It's toasted

It must have been owls

This was an odd day, an odd week, and sometimes considerably worse than odd. You see, after my last routine mammogram, I got the dreaded "call back". They wanted to take a more detailed mammogram, along with an ultrasound. Fine, I thought, except these retakes generally meant that they "found something", and that couldn't be good. So I went through it all again, they squeezed and kneaded and poked and pressed, I got all covered with KY Jelly or whatever-it-is they use to lubricate your skin while they look underneath it.

They concentrated on my left breast, where they seemed to think the "problem" was. By the time they got done, I knew how a waffle must feel while it is being baked. Or at least, my left breast did. I could practically see the grid-marks.

A few days went by. I was prepared to let it go, assuming everything was fine, when I got another call back. I was supposed to see my doc so she could "go over" the results of the second mammogram.

Go over.

Go over? What was this about? I was expecting either nothing (the usual response to a normal test), or a call saying "your test is negative," or something like that. But this.

So I tried to keep my head out of it all week, and I was more-or-less fine until last night, when for the first time in a while I couldn't sleep. It was as if an icicle were slowly turning in the centre of my abdomen. All night.

Sometimes I think I want to lay it down, just give up, because, after all, I have achieved very few of my dreams, in spite of what often seems like mammoth (futile) effort. Then when something like this comes up, when I feel the hot breath of mortality blasting down my neck, I hear some voice in my head, some idiot but triumphant, desperate, ridiculously valiant and probably absurd voice shouting out loud:

"I want to live!"

It was like a pendulum, see, between the nice, logical "Ah, nothing's the matter, it never is, statistics are all in your favour, callbacks are common," etc. etc. (no family history, everyone lives to be over 90, etc.) and a violent swing in the other direction, a silent totting up of all the victims, people I had known, loved, or even just heard about, who had either survived breast cancer after a long and horrendous ordeal, or hadn't survived at all. I began to wonder if the "thing" that rides around with me, beside me I mean, always clamped to my peripheral vision, would suddenly rear up in front of me and make it impossible to take another step.

In the doctor's little room today, you know, the little room they tell you about on Seinfeld, while waiting for the doctor, I had to do deep breathing, deep slow breathing to try to relax the knot of primal terror in my belly. The doctor comes in. How are you? Fine. Oh God. The doctor sits down at the computer. So what are we doing today? MY GOD SHE DOESN'T KNOW?? No, she has been away from the office for a week and has no idea why I have come in today. This means that no one sitting in this room has any idea what it says on my report.

So she blinks and flips and scrolls and "hmmmmms", like she always does, and asks me the usual incredulous questions. So what happened when they examined you? What did they say? It says here they saw a bruise. Did they see a bruise? Yes, I had some sort of little bruise - I don't know where it came from - Oh, I see. It must have been in the spot, see here - look - where they thought you might have a cyst. Well, yes, it was. They put a sticker on it. A what? A sticker, so the ultrasound person could - Oh.

You had a bruise, Margaret, a small one that mimicked some little probably-harmless cyst, though in six months you will have to go through all the testing again in case. In case what?

It's late at night, and I sit here tired, having dodged a certain bullet, or gotten out of Dodge, or whatever it is. Strangely, a few minutes ago I heard a ghostly trilling, as if boys were hooting at each other over long distances, but after a while I realized it must have been owls. They were as resonant and loud as if they were right outside my window, and with all that thick bush out there, just a stone's throw away, perhaps they were. They might have been right in my own back yard.

Post-script. Yes, it was owls! The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology site has helped me identify many a species through sound alone. In this case, the calls of  various common owls allowed me to compare, and quickly make a match. Looks like these were barred owls, and they were very close to the house, maybe even in the back yard. We have huge rich cedars out there, so it makes sense. One row of houses in back of us, and we're in dense bush. But if these were birds, I could not believe the volume! These things fairly boomed. The sound moved around in a bizarre way, too. I kept thinking, that has to be kids making ape noises, but the sounds simply weren't human. These birds make a hell of a racket! They have a lot of different calls too, some of them sort of trilling (chilling). Since their territory is the Pacific Northwest, I think we're close enough (though they resemble the rare spotted owl in plumage - but not in voice). I couldn't see anything out there, but I'll be vigilant from now on, that is, until colder weather necessitates keeping my office window shut. This page has a rich variety of sample calls. Listen to these guys, you'll be totally spooked out!

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barred_Owl/sounds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id2A8yC_JJY

Visiting hours: or, how to call on the cancer warrior

7 Rules You Should Follow When Visiting Someone With Cancer

MARCH 10, 2014 BY DAVID STANLEY

At the stroke of midnight, 01 January, 2014, US Census Bureau statistics tell us that the population of the USA was 317,297,938. The American Cancer Society tells us that in the year 2014, 16 million out of those 317 million people will be diagnosed with cancer.

