American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 75
The Sixties
Lois Ann Abraham
The day I found out I had breast cancer, I ended up
going to my mom’s house on the way home from the
doctor. Mom said that getting cancer meant God wanted
to teach me something. I said if He thought that was a
good way to teach something, I would like to teach Him
something right back. But for all I knew what He wanted
to teach me is how to live without my right breast. Or
how to die. Or how weird people act when you find out
you have cancer.
My sister Nancy was at Mom’s at the time. She works
in a fundamentalist holistic health food store and was
just dropping off some of the healthiest and godawfulest
yogurt ever created by God or goat. Nancy feels qualified
by virtue of her occupation to hand out medical advice
to anyone who even clears their throat in her presence.
“Gluten,” she would intone, and tactfully avert her eyes.
Nancy informed me that cancer was caused by
repressed anger. She tightened her lips and looked
sideways, like she does, like repressed anger was a
scandalous business and I should be ashamed of myself.
She made me mad, so I responded by saying, “Screw
you!” which is not something we do in this family,
though if anyone was going to do it, it would be me.
And I have to admit, it did make me feel better, so
maybe she was right. Nancy was so offended, she said
she was through talking to me and left in a huff. Mom
immediately called her cell and told her to forgive me,
I’m her sister, and it was probably the medication talking.
This was funny to me because, whatever the future might
hold in that department, I wasn’t on medication at the
time. I also thought saying “Screw you” was pretty funny
under the circumstances, but I was alone in that.
That’s one of the problems with the female side of
my family, which is all that’s left. They don’t think
anything’s funny except jokes that start with a guy
walking into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. For
them it seems to be about pattern recognition more than
anything else. They laugh when the parrot story is over,
even if it ends with the tragic death of the last member of
an endangered species.
When I told my husband Ron about the breast cancer,
he said not to worry, honey, there’s no reason to borrow
trouble, that he would be there for me. We’re okay today
so let’s have a good one. And that things would work
out. That’s what he usually says except sometimes when
it’s his cholesterol that’s in question, his tit, if you will,
in the wringer. But I have to agree. Things usually do
work out, one way or the other. Either you survive or you
don’t. Lose your hair or not. Lose your breast, or part
of your breast, or just a little tiny bit you’ll never miss.
And, as my mother likes to say to bereaved parents who
have lost one of their children, at least you have another
one at home. And I do. I have another one. So that’s the
consolation I got from my nearest and dearest on the day
I was told I had breast cancer.
My friend Cindy, on the other hand, practically leaped
over the block wall between our two yards to sit me down
on a lawn chair and drain me of the meager information
I brought home from the doctor. She wanted to know
where the tumor was, how big, how long it had been
there, what type it was, if it had spread, what stage it was
at, how they intended to treat me, with chemo or radiation
or surgery or all three. She wanted to know how many
cancer patients this radiologist had seen and how many
malignancies he had identified in his career and if any
of them had been false positive for cancer. She wanted
to know if I had researched Mexican cancer clinics or
laetrile or Chinese herbs. She wanted to know when I
would see the oncologist. And if she could come too.
There I had definite answers: next Thursday and yes.
Cindy can be a pain in the butt, frankly. But I
appreciated her taking an interest, even if it threatened
to tear a hole in the cocoon of denial I was sheltering
in. She has an active mind and knowing lots of details
makes her feel better. She calls herself a control freak,
and she should know. I’m not sure what kind of freak I
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