Where It's At

When I was a little girl, I never said, "When I grow up, I wanna be a Cancer Patient!" And more recently, I complacently expected to spend my advancing middle age dealing with nearly-grown offspring, elderly parents, college tuition, job worries, expanding opportunities for art and music, a modest dose of local political activism, and hunting through a tiny and ever-dwindling pool of potential male companions.

As it turns out, I do have all that. But I also have Stage 4/ metastatic/ incurable breast cancer. Even aside from all the unpleasantness of treating and monitoring the condition, cancer has changed my future in a fundamental way. Instead of a long, winding pathway, stretching out and fading into into the deep distance, my future is very short and obscured by the fog of uncertainty. My particular cancer responded well to the first chemotherapy and appears to be under control; but in the typical course of this disease, it will eventually become resistant to the drugs and begin to grow again. Then follows a downward spiral of treatment, response, and resurgence of cancer, until the patient gives up with treatment and dies.

The numbers aren't pretty. Something like 95%-98% of women whose breast cancer has spread through the body--i.e., is metastatic--will die of this disease. So what kind of future can I see? Will my disease get worse? (I refuse to ask "When?" as if it were inevitable. That's part of how I cope). Can I get my kids through college? Will I be able to keep my job? (and hence my medical insurance?)  Should I make arrangements about my house while I'm still doing OK? And for goodness' sake, what guy is going to want to get involved with someone in my condition (even if looks didn't count!)? Yes, it's all pretty damned foggy.

But of course, every problem has to be dealt with. My approach is a thorough technical knowledge of the disease and treatment options, combined with extreme denial of the statistics. After all, statistics are about groups, not individuals! Perhaps most of all, I rely on humor--sometimes morbid, sometimes ribald, but always from the heart. That's what motivated the little ditty below, which depicts some of the travails of living with this condition: "Terminal Cancer Blues."