When you receive a cancer diagnosis, it swallows you up
in a way that other diseases do not. First, of course, there is panic – am I going to die? But after the first
shock, when death seems less imminent in the face of treatment, the question
morphs into something else – who am I
now?
In May 2010, I was diagnosed with stage 1C ovarian
cancer. I had a radical 6-hour surgery to remove my ovaries, uterus, and
various other abdominal accoutrements, then another surgery to insert a
catheter port in my chest, then four months of intensive chemotherapy. I was
physically weakened from the surgeries and wiped out, as almost everyone is, by
the chemo drugs. My mouth turned into a
burning cesspit of sores and pain. I lost my hair. I lost my stamina. I lost
the subconscious safety net we are born with: the confidence that, while other
people must die someday, an exception will be made in our case.
On top of everything else, the cancer surgery threw me
into menopause. So, in addition to chemo, I had to deal with violent hot
flashes and night sweats. It was miserable. But I came out alive on the other
end, with an excellent prognosis. Perhaps, the thought has occurred to me more
than once, I should stop complaining and just be thankful to be alive.
Believe me, I am grateful. I had wonderful doctors and
nurses; my family and friends – well, what I feel towards them would seem
trivialized by any attempt at description. But I am not the same woman I was
before cancer. In some ways, this is a good thing. I’m not afraid of much
anymore: spiders, other people’s BS, speaking my mind. In fact, these days I’m
virtually unintimidatable. In other ways, it’s not so good: I’m physically
weaker; I weigh a lot more; and I feel defeminized in a profound way. To put it
bluntly, I’ve lost almost all my girl-parts. I used to luxuriate in my own
body; now sometimes I drag it around with me like a beaten-up Airstream.
I feel mended, not healed. Deeply grateful for surviving,
but deeply changed.
Our culture, having been fed a diet of positive-thinking propaganda
from Lifetime movies and organizations like the Susan G. Komen Foundation,
wants cancer survivors to be endlessly upbeat and optimistic, to come out the
other side more able to stop and smell the roses, to almost be thankful for
their disease experience. But I think this does many survivors a great disservice
by dismissing their own narratives in favor of a fairy-tale ending.
What happens when you don’t feel positive and optimistic? What if you’re so angry you’d rather decapitate the roses with a pair of scissors than smell them? Cancer isn’t a romantic movie. It’s terrifying and it’s horrible. It grabs you by the ankles and slams you against a rock until you cry out for mercy. I’m wiser, yes, and my cancer has been cured, thank God, but I’ve also lost a lot.
What happens when you don’t feel positive and optimistic? What if you’re so angry you’d rather decapitate the roses with a pair of scissors than smell them? Cancer isn’t a romantic movie. It’s terrifying and it’s horrible. It grabs you by the ankles and slams you against a rock until you cry out for mercy. I’m wiser, yes, and my cancer has been cured, thank God, but I’ve also lost a lot.
So, after the treatment was over and the clean bill of
health issued, when I was standing there with the pieces of the-rest-of-my-life
in my hands wondering what shape they made, what did I do? I did what I always
do – I wrote about it. Castrata: a
Conversation is an heroic crown of sonnets that is presented as a dialogue
between the speaker (me) and Carlo Faranelli, the great Italian castrato
singer. We have a lot in common, Signor Faranelli and I. Why sonnets? Because for
me something as messy as cancer needs a structure to render it manageable as a
subject, to move it beyond a primal cry and into, hopefully, art.
Make no mistake, I’m glad to be alive. I have many, many
good things in my life: my family, my friends, my animals, my work. I’m
basically a happy person. I’m going to live, and I’ve got a lot to live for.
But, as one of the sonnets says, “I will name my losses, too.” To deny this would be unforgiveable
dishonesty. I owe my readers – and
myself – nothing less than the truth.
Laura Orem
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