The Oddity of Breast Cancer Awareness Month

14 Oct

Caribou Coffee is doing it; the Capella Tower downtown Minneapolis is doing it; that marathon is doing it; Ford is doing it, and the cast of The Big Bang Theory’s doing it for Ford…October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and of course, I’ve never really been “aware” before now.

It raises this strange feeling in me: what do “awareness months” really do? Do the people working at Caribou who don pink leis or shiny tights or bandanas really through these actions become any more “aware” of what they’re promoting? Yes, you mention your mom’s breast cancer and someone’s bound to say, “Oh yeah, my [insert distant, usually female relative here] went through it…I mean, s/he didn’t…but, yeah, wow.” I’m guilty of this: before this summer, I knew my aunt had survived breast cancer — twice. But did that affect me? Did it change me? Did I think of it unless prompted? I would say “no.”

And so all these people parading around in sweet baby pink feel a little bit like impostors to me. Like “Wow, you’re so into dressing up and sticking pink ribbons on things…and that’s all it is to you.” This has honestly been my thought process for the last two weeks.

Well, I suppose instead of just complaining about how inconsiderate people can be, I’ll use this as a teaching moment.

Breast Cancer Awareness shouldn’t be about the colors — about turning city lights pink or pinning on pink ribbons. It should be about building awareness of the fact that breast cancer SUCKS, and to be a breast cancer survivor means you’ve personally gone through hell. Do I really know what my mother went through this summer? No, I don’t. I can’t imagine. She still exclaims her surprise when she realizes she’s bald, although she hasn’t had her hair since July. She still struggles with “feeling masculine.” She still admits she much prefers it when strangers in public approach her to say “I’m a four-year survivor” and clasp her on the shoulder, than to when strangers just stare at her bald head under her baseball cap, or cast her looks of sympathy. Breast cancer outlives the mastectomies and the chemo therapy or radiation or both. Its repercussions are long-lasting. And I don’t think it ever gets easier, or at least nobody should ever assume that it does. THIS is what people should be aware of. Not some sentimental shit about selling pounds of coffee bearing someone’s name (Amy) that nobody really thinks about. Did that guy at Caribou give me that gift bag with the little scarf and notebook and pen because I told my mom’s story to him, or just for buying that half pound of coffee? If the former is true, that’s what it’s about. If the latter is true, though, then damn this all to hell. People cannot use cancer as an excuse to purchase something that’ll make them feel a tiny bit better about themselves, like they made a difference. That is a load of crap.

If you’re at all going to be “aware” of breast cancer, then BE AWARE. Don’t use this as a chance to dress up or make yourself feel like a bleeding heart. BE AWARE of the facts — the cold, hard truth about cancer. BE AWARE of the lives that have been affected by cancer, or the lives that have been lost. DON’T just smile. THINK, and HURT for these victims and survivors alike. THEN, and ONLY THEN, should you be allowed observe Breast Cancer Awareness month.

One Treatment Left

14 Aug

I should have updated this more frequently. It would have helped myself, and it would have helped my friends understand this ordeal better. But more often than not, I considered updating “Twenty” only to change my mind, to deliberately decide not to.

Through the novel I’m currently writing, I sort of articulated why. I wrote this line,

[Then] it was helpful, a place to interpret things after I went through them, and often to cherish them. Here, it will be difficult enough having to experience this.

I went through middle school and high school chronicling EVERYTHING I experienced. There are notebooks I’ve hung onto filled with emotional entries about this or that crush; that fight I was in with that friend; the bad grade I got; my hair/body/clothes; etc., etc., etc. It started to taper off this last year of college — which is unfortunate, and a misfortune which I currently feel acutely. My prolific-ness is capricious: once in a while, I’ll just sit down with a pen/keyboard and BLURT out everything. Or maybe during a conversation with a friend. But generally, it’s dwindled. My word count is primarily reserved for writing fiction.

