches, unidentifiable prickles, stinging sensations that came and went without rhyme or reason.
    All the stress of the world was jammed inside her feet today. She stood up, felt the familiar pain jolt once again through her ankles and wished for better circulation, some kind of holiness that would heal her misbehaving joints, anointing them with the strength they'd once enjoyed, the strength of youth and naiveté, heightened states of emotion and passion, no rust, no mold, no dead-end cul de sacs.
    Once upon a time she'd had waist-length hair that slipped down and around her head like a waterfall made of infinite Caribbean sand. Heads had turned when she walked down the street, her hair cascading down to her hourglass waist. One admirer had called her "an incongruous collage of cool blue sky and warm, rich dirt." Hah! Those had been the days.
    Yesterday she had looked up tendonitis on the Internet, to no avail. Information overload and too many conflicting options for diagnosis and treatment equaled chaos. The orthotics she'd bought at the drugstore made her hobble and weep a stream of invisible tears that fell, or so she imagined, onto every uphill slant. Whenever she stretched her legs or raised her knees, she grew old too quickly and was forced to claw at the air in an attempt to pull herself back toward the house where she now lived, the adorabel A-frame with a lawn and a sprinkling system and a dog and a man with whom she exchanged sweet little lukewarm kisses. On the top of their toilet tank sat one predictable philodendron.
    Their refrigerator contained homemade chicken soup. There were bananas and grapefruits and apples coloring up the kitchen counter with yellows and reds and greens. Yesterday she had heated up half a cup of homemade chicken stock mixed with homemade Bieler's Broth (pureed zucchini, string beans, celery and parsley), a spoonful of virgin coconut oil (optional) and a pinch of Celtic sea salt ) while Jack cooked the shrimp. Then she had baked what was left of the oh-so-healthy chocolate chip cookie dough made with spelt flour and sweetened with sucanat. After that they had gone to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought a swirly green shower curtain.
    She closed her eyes and observed a flock of memories emerge from behind the arc of a rainbow. They flew in a great circle above her head and came to roost in the eaves of her discontent. A buzzing vibration shifted from a spot behind her nose down into the tips of her fingers, then back to that same spot, which at times she had deemed her "forehead chakra." Finally it was muffled by the thump of heartbeats coming from her neighbors' houses.
    She wanted to scream or wreck the kitchen. She wanted to have an object to aim her anger at. She wanted to smack the faceless, nameless, asshole enemy who was to blame. But what would be the point of that? She was a nobody, a dolt, a flat line droning. She hated her hair and her hideous new skirt that made her look as if she were on her way out to a square dance   
    She turned on the tiny TV that sat on the kitchen counter, inbetween the olive oil and the VitaMix blender. This was where she lived too much of her life now, here, in a world that had once smelled of steamy sex but now reeked of Dr. Phil and Oprah. She unwrapped the syringe from its packet, broke the glass top off of the mistletoe vial, tapped the edge of the vial until the air bubbles went away, stuck the needle into the vial, sucked up the mistletoe, pushed the needle into her abdomen, pulled it out, watched a drop of blood form, and pressed a tiny piece of paper towel onto the drop.
    What she was so lonesome for? A vacation? A poem by Emily Dickenson? No. She needed more. Maybe a hammer or a flood or an out of control fire. Or maybe she required a bolt of lightning that would blaze down to strike the mystical soul of her pituitary gland. Maybe it was time to force the thundering birds themselves to come tumbling out of the sky, falling every which way until they slammed into the ground.
    Outside the window, red rain-wet leaves that were plastered down onto the black asphalt haunted her. She stared at them until flashes of heat blazed into her peachiest, most luscious core, and tears came to smear her mascara. Why had god given her this imagination? It was too damn ruthless a thing to have to go up against every day.

Lenore Goes Gray

Dying her hair was a luxury Lenore could no longer afford. Besides, she wanted to know how she would look with gray hair. She'd been dying it since the first few strands of silver had started to appear fifteen years ago. Even so, she had to fight the urge to make another appointment at the salon. Vacillation. Maybe she should color it as if it were feathers, turn her plumage into a rainbow of colors. Incessant vacillation.

She longed for the shape of an egg, or the shape of a heart etched in stone. On a wall. In a cave. Her longings made no sense. She wandered upstairs, sat at her desk, the dog at her feet, her hair waiting, just that thin line between the color gray and the color of deception, camouflage, denial, vanity, disguise.

Not that she felt she had been lying for all those years. Not really. So why? Why now? Why this need to allow the supposed truth of her hair? Did it have something to do with the end of the world as she had known it? Could she sustain her determination to remain gray, washed out, a pale ghost of her former, darker self with such a lovely hint of auburn underglow? She'd had a secret, out of sight of everyone. Now it had been revealed..

She wandered downstairs to heat her morning broth and refrained from looking at herself in the hallway mirror. Concentrate, she thought, on the meadow in your mind's eye. Or no, wait, look how the shadows in the ceiling have gone crazy! Sip from the yellow cup. When the sun shines just so, note that it casts the most beautiful colors on the old, worn linoleum. She'd had a secret, out of sight of everyone. Now it had been revealed. Such a simple thing but, even so, now a trying exercise in perception.

What was it, what was it that made it worth the risk? There was no evidence to prove that what she had done would work, but the dice had been thrown. Her father stood in the doorway lecturing, pontificating, refusing to let her pass. Now he was dead in the dirt, she had spent what he'd left behind, and was on her own.

Had she made a mistake when she sold the yellow Rambler convertible, replaced it with a Plymouth hardtop and a pregnancy? She missed the vodkas, the nasty pelvic dancing, all the other banished sins and their down low harmonicas. Now she drove a Volkswagen Golf. Now her son was grown and gone.

She wanted back the lecherous liars and triple decker sandwiches, yet here she was nibbling on apples and basil, hungry for a fight with Jack in the aisles of Costco. Where was Paul at this very second? And what about Tom? And Frank? And whatever had happened to long ago Ted? She most missed the ones who had also been her friends. They kept showing up.

Her knees ached against the billowing comforter, her ears rang against the sound of the early morning furnace blare, her gray hair went on challenging, punishing, casting doubts right and left. Meanwhile, her left breast continued to do its twinge and ache routine.

She spent more and more time in the past, burning up, sucked into the sky of it, until one day she walked into the back yard and the automatic sprinkler came on, and she went back into the living room wet, picked up her cup of chamomile tea and a cigarette, lowered herself into the armchair next to the couch, and formally began to rearrange her molecules.

When the tea began to rust, she forced a smile, and a tiny avalanche of ashes broke off the end of the cigarette, fell onto the coffee table. Her lips cracked as they parted. She couldn't stop thinking about how she'd met him — and him and him and him —  at the party, at the auto repair shop, at the bookstore, in the restaurant, on the grass, on the sidewalk, through a personals ad, and so on down the line.

At 9:19 p.m. she heard a thump. At 9:26 p.m. she thought she heard his — or his or his — footsteps on the stairs, but she was wrong. At 9:28 p.m. she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, rocked herself back and forth, and thought she heard him say her name, but she was wrong again.