Half of all men will get cancer during their lifetimes
One-third of all women will get cancer
Three-quarters of all cancers strike after age 55
Fourteen million people are living with cancer; as survivors or current fighters
1500 people die from cancer every day
600,000 lives are lost every year

My brother Michael lost his life his life in 2012 to oral squamous cell carcinoma. Me, I’m one of the fourteen million survivors.

The numbers are clear. At some point in your life, you will want to visit a friend or loved one with cancer. It is scary as Hell. What to say? What to do? How do I help? We want to help, but we don’t know how. What are the rules for a visit with a cancer warrior?

My Seven Rules for Calling on the Cancer Warrior.

1) Make absolutely, positively, 100% certain you are healthy.

Whether from the chemo, the stress of the illness, or their cancer itself, many cancer patients have compromised immune systems. A little bug or a sniffle that might put you a bit under the weather could have serious repercussions for the health of a cancer patient. Even without your bug raising serious problems, a cancer patient already feels lousy enough. Keep your sniffle-ly nose to yourself. If your kid stayed home sick yesterday because of some norovirus, stay home.

i) Wear clean clothes. Your favorite sweater, the one a little kid goobered on yesterday in the queue at McDonald’s whilst you weren’t looking, might still harbor some Klebsiella or H. Influenzae.

ii) Wash in. Wash out. When you enter the house, wash your hands properly with soap and running water for 30 seconds-that’s singing Happy Birthday through twice. Or use hand sanitizer. Wash them again on your way out. It’s a good practice.

2) Make contact in advance.

My brother and I were as close as brothers can be. Yet, when he was deep in his cancer fight, I never dropped by. One, it’s just rude. Two, you never know what kind of day your friend is having. Michael really liked to make those contacts via text message. To a cancer patient, a ringing phone, when your pain and discomfort have just settled down enough so you can nap, is a huge and unwanted intrusion.Send a text. You might not get an answer. Don’t drop by ‘just to see if everything is all right.’ Most likely, your friend is getting some sleep.

Cancer, and cancer treatment, are exhausting beyond words. How exhausting? Picture yourself as you lie on the couch with your face turned towards the seat cushions. You hear something interesting on the TV. Now, try and imagine that you lack the energy to turn your head towards the TV to see what is on. Yep. That bad. Sometimes worse.

3) Time limit your visit.

When you text to see if there is a good time to visit, give a limit.
“Michael, is there a good time today or tomorrow for me to stop by for a twenty minute visit?”
When those twenty minutes are up, get up and go. If your friend wants you to stay longer, s/he’ll let you know.
Even when we have cancer, when someone visits our home, we feel as if we are the host. Just to burn the mental energy required to be “the host” is a huge drain on very limited psychological resources.

4) Contact the caregiver about gifts.

Before you bring anything with you, contact the patient’s caregiver. Radiation and chemotherapy play havoc with the senses. What to you is a lovely scented bouquet of flowers might kick off three hours of retching and vomiting for your friend. In addition, many people become highly sensitive to pollen during treatment. A plant might be nice. But ask.

We like to feed our friends and family when times are tough. Ask if there is anything special you could bring, and anything specific you should avoid. Just because your friend liked your lasagna two months ago, the smell of the tomatoes and basil might send her reaching for the waste bucket.

When Michael was ill, I brought him DVDs. He was a huge baseball and Detroit Tigers fan, so I brought him highlight DVDs from the Tigers amazing 1968 season. We were little kids then, just starting to fall in love with sports and our heroes. I also brought him Rocky and Bullwinkle videos. Mindlessly funny stuff. Norman Cousins, in his great book, Anatomy of an Illness, wrote at length how the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and the other great comedians of his youth helped him heal during his bouts with ankylosing spondylitis.

“I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep,” he reported. “When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.”

5) Avoid forced optimism.

Don’t be a cheerleader.
“You’re going to be fine. I just know it.”
“Bullshit,” says the patient. “I might freakin’ die. That’s why they’re bolting my head to that goddam table and irradiating my skull. That’s why my body is slowly being carved to pieces. That’s why I get bags of ugly yellow chemicals pumped into my body. You don’t know shit about my illness. I’m laying here, feeling like if I blink 2% too hard, my eyeball is going to fall out of my face, and if I swallow without thinking on it first, I’m going to be curled up in a ball in the bathroom for the next two hours heaving my guts out, while I try not to have shit come pouring out my asshole, and you’re sitting there telling me ‘You’re going to be fine. I just know it?’ ”

“What the fuck do you know? Get the fuck out of here. Jesus, you fucking idiot!”