This summer was not at all what I anticipated. I expected my mom’s experience with breast cancer to be the kind of suffering that brings enlightenment. You know…wow, shit sucks, but God/friends/family/life is amazing. And you know — maybe some of this will only come in retrospect. But right now, this experience hasn’t been like that.

I feel like just how the chemo therapy has had a cumulative affect on my mother, and has slowly worn her down through the course of the past five treatments, so has it worn me down.

There’s less light in my eyes and I’m just not joyful. I don’t feel like I’ve had anywhere healthy to turn in order to deal with this. Some people that I expected to be around to help me didn’t end up sticking around. The repercussions of being a transfer/commuter student at Augsburg also showed in that I talked to few people I met this last year. And it’s an unrealistic notion to try to maintain close relationships with Bethany people, because I just don’t get out of the cities at all. I knew I had the potential to turn inwards during this, to bottle things up. I’m disappointed to say that I believe that I very much have.

The idea that people would continue to support my mom — you know, with meals and cards and scarves in the mail, like how they came pouring in during the first few weeks after her diagnosis — has left me entirely disillusioned. Half the time, I feel lonely and angry. The other half, I’m too busy to think about it.

I suppose the biggest blessing I’ve had this summer is almost-constant work. West Suburban Summer School was a Godsend. It got me sunshine, it got me out of the house all day for 5 weeks, and I found out what a beautiful blessing that little kids (and not so little kids) can be. Arc’s Value Village is laid-back and straightforward with eclectic coworkers. Maybe I wouldn’t have appreciated these positions as much if not for the cancer…but now I think I’m just trying to talk myself out of the darkness I’d gotten into.

But the truth is, this has felt pretty rotten. I don’t feel as though it’s made me stronger. I feel like it’s made me angry. Then yesterday (prepare yourself for the nerdiness…and go) I was watching “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and Harry has this emotional breakdown towards the end of the movie whilst confiding in Sirius Black about feeling angry and dark.

(Harry) I just feel so angry, all the time. What if after everything that I’ve been through, something’s gone wrong inside me? What if I’m becoming bad?
(Sirius)I want you to listen to me very carefully … the world isn’t split into good people and [bad people.] We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.

But like — look how pretty that looks on paper (or spoken by the very pretty Gary Oldman.) Doesn’t mean it’s as simple when the choice is there. This is also, I realized, an emerging theme in “Redefining Evil.” Everyone in the story has their own nighttime. It’s no different inside. It’s just whether we choose to seek the light.

Anyway…long story short, I miss my mom’s hair. I want to run around the world without ever having to stop. I want this fucking chemo therapy to be DONE. NOW. I’m still trying to see what this experience is making me into.

But at the end of the day, I know I haven’t given up hope.

Slumber Party

16 Jun

Yesterday my mom and I went to a cosmetics class at Fairview Hospital in Edina – it was called “Look Better, Feel Better.” It’s a charity organization catered towards women going through breast cancer treatment. Chemo therapy does a lot of wonky stuff to the body that you don’t usually think of. It changes the quality of one’s skin; their nails; and obviously there’s the hair loss. So the program itself is pretty cool because it offers women a way to approach make-up and wigs and hats from the same perspective.

I expected a seminar with a ton of people, so I was pleasantly surprised when it was a small conference room with the facilitator and only three other women. The subject line of this entry comes from how the whole thing felt — these women were upbeat and their journeys with cancer was more of a footnote to the pleasure of, say, discussing what shade of lipstick is most flattering. It was super encouraging. It gave a certain sense of normalcy to all this.

That’s really how it feels. I’m seeing the wisdom that I was given early on when my mom was diagnosed. I had someone tell me that I would be creating a new kind of normal. And this is it. My mom’s bald. I wear pink bracelets whenever I go out in public. I use “my mom has cancerrr” as a great excuse to buy new clothes. Stuff like that. It’s all right.

