This Could Save Your Life

November 17, 2009

I was a 38 year old mother of two, married, ate right, exercised, no cancer history, breast fed my kids, when on a Sunday morning in the shower, while doing my routine self-breast exam, I felt a lump.  

It took five years and a double mastectomy, dose dense chemotherapy, radiation and 1825 Tamoxifen pills, but I am alive and kicking.  I am a writer, a blogger, a non-profit founder, a hands-on mother, wife, daughter and more than anything, I am the most grateful woman on the planet that something as simple as a self-breast exam on a leisurely weekend morning quite literally saved my life.  

So, it is with anger and outrage that I read the headlines today that a new study says women should wait until 50 to have mammograms, and worse yet, that self breast exams are useless.  Here's the link to the article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33973665/ns/health-womens_health/

Excuse me?

 Listen, I know the deal.  I know it's about money.  I know we are in a health care crisis.  I get the fact that we have these amazing machines to detect disease and nobody can afford to pay for them anymore.

 But is killing people the answer?  I don't think so.  

 And if you worry that I'm being dramatic, Hell yeah, I'm being dramatic.  I am in a theatrical froth right now.  Out there somewhere, is a woman who is reading that trash about the new mammogram advice with cancer creeping around her breast and she isn't going to know it.  She's going to blissfully go through her day and her week. She'll do her job and meet her friends and she is going to think, "Hey, I'm good, I'm not 50 yet.  Cancer can't get me."

 And she is going to be dead before she ever sees that birthday.

 And why do I know that?  Because if I'd ever had the misfortune to follow these outrageously deceptive new health guidelines regarding mammograms, self-breast exams and their relevance in early detection--

 that woman would be me.

 Here's the best part of that article, and yes, I am being sarcastic,

 "The task force advice is based on its conclusion that screening 1,300 women in their 50s to save one life is worth it, but that screening 1,900 women in their 40s to save a life is not, Brawley wrote."

 Hey Brawley--and I'm assuming Brawley has never had cancer--I have two people I'd like you to meet.  They are my children.   They are 10 and 7.  And thanks to that "useless" self breast exam and the not-necessary-mammogram suggested in the article you're quoted in,  they still have a mother.  And they think that is very much worth it.

I happen to agree. 

And because I don't like to bash anyone without at least offering a solution to the problem, here's a start: You get kids when they're 16-like I was in highschool, when the gym teacher told us to start self breast exams--and you tell them to do them.  You show them how,  so as they grow they will know how their breasts are supposed to feel. 

 You take that money you invested in this bogus study and put it into something that actually saves lives--early detection AT AN EARLY AGE.  You get to kids when they're young and have a fighting chance.

 Then you don't have so many freaked out women at 40 who begin so late that they don't know what their boobs are supposed to feel like, and they create all those false positives and all that wasted medical money that the panel is so worried about.

In the meantime, you leave us 40 year olds alone, and you encourage us to keep on top of our health, and our breasts and our lives, instead of dissing our own health and leaving it until we're 50.   Let me give you some information:  If I'd followed such an ill-fated medical message under the guise of staying healthy,  I'd be dead by now.

 How's that for a study?

When I Went Topless

September 24, 2009

Recently I was reading the daily U.S. internet headlines and what to my wondering eyes should appear but this: More women going from jobless to topless. 

Which reminded me of the day I went topless for the public, too. 

I was standing in a busy hallway at Massachusetts General Hospital in my home country, the United States. It was a cool spring morning and I was heading upstairs to have a double mastectomy because of breast cancer. 

As you can imagine, I was an emotional mess. My family was around me and everyone was doing their best to help me out by making small talk and holding my hand but honestly I just felt like my brain was being sucked into a fear vacuum that whose power switch was stuck "on". 

So I'm standing there, wrapped in this thin jonney thingy, awaiting the elevators, and they were taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R. When you're waiting in line for someone to come remove your breasts, the waiting is beyond hard: it's mind-numbing. 

And as I'm standing there, my mind is racing, and I'm starting to cave inside. Maybe I should just leave? What if I don't get on the machine and I just walk home, will this breast cancer young-mother-this-can't-be-happening-to-me all go away? What is my 1-year-old daughter doing right now with her caregiver, and is my son doing alright (at 4 almost-5-years-old, he knows what's going on..)

And then something hit me and it was hard: I'll abbreviate it here but it was something like "OMG Ann snap out of it, this is YOUR LIFE. You can not give in! You must fight!" 