Everything was out of order, and she was being eaten alive. By housework. By routines. By the mundane. So she went alone — why bring anyone else along? — down a road that led toward what appeared to be an impossibly dead end. She went on foot. Wearing a sweater that looked ridiculous — too young, too tight.

There had been men who said she had a nice voice, who had applauded her confidence in bed, and it had been true at the time. She had been so on, so hot, so perfect a sexual creature, really.

She hoisted the sturdy new brown backpack up onto her shoulders and walked down the street looking for a clock. She had one hour left on the meter. Every time she saw her reflection in a store window, her hair gave her a shock. She had assured herself that the gray would be interesting, a statement of fearlessness, acceptance and even rebellion. 

Her dreams in the past week had been vividly erotic, every night a different man from her past would appear to haunt and taunt her. First Frank, then Paul, then Ted, then Tom, then Nate. Who would come next, and why?

She was old enough to be a grandmother now. The gray would have been fine in a  culture less vain, less obsessed with surfaces. She thought of Paul, how every time they had been together they had undressed within the first ten minutes — how wonderful that had been at first, and how horrible it had become, at last. What was this gray all about? What was this sad little sojourn that pushed her further down the lane into the land of spoiled milk and dirty laundry? Was it about lymph nodes and metastasis and angels? Or was it about lazy ceiling fans rotating above her head, slowing her down into some kind of final, balmy nakedness?

What was it, what was it that made it worth the risk?

In the Land of Uncertainty

Many times a day Lenore swallowed Chinese herbal extracts, cod liver oil, Vitamin D, Wheat germ oil, vitamin B, CO Q10, iodine, testosterone, Super Eff, Immuplex, black Spanish radish, mammary PMG, glucosamine sulfate, curcumin, probiotics, melatonin, beet kvass, kombucha tea, homemade broths, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetable condiments, raw butter, raw cream, kefir, yogurt, grass-fed beef, free-range poultry, nitrate-free bacon, wild salmon, organ meats, naturally leavened sourdough bread, coconut oil, coconut water, coconut juice, coconut butter, olive oil, grapeseed oil, crispy almonds, crispy walnuts, crispy cashews, goji berries, whey-soaked grains, sprouted seeds, celtic sea salt, Stevia powder instead of sugar, cruciferous organic vegetables at least twice a day, antioxidant fruits, minimal carbohydrates, decaffeinated coffee, and the occasional glass of sulfite-free, organic wine.

That was some of what she swallowed. Not all, but some.

She took this list as evidence of her will to live, metastasis to her lymph nodes bedamned. She had not run out of options. Options tumbled out from under her feet, floated in midair, lectured at her from the kitchen. Pots and pans used the stove as their podium. The beet kvass glared at her with dark red sternness; it was as if it could see right through her skin, with some kind of x-ray vision, into her bones and liver and kidneys. Drink me at least twice a day, it commanded. Detoxify.

The joints in her ankles and knees were suddenly killing her. Malfunctioning. Disintegrating. Walking the dog was more difficult now. What did it signify? Another possible sign of death creeping up too close, too fast? Or simply a long-term, chronic side effect of the last medication that she had stopped after only three weeks because it made her feel so awful?

She spent whole nights listening to mysterious clunkings, or wandering lost and unenrolled on college campuses, or running from nasty tidal waves. Every morning she struggled to swim up from the murky bottom, to get herself back into the light of coffee. Who knew? Death and disease had the whole world stumped. Her breast continued to twinkle with twinges and aches, unidentifiable prickles, stinging sensations that came and went without rhyme or reason.

They'd created machines to monitor the state of her mammary glands, but her faith in them was limited. False positives, false negatives, useless diagnostic and prognostic pronouncements leading to what? Sweatier palms? More hidden staircases leading to more doors leading to the land of continuing uncertainty? More destinationless prayers? If her coastline was indeed being eaten away, would it really help to know the rate at which she was disappearing?

Jack's huge dark green couch was much too big for their small living room. The overstuffed pillows that came with the couch also took up too much space. There weren't enough big windows, either. The dining room was depressingly dark. Between her back and the window was a pillow, the background of which they had used to help them pick out wall colors for the office. Pale green and amber. Later she'd  find ways to add splashes of pinot noir red, and a bit of blue, to match the abstract wisps of flower designs. Ah well, someday. There were plans in the making. But would she live long enough to see them come to fruition? Underneath all her diet changes and dreams of coconut oil miracles, this question remained to gnaw, hour after hour, at her days. Where had  the last 54 years gone? A boring and unoriginal question, she knew. But, given the situation, she was allowed.

One cloudy Friday she bought a hand-knit scarf that looked like a beautiful, crazy rainstorm. It suited her perfectly, because every few minutes her life felt like a tree meant to be torn apart by wind and electricity. She could go back to the hospital, pay for more blood tests and imaging, radioactive injections and fancy scans. She could climb inside big machines, count for hundreds of seconds, then wait on needles and pins for inconclusive interpretations.

Or she could wait and see.

Agitation

It was a golden Sunday morning, Lenore's washing machine gave off a determined energy that she was dying to harness. It was lovely, so lovely it made her want to squeeze all her most meaningful words into a tight red dress surrounded by multi-colored cocktails in shimmering glasses.

In the past year her personal world had intersected with but one of the many fucked up facets of the world at large. To be more precise, the medical world. To be even more precise, the cancer world. She had entered uncharted waters, and she had made great discoveries. But she didn't yet know what to do with this knowledge. All she had learned—about doctors, about science, about medicine, about healing, about health, about the pharmaceutical industry—made her wobble with the weight of too great a burden. The world she had encountered seemed mostly to be ruled by a herd of not very bright sheep.

She sat on the floor next to the sofa, looked into the dog's eyes, and listened to the heavy duty churning of soapy water in the Kenmore agitator. Her blabbering heart trembled. How could she help to set things right?

Invocation

    Full moons were coming and going. Feelings of fear, unlike any she had known in the past, continued to jostle and jab at her darkest nooks and crannies, but as the raw afternoon winds blew down from Twin Peaks, carrying the sounds of traffic, trees, ocean, and, of course, the raspy breath of death, Lenore held out her arms and asked for more. More, please. More stamina, more balance, more poise. What else could she do?
    Just this morning she had picked up a memoir written by an American woman who had moved away to start a new, more sensuous life in Italy. As Lenore flipped through its pages, her eyes happened to fall upon a passage about the martyred virgin Agata, "who refused the attentions of Quintino and paid by having her breasts torn off." Agata had come down through history holding her severed breasts on a platter. Women who feared for their own breasts, it was said, invoked her.
    Oddly enough, Agata was also the patron saint of bell makers. Lenore uttered an ah-ha under her breath when she discovered this detail, because it seemed to fit so well. All week long she had been listening with gladness to the sounds of bells, she didn't know from where, that seeped through her windows along with the rustles and smells of people, animals, flowers, edibles.
    Lenore believed that by changing her emotions she could change her blood. She believed that the cells in her veins were constantly transforming themselves as they took on the energies of her anger, her love, her bravery, her fear, her joy. Whatever. She felt a lymphatic surge of thankfulness for having found a doctor she could trust and respect. Dr. Korngold had been a healing anchor, helping her to shelter the sputtering flame of calm with a cupped and steady hand.
    A bar of golden honeysuckle soap glowed on her bathroom sink, a bowl of lemons heaped their sunny color onto her kitchen table. "Agata," said Lenore, as her gratitude crescendoed into the unexpected welling of a tear that slid down her cheek and dropped into her cup of coffee. "Agata," she said again. "Agata."