Toxic Pee

17 May

As some of you might know from my Facebook status earlier today, or from my mom’s CaringBridge, today she went through her first chemo therapy treatment. Although she came home and nearly fell on her face the moment she got in the door, she’s doing all right. The worst of the symptoms is yet to come — fatigue won’t hit her until approximately four days from now, which is why the treatments are 3 weeks apart. She got impatient with waiting to shave her head so my dad buzzed off a ton of her hair tonight. I’m happy she did what she had to in order to decrease her anxiety — but that wasn’t my first impression.

After she sat me down while I was in the middle of my victory dance over beating Mario Galaxy 2 for the Wii and gave me what was essentially the pep talk of my life, I experienced a bit of an attitude change. This was yesterday.
You see, I might be good in school but I’m not very disciplined in other areas of my life. I tend to reserve all my hard work for school and do whatever I feel like doing once my homework is done and my 4.0 has been achieved. In this case, that manifested as the idea that, since my mother’s the one going through breast cancer and I can keep a straight enough face around non-family members and I had the right to then bitch and sigh and look away when I was alone with my family. But looking away is easier than educating myself and facing the facts, which I haven’t been doing.
Yesterday after she talked to me I got pretty frustrated over things that I’m sick of being frustrated over. In the midst of this, my dog Evvy began her daily pestering for me to take her for a walk in the park. I yelled at her a few times, and then realized that walking might clear my head. So we went — the weather was beautiful; sunny, cool, with a breeze to keep the air fresh. Initially I planned on just doing a short walk like I usually did. Then I literally reached a crossroads and, still feeling frustrated, I decided to take a longer route. This resulted in me talking and pestering myself into the three-mile loop around the marshland by my house.
By the time I was nearing home almost an hour later, I had clean forgotten about the anger that I’d left with, and Evvy and I were both feeling spirited enough to add an extra half a mile to our route.
It was the first time all summer I’d walked that far and it was definitely the first time in a while that I succeeded in deliberately pushing myself out of my comfortable routine.
I think I was able to do that because of my talk with my mom — more than just bracing me for the tough parts of the stretch of this fight with breast cancer that’s now ahead, she reminded me that I might need to try a little harder.

Today, after one of my dear friends kept me company for some of the time while my parents were at the clinic for chemo, I saw the effects of this attitude change. I had woken up feeling like I was getting sick. My head pounded, my nose ran, my throat itched. I ran through scenarios of having to stay somewhere else while I was sick so as to avoid contaminating my mom while her immune system was down. I ignored the possibility that my symptoms could be allergies. I fussed and drank more coffee, hoping it would kick my headache. When it didn’t, I finally took some allergy medication…I’m a bit stubborn when it comes to medicating myself, so HUZZAH to doing it anyway! When it didn’t kick my headache and a stomachache set it, I sighed and hung my head and popped some tylenol. By the time my parents returned, I felt fine — physically and emotionally. I even felt fine enough not to be so afraid of my mom’s toxic pee (true story), which could burn the flesh off my butt if she didn’t wipe the seat as to run away and use a different bathroom. And good news: no flesh on my bottom has been yet seared away.

Of course, this current peak isn’t to say that I’m not going to feel angry enough to go trip a stranger on the street. However, I think God and my family and I are building me up to being capable of pulling my foot in before I do the tripping and offering a smile to the world instead.

This is where I’m at — the peak, with the humble awareness that it’s not over yet.

Mother’s Day

8 May

The other night, one of my good friends shared 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 with me. The verses read “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I’d heard it once or twice before. It was one of those passages that I usually dismiss as verses used by happy people to justify their perpetual happiness. But when this friend shared it with me, it felt different. Rather than feeling like a justification, it felt like a challenge. Because indeed — encountering something like cancer is not cause for celebration. In fact, there are a lot of moments where it would seem more natural to weep than rejoice. Yet this passage calls for thankfulness despite, well…despite the shit.

