cancer

And here I would have thought that if Lulu and I were ever running through the woods together it would have been because someone was chasing us

October 8, 2013 by Jenny

Actual feet. My actual feet. Lulu's actual feet. That one time when we ran through the woods. Except we're not in the wood yet, obvs. — Actual feet. My actual feet. Lulu’s actual feet. That one time when we ran through the woods. Except we’re not in the wood yet, obvs.

So apparently I’m running the Scotiabank Waterfront 5k in a little over a week. So apparently I’ve been slacking in the whole fundraising thing. But I haven’t been slacking in the training. Which is sort of amazing, because I’m very good at quitting. (Though I like to think of it less like quitting, and more like being gifted at trying lots of different things.)

To recap: The Boss announced her intention to run a half marathon that was to take place four months after her chemotherapy ended. She’d been training for one when a breast cancer diagnosis crash landed in the middle of her life last fall. (You can read more backstory here and here. Or you can read about the Boss in her own words here.)

So Lulu and I thought we could probably get off our healthy bums and train for the 5K that’s associated with the race. You know, like a tribute to the lady who brought us together (she really was our boss) and became our beloved friend. So we embarked upon the Couch to 5K training program, which involves a lot of walking and running. And walking and running and walking and running. Then there’s more running than walking. Eventually there’s no walking at all.

I’m not gonna lie, running is not my favourite way to pass the time. I’m not a natural runner, I guess. It’s fine. It’s nice when it’s over. Toward the end of a run, I sometimes chant in time with my steps: “This is not as hard as chemotherapy.” One syllable per step. Yes, I sound like an idiot.

Once this summer Lulu and I were in the same town, and we ran through some woods together. And here I would have thought if Lulu and I were ever running through the woods together it would have been because someone was chasing us or we’d decided to re-enact the Blair Witch Project or something.

Mind you, if I HAD to, I could probably have run a 5K when I started. But it wouldn’t have been pretty. My goal was to run it comfortably, to feel like I’d truly invested the time to get ready for it. And, you guys, I totally have.

I’ll be raising money for the North York General Hospital Foundation. North York is where the Boss had her chemotherapy, and they were very good to her.

So, if you wanted to throw a few bucks my way, I’d be very, very grateful. You can do that here:

http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=1958795&langPref=en-CA

The cancer card

June 23, 2013 by Jenny

Lulu told me, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, to get a balcony.

She, the Boss, and I had procured a Groupon for a two-night stay at a ski resort about two hours from here. In the summer it turns into a hiking-fishing-golf resort. The Groupon covered the shoulder season, when it’s too late to ski, but it’s too early to fish. But we didn’t care because our criteria for a getaway were: 1. Get. 2. Away.

However! Our supercheap Groupon only got us a ground floor one-bedroom suite. When I called, I dutifully asked, “Is there any chance we could get a terrace or a balcony or anything?”

“Sorry!” the Very Nice Phone Man said. “We can’t upgrade the Groupons.”

I had a little moment here, a little pause in my soul. I knew I had to channel my inner cheapskate/complainer because otherwise I would have Lulu to answer to. The problem is, I cannot tell a lie. The reality was, it wasn’t actually a lie—it was complicated. But complicated = hard to explain. And did I mention that I cannot tell a lie?

The Boss had not actually started her chemo yet. She was going to be in the thick of it when we arrived at the resort, and we didn’t know how it was going to go. I started to imagine The Worst Case Scenario. (Because I’m very good at imagining The Worst Case Scenario. It’s one of my inborn talents.) Then I started talking.

“Yeah, see, so this is a girls’ getaway weekend, and one of the girls is undergoing chemotherapy, and she gets really sick, (and by “gets” I mean “might get”) so we were thinking it would be great if there was a way to bring the outdoors to her without her having to like, walk down several flights of stairs.”

Very Nice Phone Man then said, “I got you covered!”

Me: “Really?”