Don’t play pity poker. Don’t tell a story about your cousin who’s a cancer survivor. Fact is, in the midst of my cancer, I don’t care. I’ve got my own problems right here, thankyouverymuch. When I was struggling with my melanoma, I found inspiration in an older friend who was fighting a much worse case of esophageal cancer. As cancer fighters and survivors, we’re good at finding our own inspiration. Hang out with me, that’s all I ask.

6) Physical contact. Ask first.

Cancer hurts. Sometimes, the pain cannot be imagined. Sometimes, a hug can be agony. Sometimes, you need a hug, a bit of human warmth and contact to remind you that you’re not alone. So ask before you hug. Pro-tip: Use your friend’s hug as your guide. As I was leaving my brother’s house, I’d always ask Michael if we could hug. When he said yes, I’d let him move towards me, and as firmly as he hugged me, I’d hug back, but just a bit softer. If you opt for a hand-squeeze, be just as gentle. Hard to believe, but some cancers cause such deep-seated bone pain that even a too-firm yet loving squeeze of the hand is agony.
What Should You Do?

7) Be there now.

Ram Dass titled his seminal 1971 work Be Here Now. When you are with a cancer fighter, be there. Turn off your damn phone. Your twitter feed can wait. If your friend wants to talk; Talk. With. Them. Listen, really listen, to what they’re saying. They’re talking with their eyes, and body language, as well as their words. Pay some fucking attention. They want to watch a little TV with you, then watch some TV. If they want to lie back for a few minutes and take six or eight deep breaths, why don’t you join them? Lower your shoulders from up around your ears, relax a moment, and join them in several deep quiet breaths.

You do realize, don’t you, that you too, are stressed? You do realize that your angst fills the room? It is hard to watch someone suffer, someone in fear, someone in pain. Let your heart fill with compassion, not pity, and join with them in your heart for a few moments. Don’t share your heartache. Let go of your pain and watch them relax along with you.

In the Torah, Jews are commanded to perform acts of lovingkindness. Buddha says “He who attends on the sick attends on me.” In the Christian Bible, Jesus commands his followers to care for the infirm. The atheist cares for the sick because there is no greater service to humanity than to care for the sick.
Be gentle. Be kind. Be compassionate. Be there now.

Blogger's note. These are things I might not have thought about myself. In fact, I know I wouldn't. We're taught that we must be "positive" at all times, no matter how lousy we feel. If we're not "positive", we're indulging in self-pity. It's just assumed flowers will cheer the person up, when they might hate flowers or find them an irritant. And the hug - I never would have thought about that, but yes. Make the hug extremely gentle, put your hand lightly on his or her forearm  - or just ask before you touch them at all, because they might not feel like it. 

Someone I love, someone who has been part of the family for forty years,  is facing treatment, and many times a day I think about her because the disease is at Stage 4. We're far apart geographically, and right now constant inquiries are not practical or even desirable. The relentless and anxious "how is she?" puts pressure on the family to provide some statement of "improvement", if not physical, then spiritual.

 I once knew an incredibly brave woman facing terminal brain cancer. What she said to me was astonishing: "I don't know how to comfort people." No one wanted to accept what she was saying, they argued with it, they became distressed and full of denial and even anger that she should say such a thing. They even admonished her that she should have the surgery that she knew would not improve the quality of the life she had left. Another reaction is the low moan ("stage fo-o-u-r- r-. . . "), the utterance of dread. Patients and their families don't need the added burden of your hangups about mortality.

It's an ugly fact that a large part of your normal support system might fall away. I've had the big turnaway too, from a disability that some people (though I know it's hard to believe) dread even more than cancer. Then you learn that the old cliche is true: in a major crisis, you find out who your real friends are. And though this piece is extremely helplful and brings up issues most people never even think about, I've had a few thoughts about it.

I have to believe that it's OK to go in there and make a mistake. The "seven rules" are difficult, and if you think you have to apply them all, all at the same time, without a slip-up, you probably won't visit at all. It will just be too hard and you will be too afraid of doing damage. But I believe that someone in deep trouble can usually see the profound concern and love under all the slipping and sliding, the clumsy pratfalls of good intentions.

In all my life, I have found one good listener. One. One who listened so deeply and profoundly that you knew you were heard, who in fact heard things you didn't even know you were saying. Moreover, he was a vault. You didn't even have to ask. When he came to visit me in a place no one else wanted to go, I was reminded of the Bible verse, "For I was hungry and you fed me. . . " I was stigmatized and scorned, I had "fallen" and felt that I had failed massively, and he was there. He sat and looked at me and nodded his head and the listening was like a hum that came from him.