I felt odd anxiety this week when I dwelt upon the upcoming holiday: today, Mother’s Day. It felt different from Mother’s Days of past years because this entire ordeal has revolved around my own mother. She has survived and done so with dignity, so I felt like I was celebrating the work of a superhero rather than my dear mother. Last night I learned that my brother and sister-in-law were coming over during church to pot flowers, and I felt surprisingly envious. For a long time that was the tradition upheld by my brother, dad and I. I had kept hoping that it would happen this year, but it was mostly my mom and I home alone all week. My dad would come home in the evenings and the last thing I wanted to do was call him away from my mom and leave her alone to figure something out. Somehow that seemed counterproductive to the whole “do something for your mom” business that I was aiming for. Plus, gift-giving has never come naturally. I love through words and quality time. This was where my anxiety came from. I felt this strong need to do something special for her.
Nonetheless, in one of the rare moments I had alone with my dad last night I told him I wanted to make my mom breakfast, which is something else I used to do for her when I was little. But she was indefinite on when she said she would wake up, and the one time she did give me was seven a.m. You can imagine that waking up at 6:30 a.m. to prepare a meal for her didn’t sound that appealing when I was supposed to be on summer break.
But as it usually does, it worked out because I think God was (is) on my side. My dad politely woke me up and I was too grateful to be grumpy about the early hour, especially since we hadn’t discussed him waking me up. He just did it, and I climbed out of bed and without complaint got to work. I cooked the prettiest egg I’d ever done and fixed everything to her liking.
The best part is? She was totally surprised. Due in part to awesome intuition plus her familiarity with me, my mother is a hard woman to shock. She’s really great at being grateful anyway, but shocked she rarely is. So when I woke her up from a deep sleep and brought in her breakfast, everything was worth it and the anxiety was defeated then and there.
It was a really good feeling, one that I desperately needed and that gave me joy, even though I was mostly still asleep.

Aside from this, things are continuing and I am learning and growing and, yes, grieving sometimes through these circumstances. A surprise like this morning is one that I can be thankful for, but it’s a challenge to be thankful even when I felt anxiety or was struggling to accept that my mom will lose her hair when she starts chemo therapy. She got a wig this week and it was probably one of the weirdest things to behold in my life. I might have been a little overwhelmed in the moment but at least now I can try to be thankful that she got a wig, that it’s a nice one, and that things like that are available for wonderful people like my mother.

By the way — joy is not the same as happiness. I’m not entirely sure what joy is, but I am certainly not under the impression that it’s an easy thing to acquire. I think, maybe, that joy is looking up. Happiness might alternatively be looking around, relishing the sunshine or the good food or the fun times. But joy is looking up because no matter what’s around you, there’s always the Father above. And contrary to how I might talk some days, I am not fine without Him.

Finally, how grateful am I to have such a woman as my mother to be my example. I love you, mommy. Today is yours, and I am thankful for that. <3

Good Friday

22 Apr

I’m happy that it rained on Good Friday. I’m not simple enough to think it rained everywhere today in remembrance of the day Jesus was put to death, but then again, it wasn’t Friday everywhere today either.

I’ve gone through life understanding different parts of my faith walk at some times and other parts of it at another time. I think that’s how faith can be so prevalent in someone’s life — strong faith, sincere faith, isn’t that much stronger either in the good or the bad moments in life but rather matters in different ways depending on where you are.

Anyway, since most of my faith developed in adolescence, one way that Jesus has almost always made sense to me is Jesus as He is rejected. But today, once more, He makes sense to me in that way for an entirely different reason than before.

My mom’s breast cancer has given me a new lens on life. Virtually everything I do is now seen through it. Everything I feel feels like it comes from this. In this case, the emotions that Jesus experienced from the Last Supper on through His last moments on the cross are felt by me through this new lens. Loneliness as it relates to His despair in Gethsemane makes sense to me in a new way. Not trying to be all emo here — only honest. It’s amazing how I can be so acutely aware that I am surrounded by support while simultaneously feeling alone. I’ve experienced encouragement from people in some very unexpected, delightful, awe-inspiring ways since this started — but I’ve also felt inclined to draw away and inside because of some people. I think maybe it’s because of how few people can support me through personal experience with this kind of intense emotional experience. Now I sound like some Humanist psychologist but really, the uniqueness of the human experience sometimes SUCKS because nobody can ever really know another’s feelings.