Dawn

Lenore supposed that if she had not rejected chemo and radiation, it would have been easier to forget, once the tortures were over, about the ever-present threat of metastasis. But she had gambled on the gentler, non-conventional treatments, and that choice had entailed a major overhaul of her life — radical changes to her diet, a demanding exercise regime, pills, shots and herbs morning noon and night, a variety of heart and soul manipulations, constant research, and many attempts at stress reduction. Her healing protocol was daily and ongoing, which meant that she could never really forget about her newest "challenge." Sometimes she resented that. Other times she thought of it as a gift. What a blessing to be reminded anew, every day, several times a day, that she was not immortal.

She thought about the woman on TV, the one who had been impaled by a picket fence post that had pierced her neck, courtesy of a tornado, and how she had been saved in the ER. The woman' life hung on either side of a splintered millimeter. No one could believe their eyes. And yet she had lived.

There were so many mysteries. What was that clink in the engine that her auto mechanic could never hear? Why could she so rarely be happy with her hair? How did the kitchen become so messy, so fast? Why did her toes get hot at night? How did one remove the old windshield wipers and attach the new ones? What brought a cancer cell to life?

The raw terror of the last year had exhausted her. The bags under her eyes were bulging. Most mornings she didn't notice the sunrise. But this morning, as her brain thrashed in the buttery light of six a.m., the orange-red robe of dawn swathed her in a moment of relief and calm. She loved how the sunshine bleached away the dark brown stains that sullied the past. She loved how today's silken dawn illuminated every membrane. It was odd, this respite from the dark side. Rarely did she choose to see the glass half full. God forbid she might begin to believe in the possibility of some fabulous surprise waiting around every corner. Her modus operandi (well established by now, at the age of 53) was to expect worst case scenarios, and to keep her joys well hidden, choosing to elaborate, instead, upon the story of the fire that she had barely caught in time, or the slime that grew on her landlord's brain.

Dawn, of course, was just another prop, when you got right down to it, and she was always turning to props for survival. Only yesterday, for example, she had relied upon the memory of the sublime kiss she had shared with Frank that day on the beach, years ago. Their son had been playing in the waves with the dog that was now dead. That kiss had flown in the face of everything bad that had ever happened between her and Frank. It had swallowed her whole.

The surgical wound to her breast had healed. Bloody at first — red, festering, itchy, yes — but then the curdled, purple crust appeared, the overlay of scab that had finally given way to soft new skin, one more chance to start over.

She sat down at her desk. Outside the window, a crush of brown September leaves lifted and swirled themselves away. Wavy fractals of light and dark tossed themselves onto her small, worrisome realm, which included a large pile of bills, most of them overdue and medical. She breathed deep into her shivering core, until the first honeyed light of morning stuck to her stubborn, cold blue veins and warmed them.

Something

A thrill passed through Lenore's body and on into the pot of asparagus soup. She caught the wave and rode it into the potatoey, creamy green. Another thrill passed through. Then another. Each time, she caught and rode something, caught and rode something that loomed above and then curled overhead. Where had the anger gone?

Wavy patterns of sun and shade tossed themselves onto her small realm of bone, brain and worry, soothing her into steadiness. She washed the butcher block dishwasher top until it shone with an understated lustre. She breathed slow and long into her dread.

A crush of brown September leaves lifted and swirled in the fields, streets and pearls of this new interior. She stirred three teaspoons of cream into the deep, warm cup of her quiet. Something was running through her. She wasn't sure what, but it had made her decide to grow her Clairol brown hair back to gray.

She took the dog for a walk alongside a creek that twisted itself into a frayed and jaggedy smile. She ambled toward the clatter of a train coming down the tracks. In her solitude she felt contained and yet as if she were streaming forth.

Where had the anger gone? It had burned down its own house and left her standing in the shelter of a soft blue shawl.

In Order to Continue

    Lenore's brain thrashed in the buttery light of 6 a.m. She tried to calm it by imagining lavender blue morning glories inhaling the yawning August sun. Every time puppy Olivia slammed the neck of her kibble-stuffed rabbit puppet into the side of the murmuring keyboard, Lenore smiled, breathed in the aroma of her dark french roast elixir, took a reverent sip, placed her fingers on the keys, and geared up to go fishing for a few more words of wisdom. Her own. She knew they were there. Surely they were.
    Every time she took the time to go fishing, the river began to feel less threatening. Every time she waded out and began to cast her line and reel in what really mattered to her (why was that so hard to determine?), Lenore could feel herself reshaping herself. This was all she needed in order to continue.
    The orange-red silk robe of sunrise swathed her in a moment of relief and calm, during which she reminded herself that transition could take a long time, envy was normal, everyone was growing frighteningly older, and the dreariness of obligations could be overcome by inspirations. She could meditate on Jack's face, for example — how it emanated kindness. That was one of her inspirations.
    High points and low points, traumas and joys. She had to remind herself that life was a teeter totter of ups and downs. Her pessimistic tendency was to keep the joys well hidden, whilst elaborately elaborating upon the stink of some shit or other, or the scare of the fire in the frying pan that she had barely caught in time, or the sleaziness of the slime that grew on her landlord's brain.
    Paying attention was demanding work. Paying attention to everything, everything, everything! Especially to the things that she kept so well hidden. A fresh bouquet of gerbera daisies in the copper pitcher – tucked too far away into the corner. Her memory of the sublime kiss she had shared with Frank that day on the beach, years ago, years and years and years ago. A perfect line of prose ("a deer colored city," was the way he had described his memory of Venice — how truly wonderful!).
    Fierce attachments were also essential. You had to have them. Otherwise you drifted away. You found yourself afloat without an anchor, free to experience the terror of a life lived without any stakes to hold you down. Maybe there were people who could handle the angst that went along with limitless freedom, but she wasn't one of them. No, Lenore required the fierce demands of motherhood. Motherhood in the broadest sense. Unless her nipples ached and her heart felt incessantly tugged at, she was doomed. Her arms had to be strong enough to hold a crying infant for as long as it took. Her legs had to be strong enough to walk her body to the ends of the earth if that's what she had to do to find enough food for the both of them. Flying, of course, worked more beautifully than walking, but only in her dreams.
    Holding and walking, cradling and carrying, these were the requirements of motherhood, and without them Lenore would have been, she knew, a pathetic TV-guzzling goner.
    Lenore was not, however, a natural born, bounteous-breasted nurturer. Mothering — whether applied to children or animals, work or art — didn't come easy to her. This was exactly why she needed to keep at it. Mothering ran you ragged, made you frantic with exhaustion, deprived you of the chance to saunter through restaurant doors, or lounge in the hammock finishing that fat epic novel. Mothering threw you into a world with walls made of udders. Your udders. There could never be enough of them. Umbilical cords were, therefore, a requirement. They were the strings that kept her from becoming just another kite lost in the ozone.
    Motherhood was the thing that always saved her from self-destruction. Babies and puppies made you care and care and care for them until you finally found your way back to your own best health and growth. When her funny, frolicking children tumbled to and fro, and the laughter boomed out of her abdomen in response, Lenore know it was her body saying, "Don't be afraid of some meaningless statistical diagnosis, Lenore. Cancer's just a word in a world of cookie cutter oncologists in need of validation. Just keep coming back home to yourself, and all will be well."
    And so. . . every morning she snapped on the puppy's leash and stepped out — wearing bleary eyelids and hair that looked as if it had been trampled by a herd of bed bugs — onto the sun-sequined sidewalk. After that, she held on to her kitchen table piled with dishes and dirty plates, hot baths gone cold, rainstorms that led to leaks and puddles on the bedroom floor, sweet potatoes grilled in her wacky new retro Jet Stream Oven from Nesco. She held on for dear life.