And so I forced myself to think of something else. ANYTHING else; and as I stood there I looked down at my chest, and how thin this jonney was around my breasts, my breasts that I am losing, how can this be happening. And wouldn't it be a happening if this tiny hospital jacket I have on with its threadbare tie-up came all undone and then there I'd be, flashing this hallway. And that WOULD be something--since in about 20 minutes they'll be taking them away forever and I'll have no chance to ever give the world a show that this catholic-school-girl wouldn't in a million years EVER consider doing anyway but.... 

And then it hit me. OMG. This is my last flashing chance.

I mean, I never was a "bad girl" and I never wanted to be one, but dang--in about half an hour I don't even have the option anymore. HOLD UP HERE!

So the rest is kind of a blur at least for me, and it's in my film, but for the sake of this blog this is what you need to know: I released my inhibitions AND the ties from that jonney and I let my boobs fly! 

Me, the Catholic school girl, flashing the hallway at one of the busiest hospitals on the eastern seaboard. What happened to me?!

I'll tell you what happened, I laughed. REALLY hard. And so did my family. And so did the old man stranger who, wrapped in his own jonney, was awaiting an elevator, too. His eyes went wide and he smiled and looked over at me and he warbled, "do my eyes deceive me?" I think I apologized to him for the non-medical display but I like I said, I was laughing so hard...

And then the elevator doors opened up and took me to the surgery floor where my life and my body changed forever. 

Now these women in this article, whom I am fortunate to not have much in common with regarding the financial end of their stripping, and I do share one thing: we were all in a really bad way. Mine was medical, theirs is financial. The bad economy In the United States has played them for fools and now they must fight back with whatever cards they hold, or whatever body parts they can flash. 

I sure hope they rake in the dough safely and without hurting themselves or anyone else, until such a time as this economy settles down and they have better employment choices. I hope they get the last laugh--with whatever money they need to get by--and then I hope they can go on to make professional choices beyond the strip pole, and get whatever it is they need in order to survive and live their lives they way they've hoped and dreamed. 

I on the other hand would be stuck in a poor house if flashing my breasts were the only way I could make money these days. And it isn't, so I'm good, but there are times, like that morning I waited for that elevator to take me to surgery, that I felt cancer was a cruel joke being played on me. And then I flashed my breasts to the world, and I got the laugh I needed to go on and make the choices I needed to make that day, and many other days that followed it, work. I want to survive and live a life the way I always hoped and dreamed, too. 

I wish for all of us--me and the strippers--the best of luck with our crises, and the very last laugh.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Wristbands

This year marks my 5 year anniversary of having had (breast) cancer and having (hopefully) beaten it. (I'll know I beat it when I die of something else, which is not my original line, I was told that in the oncology room, but I use it all the time because it says it all.)

So I was sitting in the waiting area (which was packed by the way, UGH) and I happened to hear the woman next to me talking on her cell phone. It seemed to me by the way she talked to somebody on the other end of the line that she was rattled. Which I figured either meant that this cancer thing was still fresh in her life, still new and scary, and she was trying to keep her composure (but hell, with cancer breathing down your neck, that's not easy) or else she was just having a bad day and she couldn't deal with her reality today. Either way, I've been in both of those places, so it's all understandable to me. Cancer stinks. End of story. 

But just to make sure, I checked her wrist to see if she had a band. That's how I learned 5 years ago as I sat in that waiting room myself, a new cancer patient, who else was in my boat. If you had the patient wristband (with your name and birth date on it) you were in my boat. If you didn't, you were a friend or family member trying to help keep the "boat" afloat.

I didn't say anything to this woman, who was maybe in her 50's or early 60's. Not even when she got off the phone, and was flipping through a magazine (I remember doing that 5 years ago and not reading a single word) because sometimes people need their space. And I felt like this woman needed her space. I figured if an opportunity arises, I'll make small talk, but not now. For now I'll just be here, and maybe she'll see my wristband and know I am with her. I am a patient, too. I am one of her "kind". I looked down at her wristband and I looked at mine and in the silence between us I felt a deafening connection.

Within a few moments, a young woman came into the waiting area, and it didn't take me long to figure out that this young girl was the woman's daughter. She was twenty-something and vibrant and on her own cell phone talking to somebody about doing a breast cancer magazine layout and I knew she must work in the creative field, maybe marketing or writing. Then she talked to someone on the phone about music and I was thinking maybe she was a musician--when I leaned my head back and I hit the framed picture that was hanging behind my head on the wall. 