VNPM: We are all about making accommodations for people here. Let me see what I can do. [Pause for typing noises.] OK, I’ve got a great room for you with a balcony.

Me: Thanks!

VNPM: Wait, wait! I can do better than that! [Pause for typing noises.] OK, you have a room with the best view in the place.

Me: Thank you so much!

VNPM: I have to write something on the reservation. What should I write? I’m thinking I should just write, “chemotherapy?”

Me: I think that sounds totally reasonable.

Fast forward six weeks. The Boss and I are a few miles from the resort. Lulu is meeting us later. The “problem” is that although chemo has been excruciating, the Boss has handled it with her usual aplomb/courage/kick-assedness. She doesn’t look sick enough to justify the special treatment.

“OK,” I say, “here’s the thing. In order to get us a balcony, I had to, like, explain a few things to them.”

“You played the cancer card?”

“I played the cancer card.”

Happily, the Boss is totally in favour of playing the cancer card. And, really, why the hell not? Can I just say for the record that if you’ve never had cancer or watched someone close to you have it, CANCER SUCKS ASS WAY MORE THAN IT DOES ON TV?

“So,” I said, “the thing is, you need to look sort of…sick. Like, enough to justify the balcony. I might have told them that you can’t walk up and down stairs. I might have made a little speech about bringing nature to you.”

The Boss was all over it. She grabbed my arm and I “helped” her walk up the desk. We approached slowly, We tried not to laugh. We started to check in, and OMG, then she started freestyling.

I had pulled out my “It’s girls’ weekend!” card and was attempting to make small talk with the Desk Clerk Who Was Not the Very Nice Phone Man. (I had, irrationally, hoped that Very Nice Phone Man would be working at the desk. But it’s a ginormous resort with a bunch of different properties, and, probably, a call centre in Chennai.)

Somehow the talk jokingly turned toward how we’re going to be painting the town red. [Editor’s note: we stayed up till 10 pm the first night and 11 pm the second. Eleven was a stretch.] The Boss comes out with, sotto voce, “Well, you girls will have so much fun! I wish I could come with you!”

“Yes,” I said, picking up her cue, “But we’ll come back and trash the room like an 80s hair metal band, and you can participate in that.”

My friends, we got to our room, and not only did it include a balcony, but it was a two-bedroom suite on the top floor. They had surprise-upgraded us. And it really did have the best view in the place. Thank you, Very Nice Phone Man. No, seriously: thank you. We had more fun than you can probably conceive of. I would post the karaoke videos, but…not so much.

This is the part where it starts to sound like this post is sponsored by Blue Mountain Resort (I wish!). But honestly, from the first call to book the Groupon (Hi, Mr. Very Nice Phone Man!) to everyone we encountered there, they could not have been nicer or more helpful. The whole experience caused me to Google their corporate shit. I don’t know, these Intrawest people have some serous customer service good karma going on. (But then again, they’re getting their payback because we’ve already vowed to make it an annual thing. And a girl only has so many cancer cards to play.)

The moral of the story: I played the cancer card. I guess. But there really was cancer, and three girls spent two days having the time of our lives. So: Blue Mountain? THANKS. Breast Cancer? FUCK OFF.

You look like a goddess

May 28, 2013 by Jenny

We were dancing, Lulu, the Boss, and I. Because that’s what you do when you’re hanging out with your girlfriends and you have a get of jail/parenting card. The Boss said something about her bald head. It was semi-self-deprecating.

“Do you know what you look like to me? Lulu asked the Boss. “You look like a goddess.”

I had to agree.

A couple weeks later, the Boss and I went to the Keg (If you’re in the US, know that the Keg=semi-cheesy Canadian steak franchise. But expensive enough that you feel kind of classy). We took a picture which I can’t post because I don’t generally post identifying pictures here, but also because in front of me you can see 1) a “Keg-sized” glass of wine, and 2) a giant vat of butter for me to dip my crab into. (“Dip my crab into” should be a metaphor for something untoward, but I assure you it is not. I was literally dipping my crab.) There are only so many receptacles of yellow liquid a lady can countenance being photographed with.