Every Time

Lenore's brain thrashed in the buttery light of 6 a.m. She tried to calm it by visualizing the lavender blue morning glories as they inhaled the yawning August sun. Every time puppy Olivia slammed the neck of her stuffed rabbit puppet into the side of the murmuring keyboard, Lenore smiled, had another sip of dark french roasted elixir, and geared up to go fishing for a few more words of wisdom. Her own. She knew they were there. Surely they were.

Every time she took the time to go fishing, the river began to feel less threatening. Every time she waded out into the water, the oatmeal waiting in the kitchen became her guru, and Lenore felt herself reshaping herself. This was all she needed in order to continue.

Fierce Attachments

If only, Lenore thought, I had understood sooner. Fierce attachments are essential. You have to have them. Otherwise you drift away. You find yourself afloat without an anchor, free to experience the terror of a life lived without any stakes to hold you down.

Maybe there were people who could handle the angst that went along with limitless freedom, but she wasn't one of them. No, Lenore required the fierce demands of motherhood. Motherhood in the broadest sense. Unless her nipples ached and her heart felt incessantly tugged at, she was doomed. Her arms had to be strong enough to hold a crying infant for as long as it took. When streets glittered in the morning sunlight, her legs had to be strong enough to walk her body to the ends of the earth, if that's what it took to find enough food for the both of them. Flying, of course, worked more beautifully and artfully than walking, but only in her dreams.

Holding and walking, cradling and carrying, these were the requirements of motherhood, and without them Lenore would be a pathetic, TV-guzzling goner.

Mothering — whether applied to a human child, an animal, her work or her art — didn't come easy to Lenore. She wasn't a natural nurturer. This was exactly why she needed to keep at it. Umbilical cords were essential. They were the strings that kept her from becoming a kite lost in the ozone. Mothering ran you ragged, made you frantic with exhaustion, deprived you of the chance to enter restaurant doors, or to lounge in the hammock finishing that fat epic novel. Mothering threw you into a world with walls made of udders. Your udders. You had to plant them everywhere. There could never be enough of them.

Motherhood was necessary. Babies and puppies made you laugh your way back to good health. When the laughter rose out of her abdomen, Lenore know it was her body saying, "Come. Don't be afraid. I'll pull you through."

She snapped on the dog's leash and stepped out, wearing bleary eyelids and hair that looked as if it had been trampled by a herd of bed bugs, onto the sun-sequined sidewalk  She held on to kitchen tables piled with dishes and dirty plates, hot baths gone cold, raging Italian rainstorms that led to puddles on the bedroom floor, sweet potatoes grilled to perfection in that crazy retro Jet Stream Oven from Nesco. She held on for dear life.

Well Hidden

The orange-red silk robe of her immediate surroundings swathed Lenore in a moment of relief and calm. Transition could take a long time. Envy was normal. Everyone was growing frighteningly older. Obligations could be overcome by inspirations. She could meditate on Jack's face, how it emanated kindness. She could move to the music of the tea kettle announcing the imminent gift of the dark french roast coffee that she allowed herself only two or three cups of per week.

High points and low points, traumas and joys. Her tendency was to keep the joys well hidden, whilst she elaborated (on and on and on) upon the smell of shit, or the fire in the frying pan that she had barely caught in time, or the slime that grew on her landlord's brain.

Often she turned to props for survival. A fresh bouquet of gerbera daisies in the copper pitcher. Her memory of the one sublime kiss she had shared with Frank that day on the beach, years ago, years and years and years ago. A perfect line of prose ("a deer colored city," was the way he had described his memory of Venice — how truly wonderful!).

Paying attention was the work. Paying attention to everything, everything, everything!  Especially to the things that she kept so well hidden.

Yoga on the Horizon

Lenore was listening for the sound of her own blood. But the voices from outside had wiped it away. She had no clue where the next clue would come from, and it was probably too late to unlock the box of secret dance steps. Mother fucker and oh dear, you could die before learning the tango.

Lately she'd been finding herself in bad company when she least expected it, like yesterday, when she woke from the wrong dream, checked her emails, and found herself under attack from a psycho woman-hating bipolar stranger, or, worse yet, when she looked in the mirror and saw the very same Lenore she had seen twenty-four hours ago, now thundering into a bloodlessly habitual reaction, her anger ruled by the fat smell of a dumpster far below the surface.

She needed to stay calm in order to hear her blood. She had to remember how to be as quiet and as still as a glass of milk before attempting to drive her jeep of language through the muck and the mud. But she was lost on a random hillside in her living room, and it made her nervous. She needed to break through the towering wad of cotton balls, grab the syringe and plunge the needle in. She needed to eat a raw, red slab of fetal memory. She needed a thick hemorrhage of red to lead the way. The disease was progressive and relentless. She needed the researchers to understand her cancer's broken chains of DNA, and then learn how to fix them.

Could she transform her backed up fears into blood? What if she marched straight into the deepest territory of her own brain and struck a vein? That would be good, wouldn't it? That would mean life.

Sources

Lenore swallowed her African tea laced with pure, raw cream and thought about Lascaux, the birthing of art from fertile cave walls.

What were her sources of strength, of wisdom, of art, of faith in life and in herself? Where, she asked the cold evening air, did the heart of radiance beat? She thought about the sources, the alchemies, the turning of metals to gold.

The whey dripped out of the organic yogurt, down through the floursack cloth, past the strainer, and into the red ceramic bowl. The curds (homemade cream cheese), stayed behind in the strainer. She couldn't believe she was making her own curds and whey. Or quark and whey. Quark was the German word for such curds. She was learning all the healthy, healing words.

The cat watched her settle into bed, decided to join her, decided to come up close enough to stare with chatoyant eyes at her hand lifting the cup of tea then setting it back down onto the bedside table. What a fascinating hand, said those eyes. What a mesmerizing cup.

What alchemy had she wrought with raw cream and tea, cat and blue cup?