Maybe I'll only find one of these in my entire life, and it's a gift that I did. And it wasn't cancer, it was something else, but believe me when I say it came perilously close to killing me. But his rare gift is a valuable lesson for the rest of us: shut up for a minute, stop trying to fix it so you will feel better, and make yourself open to the pain. You'll walk out of there upright, it won't kill you, and maybe you'll even be able to come back. 

(P. S. to the P. S. A point I've made before, but I will keep on making it until something changes. I remember, not so long ago, that a person who had cancer was always called a "cancer victim". It was used in the media all the time, and not just for the terminally ill (another term I do not like). I also used to hear "AIDS victim" in the '80s. At some point, mercifully, the tide turned, and now it's (rightly) offensive to speak of victimhood. All except in one area. Mental illness always appears juxtaposed with the term "stigma," and it's about as helpful and unstigmatizing as telling someone, "You're NOT really fat, not fat at all, no, fatness does not begin to describe you who are NOT fat, so why do you think you are fat when you are definitely NOT fat?"  So it's stigma/mental illness, stigma/mental illness, stigma/mental illness, etc. etc. etc.

Very seldom have I seen "mental health warrior", but I like it. I like the term "mental HEALTH" because it implies that people with bipolar and schizophrenia can actually - gasp, choke - be "well". "Mental illness" is kind of like saying "cancer illness". How can you be ill and well at the same time? You can't. You're stuck in it forever.

See, it matters, the way we refer to things. Using the term "cancer warrior" won't make it all go away, but it will help in restoring dignity and personal power, and dispelling the fear that keeps people ignorant.

There was a time when cancer was so stigmatized that the word "stigma" wasn't even used to describe it - it was too stigmatized to even mention. The word was never said. We have come a long way. Now can we PLEASE do something to fucking get RID of "mental illness/stigma/stigma/stigma", once and for all!

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Charisma to burn

I would have to call these two my favorites from Old Hollywood. They acted the stuffings out of a part while keeping it real. And they were gorgeous: the camera ate them up.

Both of them smoked too much, but Bogie fell far sooner, in an awful sort of way, consumed. He kept smoking even after contracting fatal throat cancer. Perhaps it was a "what the hell, it's coming anyway" thing. Somehow Bette was tougher, but cancer devoured her too, eventually, until she was an unrecognizable wraith.

Our heroes flare briefly. It's always brief, when you think about it. Each of us climbs only a tiny segment of the wall (just like Harold and his fake aerial sets in Safety Last). It's hard to put any of it together. I once had the thought that if you kept going back and back, and back and back and back, through the thousands and mega-thousands and millions and billions of ancestors that spread out exponentially behind you, you would eventually reach the first cell of life that winked on out of nothingness.

We all go back to the primordial ooze. There goes the  neighborhood.

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

It's my colon, and I'll write if I want to

I wasn’t going to write about this, I swear I wasn’t. NOTHING is more boring or more elderly than someone writing about an operation or a medical procedure.

But it’s Friday and I'm a little short of ideas, so. . . 

There wasn’t a lot of evidence I had anything wrong with my colon, except vague symptoms. I don’t even want to call them symptoms, because that word implies there is some sort of evidence of disease, and how do we know we have the disease if we haven't had the tests yet?

It’s something proven backwards, like menopause. “When did you go through menopause?” a (younger) friend of mine recently asked me.

“Uh. . . “

I had no idea what to say. What exactly does it mean to “go through menopause”, since “menopause” is so vaguely defined?

You can only conclude that your menses have permanently ceased if you have had no menstrual periods for one year. Does that mean you are “going through menopause” during that year? Or has menopause already ceased  (since, whether you know it nor not, you're done with periods forever)?  

How do you know, anyway? They could start again at any moment. Or not. 

And what about the five to ten years of turbulence before that permanent cessation that marks the “end” of menopause, or at least of your fertile years? (And by the way, a woman my age is always described as “menopausal”, no matter how many years have elapsed since that elusive "last" period). What about the hot flashes, the mood surges, the rollercoaster of missed and erratic periods, the the the -

I'm a little off-topic here. I am now well past all that, but now new “symptoms” (or thingamabobs, things that bother me at least a little bit) are emerging. Things that seem to be happening in my belly, or should I say lower down, in my gut.

Isn’t that kind of where we all live? I’ve heard there is more serotonin in your gut than in your brain. I have also heard the theory that there is a second brain in the gut, a sensor or reactive network of nerve endings that is so responsive, it practically has the capacity to think.

Does it also make decisions? Such as: "OK, your time is up"?

I’ve also heard all the theories about unresolved this and unrequited that. I suppose it’s got credence. My life, at least professionally,  has pretty much been an exercise in frustration. Though I know I have talent as a writer, I have had barely any recognition, and no money. This is not supposed to matter, by the way, because I am an “artist” who doesn’t need such things. And wanting it is crass and egotistical.

