You May Disagree...

Jillian and I had a wonderful time last evening, attending a charity dinner for Breast Friends. These are the delightful women who, when a new breast cancer patient is diagnosed, leap into action with the new patient, offering support, suggestions, food and family assistance. The group has just begun a new outreach program into the local Women’s Prison, one can only imagine how lonely a prisoner might be with this scary new step in their lives.

It was not an easy evening for me. First, there is some sort of celebratory emphasis in the world of women’s cancer to have looked into the jaws of the lion more than once. “I have had three bouts in the past seventeen years,” or “she’s beat it back twice in the last ten years.” Having lost a friend in less than eleven months, it was difficult to argue with those who’ve survived…but not everyone does. I would have hoped, just a little, that they’d have celebrated those stories of women who fought good fights, had the right attitude, and just had crappy outcomes ending their lives. It certainly wasn’t Lori’s fault that she wasn’t able to attend the dinner….she did everything she could to follow the directions of her physicians—and still—took less than a year to succumb. It isn’t really about winning or losing, she didn’t “lose” the battle, the battle overcame her.

Deeper, though, and here’s where I may get massive disagreement, is the jolly reference during the evening to “chemo” as if it were a buddy. Not once, in four years, can I think of having used the phrase “chemo.” First, it dawned on me early that it was too much like “Kemo Sabe” from the Lone Ranger, and that somehow “Chemo” and “Tonto” were supposed to be buddies. Not one time, regardless of the difficulty or side effects, did I think of those poisons as buddies of mine.

MY buddies yelp at me when I hook drivers into the pasture. They call when I feel crappy, they laugh at my bad jokes. They want to know why I haven’t eaten lately when a dying quail of a five iron ends up fifteen yards short of its intended target. So “Kemo” is certainly not a buddy of mine.

More intently, though, I have never wanted to be on a first name basis with “her.” (I’m not sure why I’ve always thought of chemotherapy as female, like a ship, but that’s just been the impression from the beginning. Maybe because everyone who administered drugs in the Opium Den were women, but it certainly isn't a reflection on them.) The THERAPY is, and has been, my friend. So I use her full name. Not the poisons that come in the beginning, but the resolution and impact of the last. I try and explain this to chemotherapy patients, and they look at me like I spend far too much time with my own belly-button.

When one has been through sessions of chemotherapy, there are plenty of days when the navel is our closest friend. It stays, it doesn’t talk back, and it doesn’t disagree. You’re welcome to your own opinion…but if you don’t hear me calling out for those who’ve endured “chemo” as if it was the fun poisons that were their friends, now you’ll know. And please don't ask me what I talk to my elbows about, they are always around, too!!