The second I hit it I felt it move and I turned to look behind me, hoping the picture wasn't coming crashing down. Fortunately for me it wasn't, but it was swinging precariously and this young girl, who was now sitting next to me in the seat between her mom and me, looked at me and our eyes got wide. That was how we started talking--"oh please," I said, "this picture can NOT fall on you. Me, yes--but you? I don't even know you." And we both laughed.

As we talked, her mom joined the conversation, and we all decided that cancer stinks and this young girl, a musician and singer-songwriter, is committed to fighting breast cancer in whatever way she can. Her mom has it, and that's about as close as it gets. Just ask my daughter, she'll tell you.

Within a few minutes, the nurse called my name to go into see my doctor. I smiled a goodbye and got up to go, but as I did so I looked straight at the mother. We hadn't really had too much direct cancer conversation, but as I got up, I leaned over and I flashed her my wristband. "Hang in there. I have the wristband too." And then I added, "Sisterhood." 

Later that night, I emailed this woman's daughter, who is indeed a singer-songwriter (she gave me her card). I told her that I got on her website and really liked her music. 

Then I wanted to write something to her mom. I wanted to tell her that she is not alone, though I am sure she feels like it. But she's not--she is part of the sisterhood that none of us wanted to be in but now that we are, we are marked and we are real. (I know men get breast cancer and I feel for them too; here I am addressing the loss of breasts that changes the female in a different way than it does the male.)

Just like the wristband that they make you wear at the cancer center so that they don't mix you up with somebody else, we are a group designated by disease but not alone in our illness. We have people. 

We are a big group, a varied group, of mothers and daughters who are fighting this thing in our own way, with our treatment plans, our families beside us, and our white paper bracelets. We are a unified, terrified, full-of-pride group of people who must lean on each other any way we can, even in snatches of time stolen in a waiting room full of people. 

And then something flashed in my mind: a book I read a few summers ago, the one about the 4 girls who share a pair of jeans and all the adventures they have and the growing they do while encased in these jeans--it was called "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." It was a good read and there were sequels and I think a movie.

But as I sat there writing this email I felt a sisterhood of my own: a sisterhood with this woman's mother, and all the woman in that waiting room today, and all the women who ever had or have to wear those wristbands and sit in waiting rooms not just in Boston but in Denver and New York and San Francisco and LA, and hear a doctor tell them they must lose their breasts, or a breast, or a piece of their breast, a slice of their womanhood, a defining portion of what makes them appear female. 

And how they have to push themselves to make it through, to survive, to grow, to be stronger than the disease, to push back, to thrive, to live.

And I found myself ending my email with: "I hope your mom had a good appointment today. Tell her to hang in there--she is not alone. We are out there with her--

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Wristbands."

The Five Year Plan

A lot of people talk about their “Five Year Plan”: where they want to be in five years, what they want to have accomplished, how much money or what position at work they’ll have, and so on. From there, they go to a Ten Year Plan that works off their five: if in 5 years you’ve got 10 thousand saved, in 10 years you’ll have 20…

I am one of those people, too, I talk about the 5 and 10 year plans. And I just hit my 5 year plan: it’s been five years since I told myself “in five years, Ann you WILL be alive.”

Which sounds pretty macabre and a bit over the top dramatic, but when you’re a cancer survivor, that kind of drama becomes every day life.

This past March was five years from the month that a doctor told me I had breast cancer. Really, he said “This is a breast cancer”--his exact words still burn in my memory. Those words hit me like a hail of bullets. My world caved in, crashed, blew up, froze, cratered, insert-your-favorite-demolition-verbiage-here. I would rather he had said something else, anything else, you have warts, you are ugly, time for a colonoscopy.  Anything.

But any of those millions of worries I used to have that seemed so critical if not more likely for a young mother with kids under age 5 to endure were erased in an instant: hemorrhoids or sagging breasts or early on-set wrinkles, poof gone. He said “breast cancer”, and suddenly everything else I’d worried about as a potential medical issue sounded laughable, really ridiculous. And surreality sunk in: my breast could kill me now.

I endured surgery and the loss of both of my breasts (one prophylactically), chemotherapy that sucked the cancer and the life out of me, radiation (the burning-skin-around-my-scarring kind) to wipe out any extra little cancer cells growing under cover, and all the endless check-ups, the anti-cancer recipes, the many vitamins, that one return-cancer-scare and all the exercise I could get from there, to here.

And here is 5 years later.