Meantime, every other talented person I know in every other field is accomplishing rings around me, and making good money, and I’m not supposed to mind!

I suppose this might cause some turmoil somewhere, in my brain at least, but in my gut? Maybe.

Some call this “the revenge of the unlived life”. I have never been able to place my work with anyone/anywhere where it can fulfill its potential, or what I think is its potential.  I doubt if I have enough time left to do so. It’s not a question of “gee, I want to be a writer” or writing one chapter of something and ditching it, or getting one rejection (boohoo into my pillow, get drunk, and quit). I'm not a chipper, folks. I'm serious, and I have been for my whole life.

What this has to do with getting a camera shoved up my bunghole is mysterious, but it might relate somehow. Or not. It fascinated and repelled me, the idea of this sewer snake, this Roto Rooter exploring all those twists and turns inside me. But I had become frightened by possibilities that I did not want to think about, and I was surprisingly willing to have the "procedure" done, if only to allay my anxiety.

A close friend of mine shed some light on all this. “Cancer is so out there now,” she said. “It used to be in the closet, and nobody ever mentioned it. Now it has jumped out like a jack-in-the-box and is in our faces every minute." Not only that. . . since there’s money in it, it’s being exploited – no, people’s fears are being exploited right, left and centre. Cancer has become an industry. 

Just this morning, my husband’s favourite magazine, Consumer Reports, arrived in the mail, with a cover story called “8 Cancer Tests You Don’t Need”. It was quite a revelation and reflected the fact that the medical community performs diagnostic tests on patients, not because they need to or the patients need them, but just because they can.

They have all this expensive equipment, for God’s sake, so how can they let it gather dust in the corner? So people are terrified into thinking they have cancer just because the technician (never a doctor) performs a test on them which is meant to screen for cancer.

Like “going through menopause”, it’s a backwards sort of thing. You’re having a “cancer test”; therefore you either have cancer, or MIGHT have cancer and should be worried, if not terrified, that you do.

Anyway, the hardest part of the procedure was the prep, which I’ve already written about in another post.  Fasting has never been my thing, and I don’t remember ever feeling that hollow. I won't write about the dreaded Pico Salax, which I kept calling Pico Iyer in my mind, though they don't look much alike, do they?

The day of the procedure was sort of dreamlike. I found, to my surprise, that I wasn't nervous, or not particularly. Like a dog at the vet's, I had relaxed into the inevitable. The hospital had been torn to pieces for some unknown reason, the inevitable turmoil that afflicts airports and other such public facilities so that you can never get anywhere on time. Then there was the massive water leak that had flooded the emergency ward a few days before, and was threatening to start up again.

For all that, I got there early (husband in tow: I was not allowed to leave the place without an escort to carry me in case I fainted from an anaesthetic hangover), and they let me go in right away. “In” meaning another snaking tunnel of corridors and “little rooms” with big machines in them. People came and went, either nurses or technicians, but none of them doctors. Doctors don’t belong in a hospital any more.

I was asked to take everything off except my shoes and socks, which seemed very odd, and put two gowns on, fore and aft. This was much better than the old idea of one gown which was open all down the back, a ludicrous and completely avoidable policy that was in place for 50. . . oh, skip it.

I was expecting a long wait, the “hospital wait” that seems to put you into another sort of time zone, but pleasantly enough, it didn’t happen: very soon, people started bustling around me and doing things. I sat next to a friendly elderly woman with a European accent (we were in a sort of waiting area for some reason, perhaps because the “little room” was flooded) and chatted about this and that while the nurse (technician?) draped a warm blanket over my arm. Pleasant, though I had no idea why it was there. Then she came back and said, “I’m putting the IV in now."

IV?! Oh God. Sqeam, went my guts, squeam. I remembered all the times that technicians couldn’t get blood out of me and sometimes became almost hysterical, blaming me for having “difficult veins”. So what would happen with something this intrusive, this horse needle? 

“Do you faint when you have blood taken?” 

“No.” I lied; it had happened once when I was pregnant a million years ago and they couldn’t find a vein.

She began to work on the back of my hand, which worried me even more. I didn't watch, as I never do: I don't see why I should. Strangely, after the usual one-second jab, there was no pain at all. Another nurse (technician?), who seemed to be just sitting around with a clipboard, said something like, “Good one!”, so I felt better. I also felt something running down my hand. “Oops, better wipe this up in case a patient sees it.”

Ye gods.

While all this happened, the lady with the European accent told me that she had a very low threshold for pain. I had the impression she had been ill for a long time. Her husband, who was French, sat across from her, looking much more nervous than she was and biting his nails.