The sources were many. Porridge with cultured butter. Sea salt. Fish oil. Wayward cells. A new cast iron pan and wooden spoons. A new understanding of how her blood-sugar-regulation worked  — the delicacy of that mechanism. An unexpected gift of wild purple ginger.

Fermented cabbage was becoming a mainstay. She also soaked her almonds and oats, sprouted her seeds and legumes for making lentil and black bean soups from homemade broths. The full moon had risen above her stove. Do what feels right, it said. You have not gone crazy. I understand your concerns entirely.

Round and Round

Her old world had exploded into a new world. This was a world where healing did not come about through the suffering of chemotherapy and nuclear radiation, after which you heaved a sigh of relief and said, "Well, that was hell but now I can go back to living my old life."

This was a world where healing came about differently, and you could never go back to living your old life because you were gutting the old life and and embarking upon a major renovation. You were setting about reconstructing the terrain of your body, mind and spirit, creating a new terrain that, you hoped, would no longer be hospitable to the unwelcome visitor.

"Eat one apple a day for four days," Dr. Garret Roth had said. "On the night of the fourth day, drink a quarter cup of olive oil mixed with a tablespoon or two of lemon juice. In the morning, first thing, dissolve two big tablespoons of Epsom salts into a big tall glass of water, and drink it down. You'll spend the rest of the morning in the bathroom, but afterward you'll feel wonderfully clean, light and refreshed."

A liver flush, they called it. A tall frothy glass filled with magnesium sulfate. One of the jillion possible ways to detoxify one's body, evict the lifelong buildup of parasites and poisons. Lenore wondered just how far she could stick out her tongue at this particular aspect of The New Normal.

Why did everything, especially this healing thing, have to be so complicated? And how could it be that, as each day went by, she would have less and less of this complicated world, and then, poof, one day she would have none of it?

U.P.S. had delivered the Vita-Mix blender that afternoon, the one that she and Jack had splurged on at the San Mateo Home & Garden Expo. They were going to make Taco Soup in it. Healthy taco soup.

She felt fragile and lost. Would changing her diet really help? She felt powerful and found. Her abdominal muscles were getting stronger because of the new fitness regimen. So were her lats. Next would come yoga. She knew she needed the yoga, too, to help her deal with the anger that continued to provoke her adrenals and feed whatever ravenous cancer cells might still remain in the nooks and crannies. She knew those cells were always waiting for her to slip up and get mad, so damn mad. And sometimes she did. Last night she had gotten mad at a woman she barely knew. A woman at work. First she had felt merely anxious, but then her anxiety had exploded. She hadn't been able to sleep because of it, had allowed herself to be ravaged by it.

Lenore didn't expect to do away with her anger altogether, but she did hope to learn how to handle it better. How she hated that woman, that woman she barely knew. The rain came drumming drumming drumming down.

Round and round her life has been spinning for the last six months -- round and round around a 1.7 centimeter lump in her left breast. She had spun around that lump while it was still in her breast, and now, six months after it had been removed, she spun around it still, and would continue to do so, she knew, forever.

But the spin had to transform into a much slower thing, something more akin to an orbit. She had to begin to revolve more slowly around her ghost lump, because the goal here in New Normal was to stroll rather than race through the rest her life. To take deeper breaths, to work less and play more, to transform her anger into something other than destructive. Understanding. Compassion. Laughter.

Round and round, the blades of the new Vita-Mix super duper extra heavy duty mixer would soon be spinning

"Keep in mind that your Vita-Mix machine has been designed to give you years of worry-free use."

Sincerely,

Your friends at Vita-Mix

Yes, I will keep that in mind, my friends, thought Lenore.

Merely Reality

Worrying about herself had grown tiresome, and Lenore, now sweaty from the daily three-mile walk that had become an integral part of The New Normal, marveled at how, still, the beauty persisted — more poetic and unreachable than ever. The hospitals, the bandages and all those incomprehensible doctors, well, there was always the chance that they would return to steer her life off course again. But now she was more prepared to deal with the dizzying zigs and zags.

She had traveled far from where she had been Before. She had entered into a world where her arms would never be long enough to embrace the curve of a horizon that stretched far beyond her cloud of unknowing, and where her words flew away into a new inward stillness that sometimes came over her as she washed the dishes, or dealt with the gnats of daily life, or strode to the beat of her nanopod.

The tumor has been removed, but one still had to deal with the conditions that had given rise to the cancer in the first place. The terrain — she had to change her terrain.

Walking toward a golden fountain of everything under the sun, Lenore heard the tinkling taps of a knife against a china plate and envisioned a crispy rye cracker smeared with forbidden brie. Am I really becoming a vegetarian? she thought. That sound in the kitchen, is it the seitan calling out to me?

She had to remember to move the car for streetcleaning today. She would do that between popping her Arimidex pill and taking her Pilates lesson. All morning long she had been feeling a series of mildly uncomfortable twinges in her still-numb left armpit. Twinges of. . . what? Malignant lymph nodes? Tiny flitting aches that signified. . . what? The voices of miniscule residual tumor cells as they rumbled, replicated, and prepared to roar? Probably not, she thought. Probably they were merely more random, lingering reminders of the surgeries she'd had six months before.

Then again, maybe they were the precursors to another round of. . . what?  Horror? Challenge? Battle? No, no, no. Well then, how would she name "it," if it came back? Precursors to another round of. . . time travel? dying? curling up on the linoleum? meditations on imperfection? reprioritization? devastation? delving deeper? surreality? Or just a different taste of reality?

A different taste of reality. That would suffice. So simple, really. Precursors to another round of a Different Reality. Different than today's. Different than yesterday's. But, still. . . . reality.

Everything Under the Sun

Walking up Cortland Avenue at 9 a.m. after Pilates session #9, the New Woman remembers to stop at the grocery store, pick up an organic chicken. She has never bought an organic chicken before. She will make dinner for them both tonight. She'll try out the new recipe for shredded brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar and garlic powder. She feels calm despite all the work work work that is piling up up up.

The offending tumor has been removed, but one must deal with the conditions that gave rise to the malignancy in the first place. The terrain — one must change one's terrain.

The subtle increments of updating a mailing list. . . classic India Spice Yogi tea. . . the joy of conversation. . . . a little brown dropper bottle full of Lugol's iodine. Mere but momentous specks on her long, long list of life.

Walking toward a golden fountain of everything under the sun, Lenore is.

She Felt Herself Smile

Lenore felt herself smile at the thought of looking forward to taking the drugs that would destroy what little was left of her body's estrogen. Funny how her priorities had changed. Compared to chemo, the ravages she could expect from the hormone treatments seemed negligible. Compared to chemo, just about everything bad seemed negligible, and just about everything good seemed even better than before.

She felt herself smile at the sound of stormy rain on the roof, felt herself smile when the cat crept up along the side of the bed aiming to squish herself into the narrow space between Lenore and the edge.