In the cancer world, five years past cancer is the first big milestone. It’s the initial indicator that all that hell and change and growth and loss and tears and fear and hope you’ve been through has actually done something; it’s kept you alive. 

So every year at this time I celebrate the fact that life is not a guarantee and that some times in some lives you actually have to fight for yours. 

This year, of course, it will be even more excessive: because I’ve hit that milestone that leans me toward a hopeful belief that the cancer won’t come back. The cancer docs say if you make it to five years, then ten years, and five years after that etcetera, you’re in good shape. They can’t guarantee that it won’t come back, though, which is what I really want to hear. But that’s impossible to predict, once a body has proved a place that cancer can live there’s no telling what will happen. Still, my doctor says this first five years is a great sign. So I’ll take that sign and run with it. 

And this year, I know I am one of too-many-thousand women who are celebrating their successful 5 year plan, all those faceless women I don’t know and never will but whom I feel so close to I could call them sister-- and in some cases brother, because men get breast cancer too. So this year, I celebrate for all of us. 

And I think of all the breast cancer patients whose plans didn’t work out, and who didn’t make it here, and who tried their hardest but still, their five year plan didn’t work. And I get a mix of fear and gratitude, and confusion, and wonder that my five year plan did. This year I’m sure I’ll cry a little--for them, for me, and for all of us who are mixed up in this cancer confusion. It’s been a long time, you’d think I would be used to it, but some days I still can’t believe it happened to me.

This year marks my fifth year anniversary of my diagnosis with breast cancer—and I’m still here to talk about it. That’s a Five Year Plan achieved.

Now, onto the Ten Year Plan.

The Lump

This blog is for everyone to read, but it is intended specifically for the audience that I met at the Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope and Healing in Maine, U.S in 2008. Here's why: 

At that screening, after we showed the film The Breast Cancer Diaries, my director Linda Pattilllo and I sat in on a panel Q and A. In the audience of at least 60 people were doctors, nurses, cancer patients, survivors, family and friends, and a young woman I'll call Y.

Everyone asked questions: how am I doing? How is my family? And questions about how the film came about and the dynamics between me and my director, who is also my sister-in-law and my friend.

And then Y stood up, and she asked me a question that stopped me cold. It went something like: Ann, how do you deal with the fear of recurrence of your cancer? It's such a scary thought, does it haunt you? (I am paraphrasing here, but that's the gist of her question.)

I stood there with the mike in hand and in the bloated pause that followed, this went through my mind: 

2 days earlier, I was at dinner with my husband and kids when I rested my chin in my hands and felt a lump on my neck. Oh sh-t. What is THAT? Four years and countless procedures and prescriptions later, it was the first lump I'd felt since the one in my breast. I didn't let on to my husband at dinner. I didn't want to scare him.

But the next day, I told him, and I asked him "Can you feel this?" and he felt it and said "yes." And I was off to my general practitioner like a shot. He confirmed it was a weird lump. I should get it looked at. 

That was a Sunday, this was a Monday; and I hadn't told anyone, not even Linda. But there I was in front of this crowd of people who already knew my fear before I spoke it. They undestood this weird world I live in now, this post-cancer "Boo! Scared you!" feeling I get every time I have a simple headache or a neck ache: is this a muscle pull or a tumor? Is this normal or am I dying?

So I couldn't believe I did it, but I guess my fear wanted to come out: so quietly I answered Y and to everyone else, I said: "Well yes, to be completely honest, I do live with the fear. And this very weekend I felt a lump in my neck, and now I have to get it checked out. So we'll see." 

I think my sister-in-law almost fell out of her chair.

I called my oncologist and got an appointment--but couldn't get one until the following Friday (she's out of town and I had to arrange things at home.) As you can imagine, it was a very long week.

The thing that hit me all over again those long 5 days was that fuzzy, distracted feeling that comes to me when I think I might be dying of cancer, something I hadn't felt in 4 wonderful years. I'd part my daughter's hair and brush it, thinking 'will I still be here to do this when she's 12?' My son would come in and not find his little league glove and his lack of organization didn't bother me in the least. The refrigerator broke (literally) and I dealt with it in a parallel universe; yes sour milk is not okay; oh, please, sour milk is not important. 

And worst of all, I watched my husband with our kids in the other room, just the three of them, and I'd push away that scary thought that this is what it would look like if I wasn't here.

Now I'm taking you down, and I know it. I promise you it won't last. And it doesn't last for me, either. Because it can't. When you live with cancer, that fear is a part of life. But it isn't your whole life. And you can't make it your whole life, or cancer wins before it ever takes you. And I'll be d-mned if I let that happen. 

