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 March 2007 Post Book Essays "Sucker-Punched: Some Thoughts on Elizabeth Edwards" - Wednesday, March 28,
2007 "Sucker-Punched: Some Thoughts on Elizabeth Edwards" - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 My husband and I read a small article on page 2 of the front section of the newspaper last week, saying that Senator John Edwards had accompanied his wife, Elizabeth, to her oncology appointment and that they were holding a press conference later that day. I suppose this brief article was meant to be a little cryptic and non-commital (pending an official statement at the press conference), but our hyper-vigilant antennae took in the full wavelengths of the message, decoded: recurrence of her breast cancer. Sucker-punched. Elizabeth Edwards has been sucker-punched. I know that the Edwards family has been on the minds and hearts of many people in this last week. Fear of breast cancer is big. Terror at the time of diagnosis is giant-sized. Fear of recurrence is a beast all by itself, lurking in the corner, hulking and huge, letting you get a whiff of its hot breath just often enough to make you uneasy. Elizabeth and John Edwards have met the beast ...and now they have to learn how to live with him. I've watched their hopefulness tempered with realism this week with deep empathy and respect. They've stepped through the looking glass into the wobbly world of recurrent cancer, where good news and bad news are relative and a moving target. The bad news: her breast cancer is back. The good news: it's in the bone, so not as immediately life threatening as other organ involvement. The bad news: it might be elsewhere. The good news: if it is, it looks like the total tumor burden is comparatively small. The bad news: treatment again. The good news: treatment again. I can almost hear the whoosh of the air rushing out of them as they absorb this latest blow. Elizabeth is spunky. She's got grit. She faced her initial treatment with strength and courage. Having been through that, she already knows how to do a good part of this. Beyond breast cancer and its considerable challenges, she and John have already survived life's most unspeakable tragedy: the death of a child. She sounds like she's up for the fight and banking on managing the illness. Raising young children will ramp up her resolve. The Edwards's decision to go on with the presidential campaign says to me that they're focused on future and their common sense of mission through public service. Below all of this, it also feels to me like they're deciding to do what they normally would do. Normalizing life in the face of this recent news will help them cope. Just a word of solicitude to Elizabeth, from someone who has now been on 17 different chemo agents over the course of managing my own metastatic disease for more than six years and dealing with breast cancer for nearly 13: Be tender with yourself. Stand up when you can and lie down when you have to. This is a long road, and you have to pace yourself for what, hopefully, will be years of coping with this disease, building a life that includes the presence of cancer. I'll venture to say that you'll even begin to regard the beast as a great teacher, even if you didn't invite him into the school of your life. You've just pledged a select sorority. The hazing is hell, but the camaraderie is amazing. Welcome to the Sisterhood of the Sucker-punched. Godspeed.
"On Optimism" - Monday, March 25, 2007 In a moment of optimism (and perhaps stupidity and naiveté), I bought a puppy. As a member of a medical community characterized by uncertain futures, this act gives me all the pleasure of my long-postponed adolescent rebellion. It's a combined act of fresh-faced hope and thumbing my nose at statistical probabilities. We in the metastatic breast cancer sisterhood make jokes about buying green bananas, let alone making a commitment to something with a life expectancy of at least 10 years. I guess that I'm learning that making long-term goals builds hope and optimism, even when scientific evidence may tend to make me blanch as I contemplate my calendar beyond six months. Even as I entered the appointment date of my annual physical a year ahead of time, for late November of this year, a little frisson of fear shivered my timbers. I walk a tightrope between fatalism and faith. In order not to be lifted up and slung down over and over by scan results and then scan results, I accept news with a practiced caution, born of long experience with the waywardness of my illness. On the other hand, in order not just to roll over passively and let death overtake me, I have to feed the fires of hope. Some days, that feeble, flickering flame of hope makes the difference between taking the next treatment or saying, "Oh, to hell with it!" So I have this new puppy. My husband, Steve, and I had a great dog for nearly nine years. She was an English Springer spaniel named Lizzy, a liver and white beauty with spots on her white-sock paws. She was as neurotic as the day is long but was, despite this, a nearly perfect companion. Steve brought her home on an impulse from a pet adoption effort at a local big pet supply franchise, literally three days after we had firmly decided that we would not have a pet. As a matter of fact, when we made this "firm" decision about no pets, I felt justified and strong in saying an emphatic "no, thanks" to my ex-husband, who was trying