The Boss had a hot flash. Who knew that was a side effect of chemo? Five to ten years of fake menopause, which ends just in time for the real thing!

“I’m going to have to take off my head scarf,” she said. “Is that OK with you?”

I sort of loved that she asked my permission. I was like, “Hells, yes! Take it off! Take it all off!”

This was the same lady who a few months ago was all, “I am not OK with being a person with cancer.” And yet, tonight, she was smoking. The makeup, the outfit–she had it going on. She just didn’t have any hair. It made her even hotter, in a “I am ripping up a picture of the Pope in front of you motherfuckers” sort of way.

The funny thing is, the Boss has this killer wig. It is to die for. I tried it on once, and I’m telling you, I have never looked so good. I’ve seen that wig a whole bunch of times, but never on the Boss’s head out in the world. I think this is telling. I think the Boss is braver than she thinks she is.

Wigs are hot and uncomfortable. So, apparently, are head scarves when you’re having a hot flash.

So she pulled it off. We were sitting at the bar. Then we went to a show (more on this later!). The Boss stayed bald the whole damn time. As we were walking from the restaurant to the show, she said, “Watch, watch how people stare at me.”

It was true.

I defended them. “Of course they’re looking at you. Who wouldn’t look at you? Think about it: you’re walking down the street, you’re on your way home, and all of a sudden this beautiful bald lady is in front of you. How can you not stare?”

My defense was heartfelt, but man, did they stare. Worst was the 30-to-40-something men. They seemed to be riveted to their phones, but then they’d look–just for a second–and then they were back to their phones. But the look–the look was killer.

“Do you know what you look like to me? Lulu asked the Boss, back when we were just dancing in our hotel room. “You look like a goddess.”

Yes, I thought. This is EXACTLY what a goddess looks like. Everyone is staring at her because how can they not? But also, SHE is staring at them. She is saying, “I’m hot, and I don’t want to wear my wig or my headscarf, and if you want to stare at me as a result, knock yourself out and BEHOLD ME.”

I might as well have been walking down the street with Kali. I learned about her in yoga teacher training. She’s the goddess of war and destruction, dark and violent and fierce. But also of life and creation, because you can’t have one without the other, can you? There are 108 ways to say her name! It takes a long time to go through them. Here we see her standing on top of Shiva, who is usually considered the Main Destruction Dude. (Because, you know, boys write history. And mythology But I digress.) Also, she is blue, so you would probably stare at her if you saw her sitting at the bar at the Keg.

“You look like a goddess to me!” Exactly. I just hope we can all remember, later, when everyone is healthy and distracted, what it’s like to be a goddess. Or what it’s like to walk down the street with one.

Discrepancies

April 29, 2013 by Jenny

“There’s a discrepancy,” said the Boss. “There’s a discrepancy between what I think and what I actually am.”

This post is about cancer, Chicklets. This post is no fun. We’re all about the “mock” here at Mock Chicken, but you can only mock cancer so much before you start to sound like an idiot. You have to recognize its power over you, if only metaphorically. They start to come at you with Stage X, blah, blah, invasive, blah, blah, and the smart thing to do is to listen to the doctors, to listen to the People Who Know. It’s important to do that.

But it’s also important to listen to your heart.

When the Boss was first diagnosed, she talked about starting her own blog. We talked about various titles and subtitles. DARK PINK was one of them, because though she was down with the whole “I’m fighting cancer” thing, she wasn’t so sure it was all going to be all daffodils and pink ribbons. I like to think, invoking Lily, that she was finding her goth self. Then we thought of BITE ME, CANCER.

Wait. You can’t say that. It turns out that having cancer isn’t a black and white thing. There is no line in the sand where on one side you’re sick and on the other—congratulations!—you’re cancer-free. It turns out that anywhere you have to fill out a form—at a spa, for instance—there is just a single box marked CANCER.