You give the fear some room and then you take it back. You move through and go on. It's just the way it is. 

So after 4 mind-numbing days, that Friday I saw my oncologist and after a thorough exam I am here to tell all of you, and especially Y, that there was NOTHING in the lump that said cancer! 

And I can also say that if you are a cancer survivor and have a worry, see your oncologist before you really get worked up. My doctor told me that she sees cancer every day, and she could tell that lump was NOTHING! 

Nothing being a relative term, of course. Because her 'nothing' is my whole world: it's parting my daughter's hair for many years to come; it's finding my son's glove and helping him organize himself. It's joining my husband in the other room with no ugly pictures in my head. 

It's knowing I get to keep going and fighting and living with cancer. Just like the women and men I've met in the years since I was diagnosed and all the years I'll show my film. And especially to all those people in the audience at the Dempsey Center that Monday night; it was nothing, I tell you, that lump was nothing! 

Which for me, of course, is everything.

Life In Tattoos

I have a friend who has 49 tattoos. I am not kidding you. She has 49 tattoos and they are beautifully displayed across her arms, back, backside, ankles and other places I haven't asked about. But they are hers and she loves them. 

I am not a tattoo person in general; meaning I have never gone out and paid for a tattoo. But I have one. Actually I have three. They are the pinpoint pricks the radiation oncology group had to put on my smooth white chest after my double mastectomy and chemotherapy treatments were over. They were the safeguards to help the technicians on board to shoot my chest through with radiation in a few days not to miss the right spot; if they did they could harm my heart. So these spots on my chest needed to be as precise as any dot on any map, and they needed to never ever move. My life depended on it.

That was 5 years ago, and I feel wonderful today, and I just bumped into my friend with the 49 tattoos this week. She is my childhood chum and we come in and out of each other's lives quite inconsistently through the years, but we intersect nevertheless. And I am grateful: there is nothing like a childhood friend, I don't care how different our lives become or how not-often we see one another. She is still so very important to me and I guess always will be.

So as we were talking, she told me she'd added these last 2 tattoos and she showed them to me: they were a lighthearted homage to her mom and dad, whom I know and like very much. One said something in Latin (her dad is a lawyer) and the other is a line that her mother is known for saying: life is not neat. 

Now I'd heard her mom say those words quite often during my childhood. She said it over and over as a way of reminding herself and her children (and their friends) that our paths in this world can often be confusing and difficult but just as easily can be exciting and rewarding and full of adventure and growth. So you have to try to succeed, you have to rise to the occasion and see how far you get. And if it ain't pretty, or neat, just sweep it up (my friend's tattoo comes complete with a broom) and move along to the next thing life has in store.

I remember those words all the time in my life, in fact I quoted them and their originator just a week ago when something wasn't right and needed to be resolved; so it was great to see her widsom inked out on the arm of her daughter, my ol' pal.

And then I pulled down my neckline to reveal my little spot and said with mock defense, "Well remember I have a tattoo, too." We both smiled and she looked at my little blue dot and looked up at me and I said, "the technician who put it on me said it's the world from far away." 

But in a way I realize now that my tattoo also says the same thing my friend's tattoo says: life is not neat. Stuff happens. But when the going got tough, you have to grab your broom and start sweeping. Now I tell my kids the very same thing. You gotta keep on going, life can be messy sometimes, but that's normal. Just keep sweeping. 

And so far I've found that if I sweep it up the right way, hold on tight to my broom and keep up with people who make me smile, especially my old friends with 49 tattoos, then life, neat or not, is well worth it

Farrah's Story

September 07, 2009

I spent a long week awaiting the airing of  Farrah's Story in the U.S. earlier this year. On the one hand, I wanted to see the film because it's Farrah and it's cancer and both have been in my life (Charlie’s Angel and Me) for awhile now. Farrah I like, cancer I sincerely hate. On the other hand, having had cancer myself, I wasn't sure I could handle it, or if it would be anything but a sad reminder of my unfortunate past.

But having watched it, and having burst into tears at the end, I can say I am not only happy that I watched,  but honored too. It was beautiful and awful and amazing and difficult to watch and funny and horrendous and I am grateful to Farrah Fawcett and all of her family and friends for showing us this important documentary.