Smiling still, Lenore contemplated her ongoing metamorphosis. She had thought that perhaps all her "major" life transitions — moving to San Francisco, for example, or motherhood, or finding her right livelihood — had already conspired to happen well before she'd reached the age of 50. She had never believed in marriage, and as for finding the one true love of her life, well. . . the statute of limitations had expired on that one long ago.

But now, hah! Now she could cite at least one more major life transition: this one, the one represented by the oddball smile that appeared on her face as she realized that she was actually looking forward to swallowing a concoction of heavy duty chemicals — aromatase inhibitors and selective estrogen receptor modulators — then rubbing a gel made of fish oil and curcumin all over her breasts every day for. . . forever? She wasn't sure, because her doctors were only just now beginning to finalize this stage of her ever-evolving treatment regimen. The indecision and confusion was transforming into. . . something else.

She looked back over the last six months of a hell that had been shot through with unexpected daggers from heaven, and felt herself smile a new kind of smile.

Twisting and Turning

Twisting and turning through her Bernal Heights streets, striding up toward the hill, Lenore leaned into the sidewalk and felt joy return. She had set herself to music, trees were everywhere now. Walking walking walking, she was leaning over twigs sprawled at her feet, leaning over cracks in the buckling cement. Her arms were reaching between fenceposts, she could feel her branches growing up and out, wending their way through all the cracks there were. All the cracks in the world.

Stones clustered in a group around her feet. Stones, weeds and yellow petaled flowers. Her body leaned out over its own exposed roots, and it came to her then that she had never helped her brother take his pills. She had never helped her brother take all those goddamn awful piles of pills. She could see the pill containers now, sitting on his kitchen table and bedside table and coffee table. She could see how exhausted he must have been. Tired of fighting.

She picked up her pace, pushed herself faster, harder, took off her jacket and tied it around her waist. All those pills he had taken when he was alone and counting. If only she had known then what she knew now. About the insanity and the loneliness of pills. About the dutiful hell of trying to remember when and how to take those pills, every day, without fail. But it was too late now. Her brother was dead, had been dead seven years, and she had never once helped him with his pills.

On the way back down to Cortland, her hair brushed against the scaffolding in front of a dilapidated Edwardian. Walking, twisting and turning through the maze of this Tuesday afternoon, Lenore felt herself smiling despite the unexpected tears, felt her lips turning upward, felt her oxygen expanding, felt her oxygen whirling, felt her oxygen stopping the cancer from growing.

Cancer didn't like oxygen. She was killing her cancer. She was twisting and turning her life this way and that, in order to kill the invader. Even so, she didn't see this as a war between herself and her cancer. She saw it as a parting of the ways. She saw it as a chance to remember her brother, a chance to grieve for all those days she never had with him, days when she could have helped him count and sort and take his pills.

Fat Chance

Lenore felt fat with relief. Fat with gratitude. Fat with pleasure. Fat with the Saturday morning's gift of work. She was working, you see, instead of ailing. She had set the alarm for 6:30 a.m., and the first day of her weekend was beginning with work, not play. Because of this she was fat fat fat with joy. Life had given her the chance to start over, to reassess and begin again on a new plane of existence. The chance of a lifetime. The fat chance of a lifetime.

She slipped up only once in the middle of her gratitude, when her hand twitched upward with a jerk as she attempted to rearrange her eyebrow with a loaded mascara brush. "Fuck fuck fuck!" she cursed aloud. She was in a rush, she had to get out of the house, beat the traffic, drive over a bridge, get there get there get there. Now she had to waste two whole minutes wiping off her mistake. Fuck.

And then, voila! The realization: What an idiot she was being. She had smeared a glob of mascara on her eyebrow. It would take an extra couple of minutes to walk to the bathroom, wet a rag, wash it off and start over. Her irritation had gone beserk, all out of proportion. What a bad and ungrateful habit she had cultivated all these years, so often allowing her tiniest irritations to yell and curse and run amok.

She breathed in until her ribs expanded as much as they would expand, then out. On the out breath she pulled her navel in as far as she could, deep into her abdomen.

Here she was at home, working instead of reeling from a first round of chemo. Glory Hallelujah and Amen Brothers and Sisters.  Here she stood looking into the mirror applying extra thick mascara to her lashes, instead of staring at a bald head and lashless eyes. Here she stood with rosy cheeks instead of an ashen pallor, and a bellyful of blueberries and good healthy grains instead of an empty, wretching gut.

"You silly girl," Lenore said to herself. "You silly, silly girl." Standing on the edge of her fat Saturday, holding the fat bird of joy in her mouth, yesterday's horizon wrapped its arms around her in an unexpected hug that, because it was unexpected, felt particularly good.

All Things Considered

The levee has broken. A flood of blood, bearing nothing but death and destruction, is rushing over the rooftops, ripping the trees out by their roots, overturning everything in its path, turning the city of your body into a murky black cesspool teeming with disease. Floating carcasses of once healthy cells. A stench like no other. It's impossible.

Will you be dead in five years? Will you wake up one day and discover that it's too hard to breathe? Will you be gasping on the floor, the way your landlady Helen was when her husband found her in the kitchen, picked her up in his arms and rushed her to the hospital? She hadn't seen it coming, the way it spread to her lungs almost overnight. She had staved it off for ten years, doing nothing but eating macrobiotic and avoiding all conventional doctors like the plague.

Ten years wasn't so bad though, was it? A lot of women do every slash and burn treatment in the book, and still die a lot sooner. At least Helen didn't put herself through toxic hell. Her husband Joe said she felt great up until a few months before the bomb went off. Then it was awful. They made a panicked run to a clinic in Mexico, where she only got worse. They ended up in a hospital back here in San Francisco, and she even agreed to chemo. The chemo worked like a magic bullet for a few months, but then the cancer came back even stronger and more powerful than before.

So. After two surgeries, extensive research, numerous doctor consultations, and months of consideration, you've chosen to forgo both radiation and chemo. 

Who knows. Maybe you've made all the wrong decisions every step of the way. Or maybe you've made all the right ones. Or maybe you've made all the right ones except for ONE, the one that will kill you. Or maybe you've made five perfect decisions and three crappy decisions.... or vice versa. Who knows what your odds are, really?

Are you a fool? Are you out of your mind? Have you no understanding of the immensity of the strength that powers death? Will you be sorry? Will you feel regret and wish you had it to do all over?

Will you leave your child without a mother before he has reached the age of 25? 30? What if his father dies too? He's already 64. What if your son is left to fend for himself in this great big lonely world, before he has even found a woman to love, before he's even close to having kids of his own? He has no brothers or sisters, no kinfolk to speak of. How could you do that to him? How COULD you?

It's impossible not to consider this.

Nevertheless, you have made up your mind.

 

River Sea Ocean

Lenore had tried various tricks, i.e. river–sea-ocean and overall stress reduction, but had not yet progressed to bonified meditation. She worried that this might not be  enough, that she wasn't moving as quickly as necessity demanded, that de-stressing was merely one step rather than the optimal two. She had to take two steps: 1) Less stress, and 2) Meditation. These two steps were supposed to go hand in hand, each one bolstering the other — in a perfect world, that is, a world where there were a billion hours available within every minute. Uh-oh, it was 9:43 a.m. and she had forgotten to take her twelve "take with a meal" pills at breakfast. Shit. She felt her adrenals kick into stress mode, causing a spike, no doubt, in her insulin level that  would set off a chain reaction leading to feeding the hungry cancer cells and making them oh so happy. Shit fuck fuck ommmm ommmmm ommmmm!!!!