That, however, is entirely untrue as soon as I turn my eyes from the things of this earth towards the things I can’t see. I haven’t felt this connected to my Savior as in this very moment in a very long time. Because He does get it. He’s been lost in darker places than me. When He was here. Walking with feet just like mine albeit probably hairier. [;)] I won’t harp on this, because this is where I could go swelling into some inspired speech, but I’m just not in the mood. That’s not the point. Lately I’ve been wondering if my faith is at all relevant, but today, Jesus is relevant because He was lost despairing in the darkness but He is the light and He is my light and He knows the way through the night.

Early Mornings

20 Apr

It has been brought to my attention that this blog needs updating. I agree and of course I have agreed for a few days, and yet still I’m only now getting around to it! There’s no real explanation except maybe that sometimes it’s not as easy as it sounds to share my feelings about this experience. If I’m having a tough time with it, my first response isn’t really to go blog on “Twenty” about it.

Anyway, since my last (lengthy) update, things have gone from bad to better. Last week was really difficult for my mom and in addition to feeling compelled to care for her, these last few weeks of school are speeding up and stressing out my working capacity. However, presently, this week has been going very well. I think for me it’s very, very good to be a commuter because I don’t miss out on being here for my mom and dad but I can also withdraw to school to recover.

…I have just been informed of the THREE INCHES OF SNOW outside. I have to go…dig out all my winter clothes that I locked away BECAUSE IT’S APRIL 20. OH. MY. GOODNESS.

Things I Realized I’d Taken for Granted

10 Apr

Things I realized I’d Taken for Granted

  • Squishy hugs
  • Hair
  • Being able to wash your own hair
  • Boobs & cleavage
  • Health
  • Organizations like the Susan G. Komen foundation
  • Being able to wash your own hair
  • Being able to moodily respond to parents, “I’ll do it in a minute” without feeling horrendously guilty
  • Dogs or cats climbing all over you
  • Reclining chairs
  • Compassion

    • Springtime

    5 Apr

    I figured that I should update this, though I’m not really feeling all that prolific…so, you’re all in luck, because this will probably be short! ;)

    Some of you might know from my mom’s CaringBridge entry about me that this weekend was the lowest yet in terms of emotionally dealing with this breast cancer shit. I’d say that the shock wore off, and that’s not really a surprise considering how fast all of this happened and how little time I had to respond to it until after the surgery. I got angry, and I felt like all of the energy had been sucked from my body (…by the vampire that is cancer? *gets shot.*) I was angry at the cancer and I was angry because the whole world seemed to be going on as it did before, and I just didn’t think that it should. I was angry thinking that as soon as this wears off for other people, the support that emerged will disappear and it’ll keep mattering to us but nobody else.
    It’s not that I necessarily got over that, but my hope was restored by Monday afternoon where I spent most of the weekend feeling utterly despairing. Monday before I saw my mom’s entry, I got a text from my wonderful foster sister wanting to hang out in the evening. She never, ever fails to make me laugh, and to make me feel valued and just…stable. After that, I heard from my wonderful roommate from last year who wants to see me this weekend. Both of them shared such beautiful, loving words with me and it was exactly what I needed.
    Additionally, after my last Monday class I got to talk briefly with this guy in my class who I feel God introduced me to just in time to be someone to help me through this. He has a beautiful mess of a life with this unbelievable faith that just radiates from him, and it’s an attitude I want to emulate. Don’t let the shadows block out His light.
    Finally, whilst picking up my mother’s drugs for her (and popping a few Vicodin…just kidding) with my aforementioned foster sister, I got this BEAUTIFUL message from my bfffe that moved me deeply. I saw her in it — and I really missed her.

