Chocolate Bunnies

Life is too short for holding grudges, for unkindness, for ill-will, for being mean. Life is just too short for - well, life's too short, and then you die.

Jim's sister, two years older than I am, has been diagnosed with a second form of blood cancer, in addition to the leukemia whose recurrence was diagnosed in November. It's not just "leukemia" - there are different types, and Jim's mom mentioned the name, but I don't remember what it was. She was cured a couple of years ago, after receiving a bone marrow transplant from Jim's stem cells. But cancer, like the cat, came back. She's far too weakened from double pneumonia (a little "oops" from her chemotherapy) for them to treat the new problem. It's not likely she has much time.

So Jim's family gathered in Houston for Easter, and I went with Jim and my daughters to see Debby. She was the one who introduced us in the first place. I used to work with her, at Sematech, in the 1990's. Cute girl, outgoing, exubuerant, lots of pretty, curly, dark hair, but she was in a lousy situation: waiting for a lease to expire, she was still living with a guy who had broken up with her, so the juxtaposition of our situation on hers is a little ironic, maybe. Short as it may be, life abounds with odd little coincidences. Jim's family has not been told we have been (to all intents and purposes) separated for years now, though obviously they've noticed I never show up for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or other family gatherings. They were surprised to see me for Easter.

Unmercifully, her brain remains clear and alert, though her physical body has become a liability. She can't speak, because she had a tracheostomy to get her through the pneumonia. Her skin is dry, flaking, blistering. She can barely use her hands: they are weak, and shake uncontrollably. She uses a suction tube frequently to remove bile from her mouth. She's in diapers. There are tubes into her nose, her throat, and her arms. But when Jim bumbles into the room, knocking over the box of surgical masks by the door and blowing into his gloves in a ridiculously futile effort to get them comfortably onto his hands, she laughs.

Her 9-year-old daughter hasn't been told that her mom won't be getting better and coming home this time. Debby asked her next younger sister to break the news. Of course, the little girl knows - people know things. This is one reason it's always better to be honest. She refuses to go to the hospital to visit, and it's not hard to understand.

Visiting is hard. It's hard to act normal, to talk cheerfully in a surgical mask and latex gloves, to someone who looks like a caricature of the someone you once went out clubbing with. But it's stupid to talk about little else besides the amusing fart noises you can make with the gloves. So I talk about the kids playing in mud puddles after the freaky Easter morning rainstorm, or about how once I was forced to sit through Oprah and Oprah brought a puppy on her show and proved herself to be, beyond question, the single most annoying human being on the face of the earth. Occasionally Debby tries to join in the conversation and I can't understand her. Cracking a joke? Asking for her blanket? Needing the nurse? Debby is frustrated.

But goodbye is the awful part. I do understand when Debby mouths, "You can go, you don't have to stay." It's late and we have to drive back to Austin. How horrible to leave her there to the nurses and to the sad little thing her life has become. No one deserves this, no one. Debby was a demanding patient from the very first, before she really got sick, tending to overstate her pain and even - to use her own phrase - "playing the leukemia card" to get her way, and the nurses know this. So now, they take their time answering the frequent summons from her call button, and are a bit brusque when they deal with her. I feel like shaking them.

We say goodbye and she cries, and Katie and I cry though we've been trying really hard to project good cheer. "I love you so much, I love you so much," she is whispering. We tell her we love her, and blow kisses - you can't touch her - and leave, stripping off our gloves and masks, to reenter the normal world outside the hospital doors where the bright afternoon sun is setting, where Debby can't go. Driving back to Austin, I glanced at the speedometer several times to find I was pegging ninety. I get to leave.

Life's too short. But knowing that isn't enough.

The Breast of All Possible Worlds

Let me preface this post by stating that I'm absolutely fine - there's nothing wrong with me that years of intensive psychotherapy won't clear right up.

Yesterday I got a call from the Women's Imaging Center about my mammogram last Friday. There was a funny-looking spot (I'm paraphrasing - that probably isn't the technical term) in my right breast. They wanted me to come back for a follow-up as soon as possible. "I have appointments available tomorrow," the woman told me over the phone.

Well, the technician who did my mammogram last week did say that callbacks are extremely common, especially with first mammograms. So I didn't freak. I made my appointment for today and didn't lose any sleep over it.

This one was a little more uncomfortable, but not too bad. The technician squeezed me a little tighter. It still isn't painful - just awkward - until they send you to the inside waiting room.

This may be the most surreal experience I've ever had. I'm wearing my jeans, but am topless other than a loose cotton cape over my shoulders which snaps at the neck and just meets the requirements of basic decency, if I'm careful. My shirt and bra, purse, phone and keys are clutched ineffectually to my chest. I'm shown into a room with six other identically outfitted women watching E!. They look up and smile wanly in greeting as I am ushered in. "Just sit here for a bit," says the technician, "and I'll show your films to the doctor and see what he says."