How much time was she allowed to make the transition from Normal to New Normal? Under every rainy sky there was more than rain, so much more. River sea ocean. It wasn't ever possible to tell the whole truth, but she could feel it down at the bottom of her gut — the truth behind her choices, going all the way back to the decision she'd made in 1981 to become a single mother, followed by the decision to have a homebirth (which she'd ended up doing on the old mustard colored couch out on the closed-in back porch, much to her own delight and everyone elses' chagrin).

Pretty much all her friends at the time had advised her against following through with these unconventional baby and birthing decisions. But she'd known that she wasn't going to change her mind about having a baby on her own, despite all the perfectly reasonable reasons not to that everyone had thrown at her. She had also known that going to a hospital to have her baby would never work. Not for her.

She had listened to the same voices of opposition when she decided to quit her old job in order to start her new business. Everyone had protested, "For heaven's sake, Lenore, don't quit your old job until you've gotten the business off the ground! It's too risky! You've never started a business before!  Do them both for a while, Lenore, until you're sure you can make a go of it." But she'd known that she couldn't do both, that she had to leave the old job behind in order to give her whole heart over to the new one.

Now the voices of opposition were all about cancer. River sea ocean. River sea ocean. Cancer sea ocean. River sea cancer. And here she was responding: "That's right, folks. No chemo. Not for me."

So much more than rain. So much more than rain to be found under a rainy sky.

The New Normal

Lenore clung to what was left of her day. She wanted to read a story from Alice Munro's latest collection, Runaway. But her eyes were so heavy. Did she really have the energy to go looking in a book for more germs of truth? The dishwasher grumbled and rinsed its way toward midnight. The kitchen garbage can was overflowing with rotting carrot pulp and a leftover deli chicken carcass. She had to decide about Arimidex or Raloxifene or whatever other of the treatments she had to choose from. How awful would the side effects be? How much more of herself was she about to lose? She was beginning to hate all the people who kept telling her what they would or would not be doing if they were her. Which they were not.

Hate had voluminous wings. She couldn't let herself spread those wings, couldn't allow herself to ride that bumpy current of emotion. Everybody had an opinion. Everybody always had an opinion. And felt compelled to voice it. Opinions made the world go round. That was a fact. She couldn't fight it, right? RIGHT?. . . . Or wrong?

The sweet potato pudding she made on Sunday had been a success. She wondered how she had ever been able to eat a "Rosemary Chicken with Spinach & Rice" Lean Cuisine. Her healthy new diet was markedly better than her former one had been, even without the pork tenderloin and fillet mignon. Something was prickling inside her gut, however, and the only thing she could do was sit and wait and feel uncertain. Prickling was fast becoming an ordinary sensation as she transitioned into the next phase of this adventure. Prickliness was a big part of the New Normal. After all, all had been altered. Every day the unexpected rattled her doorknob. Every day she jumped and said, "Hello? Who's there?" even though she already knew perfectly well. This was no stranger, nor a temporary visitor, nor even a weekend guest. No, her breast cancer had settled in. That was the nature of the beast, to make itself at home. Indefinitely.

You Touch it With One Finger

The carton of half and half sits in the door of the fridge, forbidden. Don't touch it, thought Lenore. Not even with one finger. That finger could be the trigger finger, the one that makes you long to pour a little cream into a little, just a little cup of coffee. You touch it with one finger and before you know it you're touching it with your whole body. You've gone from fantasy to sipping to gulping gulping gulping it down so fast your whole world is spinning, careening off course. Your orbit's all out of whack now, all because you were brazen enough, stupid enough, reckless enough careless enough arrogant enough to touch it with one measley little rebellious finger. The doctor said no dairy. The doctor said cancer likes milk and cheese and meat. 

But oh dear god the coffee makes you feel so frisky and bold. Sure, there's the hysteria underlying the ecstatically caffeinated exterior, but your finger, the half and half, the coffee at five in the afternoon, none of it really gets to the root of the problem, which is your anger. You are so ANGRY! Everything is making you angry, everything everything everything! The coffee grounds you spilled on the counter are making you volatile, screamy, furious. You want to kick Dr. Mike. You hate that he refers to himself as Dr. Mike.

There are those who say that repressing anger can give you cancer. Well, you are not repressing your anger. No, you are already in the hospital being wheeled into surgery for the third time in five months. You are already slapping Dr. Mike in the face, raising your tense voice as you tell him that your time is valuable, you have no patience for this Captain Kangaroo shit.

You didn't walk your three miles today, didn't count your steps, didn't make the appointment for the surgery, didn't get the free plane tickets that will get you to the surgery, didn't eat your twelve servings of vegetables, or even three. And you are angry. If they had called you back, if only they had called you back, none of what didn't happen wouldn't have not happened.

You haven't touched even the outermost surface of peace today, not even with one tip of one finger. The wild roses brambling around your heart are an awful mess. Nobody understands you at all, nobody nobody nobody! The potatoes are rotting, there's no front porch swing or even a front porch. You'll die if you don't start listening to yourself. You touch your anger with one finger, and the next thing you know, Julie is dead, Wally is alone, it doesn't matter how many carrots she juiced and drank, doesn't matter how many rounds of chemo she had.

Everybody thinks you're worried about being bald or throwing up or feeling fatigued. Well of course you are! But that's not what's at the heart of the matter, that's not why you have been questioning the value of chemo. Your questions go much deeper than that. Your research has been painstaking. It has led you into a greater understanding of all that is not understood. Your mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, yelling at the empty living room. Your anger eats the cheesecake.Your anger can't find its own finger, it's so blind. And Julie's dead and you need to go straighten up the pile of books on your bedside table now, because you don't like how crooked they are, you can't stand how crooked they are.

Thick Smoke

The thick smoke of change enveloped Lenore. Flames floated in the kitchen mid-air. Out the back window, the sky appeared unsurprised and unperturbed by the devouring machinations of this healing journey she was on.

As the dishwasher dozed gently between rinse and dry, a kindly piece of vegan bread stepped in to divert her from the chaos of transition. Wheat endured.

Yesterday she had walked four miles, all her strength hovering on the horizon of each and every step.

Today she looked back and had a thought: "My memories are wearing new shoes.'

So Many Orbits

Seitan and sweat. Lenore was working hard at overhauling her life, a project that was discombobulating and disorienting. Fake meat, interval training, and 200 mg CoQ10 lozenges kept getting in the way of all that felt familiar and secure — a diet that included, for instance, mashed potatoes and gravy with a tender, slow-cooked pork roast, or a week that always managed to make room for a few hours sitting at her writing desk rather than standing atop her cheap elliptical strider from Sharper Image.