    My friend pointed out that it’s a hard enough time in the school year as it is, and so where my attention to my studies might be waning in a regular year…now it’s dwindled to NOTHING. I can only hope that this’ll hardly get me in worse circumstances than any other slacking off, it’s just that in this case I can hardly focus long enough to figure out what I SHOULD be focusing on.

    It’s still incredibly difficult to accept the physical effects of this experience on my mom. I just think that of all people, she shouldn’t have had to go through it. Accidentally kicking my mother in the shin in the past was bad enough; seeing her in constant, serious pain literally causes me physical pain. We still get lots of laughs (I was cracking WAY too many bad jokes this morning), but I can’t wait for all of this to be behind us. I can only imagine what God will help us become once we emerge from this shadow and back into the sunshine. What’s more – I can’t imagine the sort of sunshine He’s going to help us see in the shadows.

    Two Days After

    1 Apr

    Yesterday was by far the hardest day of this yet. It was the day after a 13-hour visit at the hospital and I was supposed to be able to switch back to real life. But feeling like Wednesday and the surgery was a dream when it wasn’t left me shocked that I was supposed to be able to function normally at school on Thursday. To an extent I still functioned normally – speaking art talk during Drawing and still catching on to damn statistics in my Psych Research Methods course reassured me I’m not totally scrambled by all this…but mostly. My profs have been very understanding, and the outpouring of support from my friends from BLC, from family, and from my remaining HS friends has been breathtaking.

    But, you know…it still doesn’t change the fact that…everything is a little rotten. My mom is a champion but that’s not a surprise – I’ve always known that about her, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve only known that more and more. But undergoing major surgery sucks and all of this has happened in less than two weeks. The incisions are scary and they’re scary for her — thank God my dad has an unshakable stomach and isn’t squeamish like I am. She came home earlier today and it’s not as scary as I though it would be – I kept thinking of our poor puppy leaping onto my mom’s chest in elation at her return and…owwwwwwwwwwww. But that hasn’t happened (yet?). I finally have a kick in the pants to actually do the dishes for the family again. :P I also finally have a decent excuse to want to be a hermit! :D

    All joking aside, it’s a struggle. It’s a struggle that I know we’ll have victory over, but…boo.

    This has made me feel more connected to a number of things. My dad and I, first of all, well we’re really close and I am my father’s daughter in terms of writing and thinking and school and slapstick sense of humor. But this has given us one more thing to stand together in solidarity for — we both desperately want to take care of my mom. It’s also made me feel closer to my writing, because I put the cast of RE through a lot of shit and I understand a little more how they would realistically feel.

    Of course, while everything seems to have changed, some things survive. I can still somehow find the time to fawn over boys. My fat cat Misty still randomly turns around from her seat by the window and meows at us for no reason. And I still fuss needlessly over school, only to shake my head at myself when I finish the 4-page paper in an hour after worrying I couldn’t get it done by Monday.

    I met a woman on the bus one day before spring break who turned out to work with the Dean of Students at Augsburg – a blessing I didn’t even then know would be such a blessing. When I told her about my mom’s diagnosis she was instantly supportive, connecting me with the Dean of Students so she could help me if I needed special circumstances in my courses (which I did — or at least I needed to know I could have them). One thing really stuck with me when her and I were talking. I told her that it was weird going back to school because everything was so not normal – and she said, “Well, yes. But now you’ll just find a new normal.” I see that as being our goal. Right now this feels like an ongoing earthquake – but it’ll settle. The ground will be nothing like it was before, but sooner or later, it’ll stop shaking. (Oh, my goodness. Excuse the totally nerdy geology analogy. I blame my Astronomy class.)

    So — that’s where everything’s at right now. I’m off to give a little update to my Art Blog after this. Thanks for reading. <3

    p.s. excuse the shaky writing in here — sometimes I give myself permission not to proofread every sentence.

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