The Boss is, rightly so, like, “What does that mean? Like, ‘had cancer, ever?’ ‘Currently undergoing treatment for cancer?’ ‘Afraid of cancer?’”

She has a point. The word “CANCER” with a check box? “Yes! Every time I close my eyes, I think of you!” Or, perhaps, “No thanks, I think I’ll pass!

But what if you can’t? What if it’s already there, lurking despite your half marathons and your organic vegetables?

Then, I’m sorry to say, you’re fucked. Yes, there might be a silver lining, and I’ll get to that—we’ll end with that, for sure, but you people with the daffodils, you can pretty much go shove them up your ass.

Just to clarify: I don’t mean “you’re fucked,” in the “you’re dead” sense. I mean “you’re fucked” in the “now you are going to have to confront everything you thought you were and everything you thought was true” sense.

“There’s a discrepancy,” said the Boss. “There’s a discrepancy between what I think and what I actually am.”

Yes. This is true for all of us, is it not? But if you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and you have no hair and you haven’t been at work for five months, it’s a little more true.

“I’m not good at being with myself,” says the Boss. The honesty of this simple sentence hits me in the gut. I think I went to a year of yoga teacher training that cost several thousand dollars to come to this same realization. And I’m not trying to be glib here, I’m just breathless at the raw truth of the statement.

Lulu, the Boss, and I have spent a lot of time talking about what no one should never have to talk about: how to be honest with one’s children but not scare them. This is what it all boils down to, is it not? It might be as visceral as, “I have cancer,” but it might also be as seemingly simple as, “I’m not going to let the monsters come into your bedroom while you’re sleeping.” The difference is that she says the former and I say the latter—my son’s fears have to do with monsters raising his blinds—but what if the two are the same thing? How do you promise your children that cancer is not going to get you? You can’t. You have your statistics, and the statistics might be very much in your favour, but, ultimately, you can’t. And that’s scary. You frame it to be all about the kids, but it’s all so motherfucking scary. You’re supposed to say, “I don’t want to scare my kids,” and we get that, but maybe what we’re also saying is, “I don’t want to be this scared.”

When you’re young and you have cancer, no one wants to accept it. They’re all, “My friend who had breast cancer when she was 39 had a mastectomy and…blah, blah…” All I can really think to say is that cancer doesn’t give a shit how old you are. It is indifferent to your story, to your suffering. It is the great equalizer: it doesn’t care if you are 36 or 76. You can buy a hundred self-help books and none of it makes a difference. None of it is any truer than what you already know in your heart: this might get you. Maybe now, maybe later. Maybe NEVER, but you never know. And because you never know, it’s in charge, forever.

So you have your mastectomy. You have your chemo. You take your drugs. You are a “survivor.” But I think (and this is just me talking, I’m not putting words in the Boss’s mouth—I’m just projecting) that the awful/amazing thing about cancer, is that it makes you face your worst fear. And your worst fear, it turns out, isn’t a single thing. It’s everything mixed together. It’s: “how do I be by myself?” mixed with “what do I tell my kids?” mixed with “Do I check yes or no when they give me the ‘cancer’ box at the spa?” And that’s the thing about cancer: it’s not linear. It’s everything all at once. It’s too much.

I wish I had a clever ending. Sometimes I like to circle back to how I started, which is this case is:

“There’s a discrepancy,” said the Boss. “There’s a discrepancy between what I think and what I actually am.”

But I don’t think that’s actually true. I think the Boss is exactly who she’s always been. She’s facing cancer with the same relentless introspection she brings to everything. It’s just that this is harder. Much, much harder. If there’s a discrepancy there, it’s a version of the same discrepancy we all have, whether we acknowledge it or not. The difference is that she’s narrowing hers, much faster than the rest of us. She’s burning off the bullshit. The flames are cleansing, but they also hurt like hell.

cancer

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