Ah, the almighty doctor. Do you know, I never saw this person? The lab bustles with young, attractive, healthy, cheerful female technicians, taking X-rays, performing ultrasounds, and reassuring patients. I picture the doctor as the lone male in the building, alone in his dark lair, being fed lab results by his minions. Meanwhile, back on E!, Kid Rock dispenses advice on picking up girls. (Win over the ugliest one in the group, and you're in!)

"Come on back again," says the technician to me after a space of several minutes. "The doctor wants me to get a couple more angles." So she does a "roll" shot, twisting my breast slightly under the clamp before photographing it, then a straight profile. The profile is difficult because the other breast, there's just no way to get around this, is ridiculously in the way. I hold it down and back while the technician lifts my right breast into place and tries to get the clamp secured before it can fall back down again, resulting in a highly amusing slapping sound. We both start giggling. SO not sexy.

Two more shots later, and I'm sent back into the waiting room, where Oprah has adopted a puppy and brought it onto the show and her audience goes completely ape shit. I've never seen Oprah's show before, but I've seen parodies of it on Saturday Night Live, which I never thought were very funny because they were so over the top. It turns out they weren't.

I wanted to have gone home by now. What was the big deal? My first mammogram was supposedly normal; there was some little area they needed a closer look at, and now they've had their closer look. So why am I still here? Traffic's going to be a bitch, coming home... Then the technician beckons me out of the room to tell me that the doctor still isn't satisfied and has ordered an ultrasound. It'll be a while; the line is long.

So I go back to my seat, but now I'm feeling frightened. Why so many tests? There are boxes of tissue on the end tables in the waiting room. Women cope with very bad news in this place. Oprah is going on about how, for the first time in nine years of publication, someone besides herself is on the cover of the April 2009 issue of O Magazine: and the lucky lady is Michelle Obama! (I can only imagine this must be the highlight of Michelle's life, don't you think?) Of course, Oprah is on the cover with her, because come on, let's not take complete leave of our senses here.

I'm not looking at the TV, though my theory is that they're showing us Oprah just so death won't seem so terrible. I'm thinking about heavy stuff. Could this actually be it? Cancer? What really is the value of my life? I may be the family breadwinner, but even with medical insurance, cancer treatment is insanely costly, and if we're doing a cost-benefit analysis...

My phone rings, interrupting this morbid reverie. "Are you still there? Katie needs to be picked up from school," says Jim, "aren't you about done yet?"

"I don't think so," I say, sniffling, "they've taken a bunch of pictures and need to do more tests. I don't know when I'll ever get out of here."

"Well, just call when you do. Hopefully it won't be too late to pick up Katie," he says with mild annoyance, and we hang up; he hasn't asked what the deal is with the follow-up appointment, or how things are going, but it's very inconvenient for me to be hogging the car at this time of day.

An interminable period later, there's an ultrasound, which of course isn't uncomfortable at all, but it seems to me (now in full hypochondriac mode) that the technician lingers for a long time over one particular spot. When she finishes, she tells me to lie down in the darkened room and just relax. "I'll take this to the doctor," she says, "and see if I found what he wanted me to get, or if he needs more images. It'll be just a few minutes."

"Did you see anything?" I asked.

"Was this your first mammogram?" she responds; "this is really, really common. I didn't see anything big. A few little things that are probably nothing. Don't worry!" She steps out, closing the door behind her.

And five minutes later, she's back, flipping on the lights and informing me cheerily that the doctor reviewed the tape and there's nothing wrong at all, just perfectly normal fibrous tissue showing up on the X-rays. "Just keep doing your breast exams and annual mammograms, and have a good weekend!" she tells me. And she leaves the room, and I get dressed, and go pick up Katie (who anxiously demands to know if I am all right) and go home.

Is it going to be like this every time?

Let's Get Metaphysical

I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with this mortal shit.* I've decided, upon careful reflection, that I'd rather be a never-ending pulse of disembodied glowing energy. Who's with me?

Well, you have to come with me. Being immortal wouldn't be any fun at all if you had to watch everyone you love die. You have to put up with too much of that being mortal; if you lived forever it would be completely unbearable.

Bodies are just a mess. Things go wrong, they fall apart; and frankly I'm starting to suspect sabotage. How can such a fundamentally friendly, nurturing creature as a female breast, for instance, suddenly go haywire and kill you? (You, here, referring to the person it's attached to - I'm thinking of cancer, not suggesting that breasts routinely go off on transportational killing sprees, though technically I suppose mine could smother people if they really wanted to. But no. They are friendly.)

(For now.)

It's an infinitesimally small thing on any grand scale, or a tiny scale for that matter, but there's something wrong with the calf muscle of my left leg. I had trouble with it last year, too, but it got better and I forgot about it. But today after work, as I was hurrying across Riverside, something suddenly went SNAP like a rubber band being pulled across a peg and it hurts like a sonofabitch and just for the moment I can't walk.

So basically I've just had it with bodies. What are they good for? I haven't had any serious fun with mine in ages anyway. Can't we all just become everlasting orbs of celestial light already? Like, yesterday?

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*That sounds familiar. Isn't that the first line of some famous Shakespeare soliloquy?