Then it was time to go clomping into the room with the weird machine in it.

I lay back on a bed which seemed to be constructed of chrome bars. There followed a surreal few minutes in which I felt like Whitley Streiber in that Alien novel: several people were swarming busily around me, putting an oxygen thingie in my nose, sticky things for a heart monitor (heart monitor? For a colonoscopy??) on my chest, putting a blood pressure cuff on my arm and connecting my hand to the tube-thingammy for the anaesthetic. I felt a weird, cold, creeping sensation on the back of my hand.

Speaking of Whitley Streiber, they wasted no time on the “probe” which quickly went to its mark. The first few minutes were not pleasant at all, and the hard, almost violent pokes made me jump and even yelp a bit. “Breathe”, the technician (nurse?) said.

I breathed. After a while I sort of lost track, went into a dreamy state. This is not total anaesthesia, but a sort of twilight state in which you can still answer questions (“Is God real?”), but can’t just jump up off the table and leave. It seemed that only about five minutes had elapsed before I heard a “There,” and was “unplugged” swiftly in all five places with no pain at all.

Those aliens really know their stuff.

Then I was wheeled out of that little room into a sort of curtained-off place (which is what hospitals are now reduced to: not long ago the media discovered that Vancouver General Hospital was placing beds full of emergency patients in a doughnut shop adjacent to the hallway). It was nice, nice. I was just lying there, thinking, it’s over, then someone put Bill in a little curtain-y place beside me (he had stayed out in Reception, thinking he wasn’t wanted, which he wasn’t until I needed to go home). He said hi, then went back to where he was supposed to go.

I just lay there thinking, it’s nice.

Then I guessed I had to walk, and it was strange because all that up-and-downstairs, across parking lots, more up-and-downstairs, muddy roads, etc. etc. which I had dreaded on the way back didn’t bother me one bit because I was two  feet off the ground trailing vapor like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

So that was it, pretty much straightforward, assembly-line medicine, and I was very glad to be told (before I left!) that they hadn’t found a thing that was out of the ordinary. All clear. My guts were clean as a whistle.

But there is another part to this story that I sort of remembered retroactively. While I recovered in the little curtain-y place, I heard moans and cries. Then I realized the elderly lady with the European accent was having her colonoscopy in the same room that I had just come out of.  I now understood why her husband had been chewing his nails. The cries went on and on. At one point a nurse (?) went in there, and I heard her say, “Instead of screaming, breathe.” And that was the last I heard of her.

Total abstinence: I won't last a day without food

I can’t remember the last time I went a whole day without eating.

I used to go on extreme diets, but that was a long time ago. When I look at pictures of how thin I was BEFORE the diet, I plotz. In some photos I look like a ghost: it was at that point that I felt I was “thin enough”, at least until I put back 5 pounds or so.

I have had an uneasy relationship with food, with eating.  Whole industries have sprung up around it, billions of dollars’ worth. Buying food, preparing food, eating in restaurants so we won’t have to put out any effort at all.

I remember feeling a little shocked when a friend of mine (quite obese, and apparently going to a nutritionist because she said she had no interest in food ) said to me, after we’d finished eating in a restaurant, “So what's so great about it? It’s in one end and out the other.”

Well, it’s true, but we don’t think about that, do we?

Why make such a fuss about food? Everything turns to shit anyway. Kind of like a metaphor for life.

I’m thinking about all this, as I sit here already feeling hollow and groany in the stomach. I’ve been doing “prep” for a colonoscopy for several days now, first with a restricted diet (no this, no that), and today with a liquid diet restricted to anything I can see through.

Meaning limited Jell-o, limited chicken broth (these consumed as “meals”), ginger ale, apple juice, and water and water and water. And water.

Already I am feeling unmoored. For food isn’t just something that keeps us going, as in "calories in". It’s a way of marking the day, of orientation. “Haven’t you had lunch yet?” “You mean you don’t eat breakfast? It’s the most important meal of the day.” (Why?) “Let’s have dinner some time.” Etc. Not “let’s get together and talk trash", but “let’s get together and stuff food into our mouths”.

I won’t write about the obesity crisis which seems to be blowing people up like balloons. My theory (one that I have never seen anywhere else) is that people are responding to the emotional stress of a harrowing, violent, climate-damaged world by stuffing things in their mouths. They’ve been doing it since they were babies.

It’s self-comforting, and the thing is, when you walk into the average store, I mean a drug store or department store like Walmart or Target or one of those, one of the first things you see is a WALL of junk Sometimes walls and walls of it. None of it is really edible and most of it consists of sugar, fat and other empty calories. All of it is within easy reach and does not cost very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, here’s your pacifier! Come stuff it in your mouth, and a few hours later, shit it out in your diaper. Or wherever.

