Archive for February, 2008
parking spaces
A few days after every Herceptin infusion, I get muscle aches that make me feel like I’ve been weight lifting with Hulk Hogan. During those few days, it’s hard to get out of bed and once I finally do, I limp around for a few minutes until my muscles finally concede and agree to start working like they’re supposed to.
The other day I was post-Herceptin, and I had to get groceries. I drove to Albertson’s and looked for the spot closest to the store entrance. There were handicapped spaces, in which I cannot legally park, but right next to those spots was another space with a sign that said, Reserved for Expectant Mothers.
I sat in my car for a minute, pondering my dilemma. OK, so it was technically reserved for pregnant women. I didn’t begrudge any expectant mother her parking space, but surely I was having just as hard a day as any pregnant woman. I may not have been pregnant, but my muscle aches and fatigue provided just as much a challenge to me as any bulging belly could present to another woman.
And then I wondered why the proprietors of the grocery store singled out pregnant women. Weren’t there lots of other people who, like me, were having a bad day and needed a little TLC, like a special parking space?
And so, in a subtle act of civil disobedience, I parked in the special spot.
If it were up to me, every mall and grocery store and shopping center would have a Bad Day parking space. Because, let’s face it, we all have bad days. And on those days, it would be nice to know that the rest of the world cares and has made a special accommodation just for you.
You just lost your job? You had chemo this week? Your teenager got her navel pierced without telling you? You didn’t get into grad school? You spilled coffee on your white shirt on the way to work? Your adjustable rate mortgage just doubled?
We care, we love you, we understand. We’ve been saving this spot just for you — park here.
We can’t fix each other’s lives, but we can certainly make others’ lives easier with a little creativity and a lot of kindness and some simple sacrifices…even something as simple as a parking space.
1 comment February 25, 2008
lost and found
My favorite essay of all time is one that an English professor named Nancy Mairs wrote about her experience with Multiple Sclerosis. In her essay, entitled On Being A Cripple, she wrote, “Life is a lesson in losses. I learn one at a time.”
After my mastectomy in 2006, I began writing a memoir about my experience with breast cancer. Borrowing Mairs’ phrase, I tentatively titled it, “A Lesson in Losses.” When I told one of my friends what I was calling my memoir, she said matter of factly, “Well, that’s just depressing.”
She was right — it was depressing. Four months after my mastectomy, I wrote this prologue to my memoir:
I don’t always think about cancer.
Sometimes I think about dying. I wonder what you feel and think and see when you’re dying. Do you really see a light at the end of a dark tunnel? Do you see angels coming for to carry you home? Do you feel afraid when you take what you know is going to be your very last breath here on this planet? Does it hurt?
Sometimes I think about the past. I think about the birth control pills I took for a few months when I was in grad school, the glasses of wine I occasionally had with dinner, the packets of Equal I stirred into my coffee every morning, the plastic water bottles I drank from, and the formaldehyde I inhaled in anatomy class. If I could go back into my past, what could I change? What should I change? What did I ever do to my body to make it do this to me?
Sometimes I think about pain. I close my eyes and feel my chest throbbing, and I whisper to my body that everything’s okay, the cancer’s gone, it can rest now. But my chest hurts anyway. It aches and throbs and twinges, months after the surgeons told me I would be recovered from the mastectomy. It wakes me up at 2 a.m. and won’t let me get back to sleep. And when I’m laying there in my bed in the middle of the night, I wonder if the pain will ever go away. If I surrender, if I cry ‘uncle’ to the invisible bully who’s tormenting me, will he stop?
And sometimes I think about the future. I wonder how it feels when your baby latches on and sucks milk from your breast for the first time. I wonder what it’s like to have your lover rest his head between your breasts after passionately making love to you. And then I bury my head in my hands and I cry. Because I’ll never know.
At that point, that’s all my experience was: a series of excruciating losses. After my recurrence in 2007, the list of losses grew even longer. At night when I had trouble sleeping, I’d lie in bed and take a mental inventory of everything I’d forfeited to cancer: my breasts, my hair, my boyfriend, my fertility, a lot of friends, and, after being out of work for seven months, most of my savings. A few days after I finished chemo, I went into sepsis from pneumonia and almost lost my life — and in the midst of all the sadness, I almost lost my faith.
God felt so far away, it was as if He weren’t there at all. I read verses like Joshua 1:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and I told God, “I know You’re there, but I can’t feel You.”
I read Jeremiah 29: 13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,” and I told God, “I know You’re there, but I can’t find you.”
It was a dark, dark time, and it seemed to me that the only solution was for God to take me home. At least in heaven, there would no pain, no scars, no sadness to eclipse the light of His presence. “I just want to be with You,” I told God over and over again. “I’ve lost everything I cared about. Just take me home to be with You.”
And there, in the darkest valley, is where a merciful God reached down and found me. In the midst of sleepless nights and muscle aches and bone pain and nausea and fevers and everything else I was going through, He finally let me feel His presence again. He didn’t magically remove all the effects of living with cancer in a fallen world; He made Himself known in spite of it.
Like David said in Psalm 18, “He reached down from on high and took hold of me…He rescued me because He delighted in me.”
After that experience, I decided to rename my memoir, because A Lesson in Losses doesn’t seem adequate any more. The amazing aspect of my story is not in all the losses I sustained, although they were significant.
The really remarkable thing is that in the midst of those losses, I was found.
2 comments February 18, 2008