There were moments I cringed for her—like as she’s on the table about to have this huge scary treatment, and the German doctor asks her which movie she’s done that she likes best. I could have reached back into time and dope-slapped him. I know he was trying, but seriously, when you’re flat on your back and strangers are about to invade your body with tools that hurt and pain that makes you cry out, in order to kill a demon that’s trying to kill you, asking what was your favorite movie? Seriously?

 

Let me tell you buddy her mind was so far from her favorite acting moment—but she rallied, racking her brain and coming up with three. And he comes back with “not Charlie’s Angels?” I just so felt for her in that place—that place of “please don’t treat me like a star, treat me like a scared frightened patient, because that’s what I am right now.”

There were moments I cheered for her—like when she heard the tumors were gone and she was so happy. She was laughing and overjoyed—and I know that feeling. I know it like my own name, because when you hear your cancer isn’t there anymore you feel like you get your own name back—from cancer patient back to Ann, back to Susie, back to Paul, back to Jenny, back to….. Farrah. I couldn’t help but be happy for her, too.

And then the other things, the things I can’t really relate too but I was horrified all the same—the paparazzi and the stealing of her information and leaking it to the tabloids—all while she’s trying to battle her illness? Tremendously disheartening what some people stoop to in this world.

So to me, Farrah’s story is an amazing gift. And people tell me my film is a gift, but this one—my word, the woman whose name is synonymous with gorgeous hair lost hers to chemo—and showed her bald head for all to see. That takes guts, that takes strength, and that take class; anyone who knows Farrah Fawcett must already know all this. But to me--who has only ever seen the public side, it was beyond anything I expected to see. I felt almost honored to watch it. That’s kind of a strong word, but in this case it fits.

But the hard side of Farrah’s Story to me is the huge reminder of what still haunts me--me and anyone else who's had cancer. What if it comes back? What then?

That’s a thought I live with and all cancer people live with--but somehow you file that somewhere in your day as you run to get the kids to school, fill the tank with gas, pick put the shirts, have a latte with a friend, go to your job, or just try to fall asleep at night. I have to put it away, or else it will scare me, taunt me, ruin me--the fear of more cancer is a terror I can't begin to explain.

But Farrah's story did a great job of doing just that; explaining what this disease is, what it can do, what it can't do, and why any of us, indeed all of us, should care. And talk about putting it all out there—that takes integrity, character and a burning desire to sit up and fight or else drag cancer down to the mat with you and duke it out. That’s what I did with mine. That’s what she’s doing with hers. Fight to the end, winner take all.

And when Winner does take all in this case—it will ultimately be Farrah Fawcett. Yes she died, but this documentary she’s done will live one. It will inspire, teach, shock, enlighten, act as an intimate history for her child and be there for anyone who needs to understand. And that would be just about everybody.

So for the second time in my career I am dedicating a blog to Farrah Fawcett: who I so desperately hoped would make it through all this. But she didn't. (She kept saying through the film "it is time for a miracle" and I kept saying--come on, God, a quick miracle for a girl who still says Grace before every meal.)

I could ask the same miracle for the rest of us—but a miracle for an estimated 1 million, 4-hundred-seventy nine thousand people? That’s the estimate from the American Cancer Society of cancer cases in the US in the year 2009. That’s 1,479,000 too many.

We have to not only cure this ugly insidious disease, we have to ask why---why is this happening? Why does the American Cancer Society say that women have a 1 in 3 chance of developing some form or cancer in their lifetimes, and men have a 1 in 2 chance?

Yes we are living longer—but really, living longer to die of cancer is not my idea of living longer. So what’s going on? Where’s the dialogue? Can we talk?

And ultimately that’s what Farrah’s Story is doing—I hope—in the weeks and months and years ahead—making us talk. Making us think about cancer and where it’s coming from—so that we can make it go away. Soon, and for good.

Farrah’s Story had no scripts, no makeup, no hairstylist, and at the end, no Farrah hair: but its honesty, bravery, fight and love brought me to tears. I am so grateful she gave it up like that, so honest, so heart-breaking and so real.

I think Farrah’s Story will always be the best and most poignant piece of Farrah Fawcett’s long and storied career. Forget the halo and the high heels and the hair that everyone wanted: this kind of work is what true celebrity is all about.

And I bet if I could ask him, that German doctor would agree with me.

The Best Revenge

August 24, 2009

On June 25th I was having a pretty bad day.  Nothing life-shattering--just end of school/kids getting older, change of rental properties (translation: boxes all over my house and junk to be sifted through UGH), big trip back east next week, did I make that vet appointment for the dog and when exactly is my dentist appointment?--and then I heard about Farrah Fawcett dying. Great, I thought, black cloud over my head swelling, just great.