Calling out to the Universe for help, she looked around her empty living room and knew that, cancer or not and like it or not, she was just as alone as the next person. To each his own; that was pretty much what it boiled down to. This wasn't a news flash or a tragedy, for her or for anyone else. It just WAS.

Feeling crumpled and confused despite her enlightenment about the reality of aloneness, she climbed inside the creamy red egg yolk, curled into a comfortable fetal position, and waited for the beige outer shell to initiate the rocking motion that would sway her back and forth, back and forth in an orbit that would carry her slowly around the heart of her day. Tomorrow she would try the purple yolk, Tuesday the green one, Wednesday the blue. So many eggs, so many yolks, so many orbits.

This morning had been a blah oatmeal color. Steel cut oats with soy milk, raisins and a dab of low-glycemic agave nectar. Now running on reserve power, she waited, without much optimism, for her craving for a fat fudge brownie to evaporate along with her post-exercise sweat. On her kitchen counter lay the instructions for the three-part liver detox home test kit:  No caffeine 12 hours prior to beginning the early morning saliva test. No fruits, nuts, or seeds throughout the following day, prior to collecting the next night's urine samples. No food or water the morning after — not until she went to the lab to get the blood test for. . for what? She forgot. No matter. First she'd let them suck some more of her blood into the tube, and find out later what they wanted it for. She wondered how much this next round of tests would cost. All out-of-pocket.

Yesterday had been a good "count your blessings" kind of a day. Today, however, had been less Oprah'ish. Today, although she had planned to finish and post yesterday's entire list of blessings, her discombobulation had won out over gratitude.

Today she should have exercised for longer than twenty minutes. Her hamstrings were way too tight. The whole anal count-your-calories and fuck-bad-fats diet regimen was making her edgy bordering on pissed-all-the-time. How many flowerets of broccoli comprised one serving? How big was a 3-ounce portion of salmon? She wanted a stack of pancakes and she wanted it NOW, floating in butter and maple syrup. She also wanted to sleep for twelve hours straight. She wanted to dream lucid dreams, to be awake but not awake, to be left alone but not left alone. She wanted her old routines and habits to be given back to her. Her life before cancer had been filled with the comforts of familiarity — hard-won, good familiarity — at every turn. She resented this forced march into uncharted terrain. She hadn't gone looking for this Great Breast Cancer Adventure.

Or had she?

A Piece of Music

"That snow storm's gonna come back again tonight,"Lenore said to herself. "You can hear it on the horizon." Looking out the window of the EL Train as it rattled her bones toward downtown Chicago and the Art Institute, she saw brightly lit apartment buildings full of unspoken secrets, but none of those secrets were hers. She flashed on the image of her little brown-shingled cottage back in San Francisco, its old weathered wooden turquoise gate that she loved despite its dilapidatedness (it was always so hard to close after a rainstorm, when the wood swelled up). She felt herself entering into yet another layer of her risky cancer collage. Was she playing a game of Russian roulette, as one doctor had implied? Was the omission of chemotherapy the same as putting one bullet into the revolver, giving it a spin, putting it up to her head, and pulling the trigger?

Chicago's brick walls whisked by like a string of mantras. Each pattern of each building's brick design grid, each variation in the hue of red or terracotta or gray made her want to cry, the gritty beauty was so understated.

She tried to bring back the memory of her session with the psychologist who had given her a Relaxation for Dummies lesson. Breathe in slowly. Imagine that your abdomen contains a balloon filling up with your breath. Now slowly release the air from the balloon, and as you reach the end of your exhale, whisper your mantra. During that lesson, she had whispered the name of her son each time. What better mantra could there possibly be on earth, or even in heaven?

If not Russian roulette, then what was she playing? Maybe not a game at all, but a piece of music that flowed from blues to jazz to ballad to lullabye, and then into a wild African drum beat that made her want to dance around her living room like a maniac, or run a marathon across the state of Iowa. The music was vast, heartbreaking, transcendental. Her body was indefatigable, she was running in a zone that existed outside of space and time, flying along, racing toward the finish line, a yellow ribbon, a crowd of cheering onlookers, a better understanding of her role in the world, of agave nectar, of anti-apoptotic proteins, of conjugated linoleic acids, of pedometers.

Interpreting the Visitor

Shadows of trees played over her dusty windows. Ordinary time had become a short street. The cancer was speaking to Lenore in a foreign and brilliantly incomprehensible tongue, while making gestures that she interpreted as great roaring rivers and lost canyons. The idiosyncratic, whirlygigging antics of this malignant visitor, with its deceptively benign face, prompted her to search the Internet for a dog to adopt, a dog that would go walking with her, wag his tail in vigorous anticipation, rest his head on her knee, and jump up onto the bed, ever ready and eager to accompany her into any dream or nightmare. When she began to think about demons in the ether, she stopped herself to imagine an adorable puppy, instead.

She couldn't help but notice how the cancer's eccentric nature was mimicking her own. Just outside the door or just under her skin loomed everything from despair to sudden joy. She began to think of warm days in May and June, the taste of cottage cheese mixed with almonds, raisins and flaxseed oil, tumor markers, leopard fur, whipped cream floating on top of hot cocoa, metastasis to the bone, and other possible poems.

Symptoms

Whenever there was but a little left of the day, Lenore ate handfuls of almonds and raisins. Munching her way toward sleep, she had a sense that, for one reason or another, she had to take her visits to the doctors and the hospitals as friendly reminders — not of her mortality but of her need to clear up the clogged pipes and recognize what was before her eyes, so that what was hidden would be revealed. Symptoms, symptoms, symptoms. So many symptoms arose in life. So many attempts at diagnoses then had to follow.

In the silence of encroaching midnight, she wondered, was it a myth she sought to uncover, or a structural diagram? She tried to imagine a medical approach more in tune with art, a world where disease was suggestive of poetry. Was her soul in her spleen? She needed to buy Indo-3 Carbinol. Gamma E tocopherol/tocotrienol. Gamma linolenic acid. CoQ10. But she wanted a few tastes of heaven first — a hot fudge sundae, some raspberry-rhubarb cobbler with ice cream on top. No. Not allowed. Boo hoo. But swearing off sugar was the least of her "challenges."

The next MRI loomed closer, scheduled for 4 p.m. that afternoon. All she'd have to do would be to hold her body still, very still, and count the seconds for each five-minute segment. Forty-five minutes later, she'd be free to go back to nursing her wounded breast, rubbing small pools of castor oil into her fate, and massaging her heart with walks through the city, through the music, through the animals, vegetables and minerals dancing all around her.

You Can Start Anywhere

    The dream had swept Lenore away into honeyed elixirs of paradox, trays of erotic oyster canapés. But it couldn't happen in real life. She would fix something simple for breakfast. She got out of bed and reached for her bathrobe.
    "Would you like a cup of coffee?" she said.
    "Sure, that'd be good."
    As she scooped the dark french roast out of the bag, she heard his footsteps coming toward the kitchen from the bedroom. The next door neighbor's chicken began to make a racket, clucking and baaking up a storm. Suddenly she remembered the cinnamon and overripe bananas. He walked in, put his arms around her waist, gave he