Thoughts about Life

[Bobo]

Did your mother or sisters or aunts or maternal grandmother have
breast cancer? Is there breast cancer in your family? The mantra of
the doctors. I would always tell them, my mother’s mother had breast
cancer. But she was older, in her sixties or seventies. And she was
fine. That was my story on December 16, 2005, two days before my
birthday, nine days before Christmas when I answered my cell phone and
was talking to a Gyn, I had never met, who asked me if I “was sitting
down”. There was breast cancer in the family now.
I went through the cancer system. Doctors, surgeons, hospitals,
infusions, nuclear medicine, and a little more surgery to remove even
more body parts. A whirlwind tour through my own mortality. And then I
emerged. Sort of. Treatment was done. Hopefully all the cancer was
gone. But that is always anyone’s best guess. Most everyone thinks I
am fine. And part of the time I am. The other part of the time, tucked
away in a file folder in my brain, is the anticipation, the bracing
for, the fear of cancer coming back or worse spreading into the
recesses of my body. Places where a scalpel can not cut out and chemo
can only control not destroy.
But I am well – right now. My body is stronger than my brain. It has
toughed it out and keeps on going. It never hesitated. I am amazed by
it. Wished it were slimmer but grateful for its resilience. My mind is
not always so stubborn. It swims and then soars and then falls very
far then catches a breeze and takes a rest. It is easily influenced.
Two weeks ago I found my grandmother’s death certificate. My mother’s
mother. The one who had had breast cancer. I learned for the first
time, she not only had breast cancer but she died from it. Five years
from her original diagnosis.
It has been two years since I finished treatment. I am two years out.
Physically.
Mentally sometimes I feel a million years out and sometimes not out at
all.