Even though I knew it was inevitable, as a cancer "survivor" I was kind of hoping for a miracle for her. If anyone was going to get one, I figured it would be someone big, someone famous, someone rich, you know, all those things that from the low perches of normal life seem like they shelter a person from harm. But not so; no amount of money or fame or hair-changing-influence could save Farrah Fawcett, my childhood idol from the evils of cancer. And I was and still am very very sad.

I am sure I am also very very scared too, although I kind of don't want to go there--I was already on shakey ground that day, so scattered I stood there as the latte man stared at me and my wallet that I held firmly in my hand, and looking at my purse, then at me, then at my purse, then at me, finally asked, "so....how do you want to pay for that?" Oh yes, money! That's what I forgot...

But I am scared. Great, cancer took Farrah. It took an icon. And it's taken them before, I remember the summer I was recovering from my own breast cancer treatments and I heard that Peter Jennings was sick with lung cancer. I remember hearing about it in April, and thinking "but that's Peter Jennings, he'll be okay, he'll fight this, and he's connected, he's got the medical world at his feet, he must, right? He'll be fine." And he was dead 4 months later.

So here I still sit, 2 months later, shaking a little inside. What can I do to keep myself from joining those ranks? I have no idea.

Sure I can eat right, sure I can exercise, sure I can take vitamins--all things I did before I was diagnosed, mind you--

But honestly, other than that, I can't do anything--anything but live.

So I will go on, I will live: I will worry about packing up the kids and moving from this house to the next. I will forget dental appointments and wonder why nice a young barista keeps staring at me when I've already given him my latte order--and I will keep on keeping on.

I will try to remember that no matter what bothers me today, what pressures I feel, what worries await me around the corner, and what dumb mistakes I make at the coffee bar, I am still alive, I get to still be here.

And sure life is hard. Sure some days it actually stinks. But the best thing about life is it's still mine to live.

I once got fired from a job in television and I called my friend Linda to tell her. I was crying and shaking and upset and I wanted my pound of flesh--but she was calm and cool as she listened to all the details. And then, after all was said, she spoke words to me that cemented themselves in my brain for life: Ann, listen to me: Living well is the best revenge.

By "living well" she meant get out of there, get a better job, keep going, keep moving forward. Don't get caught in the anger.

I remember those words now as I think about life, cancer and death. Unlike Farrah Fawcett and Peter Jennings, I have been spared my life from cancer--for now, anyway. And I plan to get my revenge the only way I know how, by living well--and by "well" I guess I mean simply living .

My Two Blind Dates

August 11, 2009

The last time I went on a blind date I was 16 years old and stuck at a dinner table with a sweet young boy who scared me to death. Not that he was mean, or scary looking, or at all disagreeable--actually he was really nice. But he was a boy, and I was scared stiff of boys; I didn't understand them, I was raised with older sisters--heck, at that age, I'd never even kissed a boy! 

The only reason I was there at all is because my well-meaning father "suggested" I accept when he and my mother's good friends' young son asked me out to dinner. Of course I said no--what, and actually sit there and talk?--and eat, what was I supposed to eat when my stomach was in nervous knots? How can I eat near a boy? But I was told I should go, that it was "just dinner", so I reluctantly accepted.

My conversation was halted and nervous; anything he asked I answered quickly and in childishly fast sentences. My stomach sick, I was nervous as a cat; (for the life of me I don't know what I thought would happen. Like he would jump across the table and smother me in a Tango embrace?) 

I mumbled my way through dinner, was almost obnoxious in my conversation in that I made it perfectly clear this was a "friendly date only" (meaning no K-I-S-S-I-N-G). I think he finally got sick of me because he snapped back, "would you rather go home?" I went silent after that, barely picked at my chicken cordon bleu, and got out of there as fast as possible (meaning I didn't order dessert--unheard of for me, with all that chocolate on the menu.)

Obviously, we never went out on another date again.

I was channeling that crazy evening this week when I went out on a new event occuring in my married-with-children-trying-to-make-new-professional-connections life: The Facebook Blind Date. 

Unlike my above rendered miserable experience of my youth, this blind date had nothing to do with romance. It was actually a meeting between someone I'd met professionally on Facebook but whom I'd never actually met. We'd exchanged a few emails and decided to get together for coffee this week while I was visiting her neck of the woods. And as I readied for the meeting, putting on make-up, I got this feeling that I was going on a kind of crazy platonic techonolgy-created get-together that had all the makings of a blind date--without the boy. 