But I set out to write about this strange fast, this abstinence, fortunately only one-and-a-half days long. Later this day I must purge, and I’ve heard this stuff is a Roto-Rooter to your insides. It scares me half to death  because the whole reason I am having this procedure is that I’ve been having abdominal pains. Might they be made infinitely worse by this liquid Draino I have to drink tonight?

I am not one of these people who wants to “watch”, by the way. I don’t know why they let anyone watch the procedure. The whole reason it’s done is to screen for cancer, tumors and other abnormalities of the colon. Who wants to be lying there staring at the screen and suddenly hear the technician say, “Oh my God, that’s the worst one I’ve ever seen"?

It’s seven minutes after eleven, and all I’ve had today is coffee (black) and water (clear). I thank the Lord I can have coffee at least. When I have my fasting glucose test every few months, coffee is not allowed, and by the time my arm is stuck and bled, my head is pounding. After the siphoning I run for Starbuck’s or, even better, McDonald’s, which has surprisingly good coffee that is just loaded with caffeine.

As I sit here listening to my stomach make noises like a grizzly, my mind bounces back and forth. I’ve been doing this for weeks now, but it has intensified over the past few days. Of course everything will be all right. I’ve “passed” every medical test I have ever had. Nothing is ever wrong. EVER.

Then why am I having this?

There’s no cancer in my family. Anywhere. But that turned out to be a lie, or a “mis-truth”, a form of selective amnesia. My Dad was indeed treated for bladder cancer and completely cured and went on to live another 30 years. My mother had her uterus removed, but no one ever told me why (and in fact I did not find out she had a hysterectomy until many years later. At the time, she was just “in the hospital”.)

So it is quite possible that BOTH my parents had cancer. A strange sort of flip-flop from what I believed until quite recently. I wasn’t lying to myself. I just didn’t “know”, though in fact I knew very well. I was protecting myself from the truth.

So how do I feel without the anchoring effect of food, the three meals a day that prevents everything from blurring together into “blunch”, “linner” and “dupper”? I find I’m already forgetting and almost grabbing something to eat. Just a banana. (God, I had a lot of bananas yesterday.) I am holding off on my feast of peach Jell-o and Knorr chicken broth (“Made from real chicken!” Hell’s bells, what ELSE would it be made from?) until I am truly desperate.

I don’t want this “procedure” to happen, but at the same time I want it over with. I know the most likely result: no phone call, which is good news, isn’t it? Better than the other kind.

I can’t help but remember, though, all the friends I used to have, the ones who fell to disease: cancer, heart attack, AIDS, more cancer. . . Oddly enough, the one that bothered me most was the recent death of someone I could only call an acquaintance. I had not seen her for years – she was once a member of my former church and had just been ordained as a minister – and then suddenly I’m getting a Facebook message inviting me to her memorial service.

MEMORIAL SERVICE?

When you leave a place you’ve been part of for years, it sort of freezes in time. If you meet someone you knew years later, you can’t help but think, God, they look old. But when someone dies at 50. . .  Someone you admired, liked, even though you weren’t really friends. Someone whom you knew would make an outstanding minister because of her soaring spirit and vibrant faith.

And now she’s dead. Dead?

I am still having trouble getting my head around it, don’t really believe it, can’t associate her with death at all. And it was cancer, that looming shadow, perhaps the main thing we are trying to rule out tomorrow, which is why I have to be so cleaned out. If she could die like that, just vanish, so that I’ll never see her again. . .

I can’t finish that sentence.

This is just a procedure. Millions of people have it. I haven’t had any real symptoms. At least, I don’t think they are symptoms. I don’t know what they are, just things that have been bothering me. I only know I am not allowed to eat, and the peach Jell-o quivering in the fridge is beginning to look like coq au vin.

Not eating, fasting, is like missing a step in a dance or a skipping rhythm. Or maybe stepping back from everything. It feels weird, hollow. It leaves you clutching at the air. And oddly depressed, your pacifier snatched out of your mouth, so that you are forced to see, and feel, all the things that you would really rather not.

Cancer in the family: the things you don't want to know

The things you don't know are, sometimes, the things you DO know, packed away in a sealed box of memory somewhere in a dusty attic.

All night I dreamed of spiders. They were huge, big fat ones with distended abdomens, and I wanted someone to come and kill them because I couldn't even begin to go near them. At one point a big black snake sprang up out of nowhere, and I found an Indo-Canadian boy to come and catch it and take it away.

The spiders were deeply enwebbed and camped all around my bed, crouched and lying in wait. I could not possibly use that bed. Where would I sleep?

As an adjunct to the kicking-and-screaming post of a couple of days ago, the one about not wanting to go to the doctor, well. . . I went. I went expecting it to be awful, and in fact it was a relief.