to give me custody of our aging cat. I even put the exclamation point on my response by saying, "Steve and I have decided NO PETS." All I could muster was sheepishness when, five days later, he came to get our daughter for the evening and was greeted by 50 pounds of bounding, hairy, piddling, barking, jumping Springer energy. Lizzy was "Velcro dog", happiest if she literally was touching some part of you, even if it was only your heel as you brushed your teeth. She was incredibly devoted to us and anxious when we weren't in sight. She got into everything, especially in the early days of our having her. We should have known she'd be a challenge when Steve brought her home the first day with hot pink spots all over her front paws. "What's that?" I asked, and he replied with some chagrin, "She ate a bottle of pediatric Amoxicillin this morning." She settled in, however, and when I got sick again six and a half years ago, Lizzy was Nurse Dog on duty. She was inseparable from me, present and a warm comfort as I endured treatments and the emotional slingshot of recurrent cancer. The few times I was in remission or partial remission, we learned to pay attention to Lizzy. If she resumed her nursing offices, sleeping next to my side of the bed, we watched for tumor markers to rise or something to show up rapidly on a CT scan. She knew before conventional science could detect it when the interloper was back. When we had to put her down, as she herself succumbed to cancer, it nearly broke our hearts. There is no pain like losing a dog. We wept our way through the next week and, when we finally began to wipe away tears, vowed we'd never go through that again. We lasted seven weeks. In a moment of crazy, dizzy, happy optimism, we got twelve-week-old Gracie. She's a black and white Springer pup who tries my patience, structures my days, and delights me with her infant antics and energy. She already shows a canine empathy to illness. She is a testimony to the knowledge, all the way down to my mitochondria, that life goes on and is meant for living. Why not hope? I'm going to grab the joy in each day and try not to fret about my illness.
"A Transcendent Day"
- Saturday,
March 24, 2007 Yesterday was a transcendent day. To spectators, I'm sure that it looked ordinary. Our lawn still needed mowing. The bushes still needed pruning. The UPS deliveryman dropped off 14 boxes, stacking them outside our garage door, adding to the slightly "gone-to-seed" state of our front yard. For me, those 14 boxes are the fruit of a protracted labor. Yesterday, I opened the first box and held my book in my hands. Two years ago, when I began writing the book, I wouldn't have put even money on my chances of being here to see it in print. Two years ago, I was busy looking for books about how to face dying. There weren't many. Two years ago, I was sick and debilitated from rigorous cancer treatment and not holding out much hope that the remaining treatment options could buy me enough time to write a book. I faced the spread of the cancer to my bones, lungs and liver, as well as lymph nodes distant from home base, the vacant lot where my right breast once was, where the disease originated. The goal of writing the book fueled my determination and stoked my fighting spirit when faith in a future flagged. I often wrote in my most tired moments, hairless, pale and drawn, clothed in sweats or PJ's. The computer and the work of the book became both my anchor and my life raft. The sun has risen through the window in this room through eight seasons, creeping in with warm spring light, pouring in buttery summer dawns, slicing in at an incisive, autumn gold angle, and casting pale, watery winter light on the walls. And beyond most hope and expectations, I'm still here. Through writing the book, I've discovered that facing dying is all about learning to live. I still have cancer in my liver, bones, and lungs, but I'm still here, and yesterday was a transcendent day. As I emerged from the initial treatment for my breast cancer twelve years ago, I came across Coleman Barks's luminous renderings of the poetry of Rumi. I was shipwrecked, a spiritual and physical castaway, a ruin at a crossroads in my life. I was changed and still reckoning with the forces that had fired me in an emotional and spiritual crucible. I didn't know it at the time, but I was only on the threshold of harder tests and more fundamental and challenging change. The poetry of Rumi cut to my soul and gave form to feelings I had only begun to recognize and explore. Rumi and the Psalms were often my catechism through several years of crisis and turmoil. I wore the pages to soft edges as I sought refuge there. When it came time to tell my own story, phrases engraved on my heart from that time came back to me. Excerpts from Rumi begin each chapter of my book, shorthand for what happens in my own words that follow. Last night, Coleman Barks returned to Chattanooga, his hometown, to read his poetry and his incandescent renderings of Rumi. I sat in the audience at the Rock Point bookstore, filled with gratitude for the gift of life, the gift of art, the gift of love, the gift of faith, the gift of friendship, and the amazing persistence of hope. I sat awestruck as I begin to understand the power of acquiescence and simple joy. I handed Coleman Barks my book, the first one out of the box, and had the chance to say "thank you." 
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