I kept looking at myself in the mirror and wondering, do I even look like my picture on Facebook? I have some really good lighting in that shot--this woman might not even recognize me. Oh stop, the other self inside said, the one who lost her hair 5 years ago and watched her skin turn gray with chemotherapy; for Heaven's sake, go meet the woman. Who cares? Just get out there and be seen.

So I did; I met this woman and we hit it off; we had lattes and talked shop, she told me about her family and I shared some stories about mine. She recognized me (maybe that photo's lighting wasn't too far off after all) and we spent an hour connecting in a way that email--Facebook or otherwise-- won't allow. I felt like I'd known this woman before and I was thrilled that a social networking tool like Facebook was actually working for me; I was meeting cool people through it in ways I'd read might happen. Hot damn. 

So, sorry Dad. That first blind date was a bonified failure; but 3 decades, several careers, a husband, 2 kids and a world of cyber-social networking at my fingertips, I have found a new successful blind-date-kind-of-way to meet new people and make connections.

And I didn't have to skip dessert to do it. 

And The Winner Is...

July 27, 2009

The other day I was surfing the net for the news headlines of the day when I came across a link to an American Idol story. It seems the winner of this year’s contest has been chosen, and I, the almost-non-television-watching former television reporter had no clue who it was. So I clicked the link.

A video popped up, and I hit it, and there in color and moving picture sound was the moment when the winner, whoever he was, heard the news from Ryan Seacrest (now THAT name I know. It’s everywhere.) I watched for a second, but when all the lights, cameras, crowd screams and hysteria rose from out of the speaker and screen of my computer, I raced to tone down the volume. That wild frenzy is exactly why I don’t watch shows like that; it’s too much for me. It’s sensory overload in the quiet of my own living room and I just don’t want to get involved. I have too many other things in my life claiming my energy; I don’t have enough for Paula Abdul. However, I know all about the show, I even watched it one year to get in with the zeitgeist of the culture—but once was enough. I get the picture.

And this is not a slam on American Idol, or anyone who watches it—if you like it, and many, many of my friends and family do, I say go for it and enjoy! It’s just not my thing. 

So anyway: one of my kids was nearby, and on that burst of sound and screaming I rushed to get the volume lowered. I don’t want my kids to get swept up in this hype either. I’m sure it will happen one day, when they’re older and making their own TV choices, but for now—heck, I am still fighting the all-encompassing Star Wars after-effect here in our home (it’s all Bobba Fett, all the time) and I don’t want Ryan S. to be another Annakin Skywalker in my child’s world, if you know what I mean. I’m sure it’ll happen (I know control is slowly leaving me as my children grow) but I just don’t want it to be today.

But my child, ever vigilant to all things video (I try so hard, but to no avail; screens draw them like bugs to that zapping machine) said, “what was that?” My child looked up just in time to watch the Idol winner hear he’d won.

“Oh nothing”, I said quickly, bummed that the jig was up. Then I added in a grumble, “It’s not important.” 

My child looked at me, paused, and said almost admonishingly, “Mom, it’s important to that guy (the guy who won the contest.)”

What a moment—talk about getting zapped--except the bug in the machine was me. I thought—OMG, who IS this child? Where did that come from? Whose wisdom is that? I literally was speechless, as always happens when someone—especially my own child, puts me in my place in a kind, respectful yet very real and important way.

Yes of course, it’s important! The actual moment that someone hears their dream has come true: of COURSE that’s important. How could I miss that?

But this is me: so worried about everything that this show was cloaked in; the shouting, the flashy lights, and my fear that too many watching may well be so assuaged by watching someone else chase their dream that they don’t chase their own—so worried that I forgot to just give the guy his propers. Dang it all, he won. That deserves a shout out, you bet it does-- and my child, whom I’ve got at least 30 years on, had to remind me of that.

In my furor to keep my child in a “better place,” whatever that is (though 
I worry about my children’s heroes as they grow up in this media world: Who will they be? Abe Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Bill Gates or…..Simon Cowell?) I forgot the most important thing; to give credit where credit is due. 

So here’s to this year’s American Idol, God love him, I still don’t know his name. But he’s the best, apparently, as the votes have made clear, and he deserves a congratulations; so here is mine for him. Regardless of the fans and the furor and the famous entrapments: if someone does well, you recognize it. 

And if I forget that, I need look no further than that little person playing with action figures (Star Wars of course) on the couch nearby to remind me.