But not for the usual reason, the "oh, there's nothing wrong here". The truth is, we don't know. I came away with a couple of requisitions for medical tests, the sort of thing I would have hated and dreaded before. Now I was actually determined to go ahead with them, even grateful to have them.

What brought on this change of heart? The look on my doctor's face when I told her my symptoms. It was not exactly an uh-oh look, but it was more serious than anything I'd seen on her face before.

Maybe it's nothing, I said to myself, knowing full well it wasn't. Don't be a hypochondriac, don't fuss about every little thing. But at a certain point, you begin to connect the dots.

And maybe it isn't anything. I told myself, statistically, it's probably nothing. For years and years, if doctors asked, I said, no, there's no history of cancer in my family. Both my parents lived to be over 90.

That last part is true. But it was just today, one day post-examination, that I began to remember things. I  remembered things that, strangely, I had never entirely forgotten, but had packed away in a category marked "please forget".

Because both my parents lived to be over 90, I assumed there was no cancer in the immediate family. No one died of it, so it couldn't have been there. Now I realize how erroneous a conclusion like that can be.

Suddenly I recalled being, maybe, 12 years old or so, which was in the mid-1960s. Then without any explanation or warning, my mother was in the hospital.

There were murmurings about what was going on, some sort of surgery, but I remember I was never allowed to visit her. (Never allowed to visit my mother in the hospital?) You must understand, you were not allowed to say the word "cancer" back then, or even think it. The whole topic was drenched with a sense of impending doom. So I never asked any questions about this, because I knew I couldn't.

A long time later, she told me her doctor had prescribed massive doses of estrogen for her when she was in her 40s. There was a book called Forever Young that was a bestseller back then. Written by a doctor, it claimed that estrogen "replacement" would keep middle-aged women young-looking and interested in sex for decades past the "change of life".  It could even turn back the clock and take ten years off a woman's appearance. A preposterous idea, not to mention a very dangerous one.

This estrogen was not balanced with progesterone or anything else, just dumped into the system "raw". I doubt if anyone found themselves becoming preturnaturally young from this. My mother's appearance didn't change except to get older, like everyone else's. But then, years later there was this mysterious, frightening "thing" where she disappeared for a while, and for some reason I couldn't see her.

Fast-forward to the mid-1980s. This time my mother phoned me with some "news", but now I was an adult and I DID ask questions. My father had discovered he had blood in his urine and had to be rushed into surgery. They told my mother the tumor they found was "the good kind", and she countered that with, "There is no good kind." She was right; it was cancerous, but he lived. The surgery had been successful.

It looks now as if both my parents had cancer. Because they didn't die from it, because they both made it past 90, I have never "counted" it in the family medical history. The whole thing sort of disappeared. But when they're taking a medical history, they don't usually ask you, "How many of your family members died of cancer?" They usually ask something like, "Have any of your family members had cancer?"

This doesn't look good for me. But up to now, any weird or scary symptoms I've had have turned out to be "nothing", so maybe this is just more "nothing".

I had a bleak and bizarre thought today when I first woke up, my pelvis sore from all the peeking and probing: I can't die from this, because I don't exist.

You may ask: how can this be?

I am not in touch with my family of origin, a very long story which I will not attempt to tell here. I did not see my mother's obituary until a couple of years after her death. For some reason, I looked it up on the internet.

By some magical act of transmogrification, my mother, who gave birth to four children (five, actually - one died in infancy) now had only two children, my two eldest siblings. I had been completely erased from the record, along with my brother Arthur, a brilliant musician and my closest childhood friend. A schizophrenic, he had brought shame on the family with his mental illness, his pagan religion (Buddhist) and his untimely death in a fire.

Two children from four! That's some mathematical trick, this omission of two lives, two births. It's as if we were somehow unmade because we were unwanted, or at least too much of an embarrassment to keep on the roster.  A friend of mine (stunned) said to me, "But. . . but. . . what about people who knew the family, who knew you when you and your brother were growing up? What would they think? Wouldn't they be confused that you weren't mentioned?"

I don't know.

So, folks, it's good news after all! I can't die of cancer, because officially I don't exist.
I was never born or even conceived. I never was. This gives me a strange sense of liberation, as if I am already floating around free like a ghost.

I thought I had two pregnancies, but you can't be pregnant if you don't exist, can you? My children must have suddenly appeared full-blown like Athena springing from the head of Zeus. And my grandchildren? They were already miracles, but now that I know they appeared out of the thin air, they are more precious to me than ever.

(I'm no great fan of Dr. Oz, but I thought this article was enlightening and well-written and also, I think, unusually honest for a TV guru.)

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2075133_2075127_2075098-1,00.html

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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