So I'm sitting in the waiting room in an ill-fitting beige robe, surrounded by women wearing identical ill-fitting beige robes, each carrying the same accessory--a clear plastic bag containing bra and shirt--and I'm pulling my beige robe a little tighter where it gapes open in front while trying not to notice the traffic whizzing past just outside the wall of windows, when I receive a campus email announcing an upcoming Breast Cancer Awareness Lunch. I want to send off a snarky reply pointing out that I've recently reached my lifetime quota of breast cancer awareness, that in fact I'm sitting in the freaking Stefanie Spielman Comprehensive Breast Center being comprehensively inundated with breast cancer awareness, but I decide against it. A simple no will suffice.
And so I won't have an excuse to show off my handy-dandy little card announcing that I'm radioactive. I've never before been required to carry a card explaining my radioactive state to anyone whose Geiger counter goes off in my presence, and it would be a shame to possess such a card without ever having the opportunity to use it. I'm especially fond of explaining how the doctor announced that the radioactive seed had been successfully inserted in the tumor in my breast: "Okay, she's hot!"
Come to think of it, if I do happen to set off any Geiger counters, I could forego flashing the explanatory card and just announce, "Don't worry--I'm hot!"
The tiny radioactive seed marks the tumor so that my surgeon can find it easily when she goes to yank it out next Monday. Today I spent the day in Columbus being prepared for surgery: pre-operative education, lab tests, EKG, chest x-ray, radioactive seed placement aided by ultrasound, mammogram to make sure the seed was placed properly, meeting with the radiation oncologist, and I don't remember what else. I was comprehensively cared for by a horde of medical professionals whose names I could not recall if my life depended on it. My life may depend upon their competence, but if it takes me two weeks to learn the names of a classroom full of students, I can't be expected to instantly remember the names of all the medical professionals crowding around the ultrasound room and remarking upon my hotness.
Everyone--nurses, doctors, lab techs, schedulers--keeps saying perfect, an odd word to bandy about while wrangling with the imperfections of ailing bodies. Have I stopped taking ibuprofen? Perfect. No family history of breast cancer? Perfect. Blood pressure lower than last time? Perfect.
But I can read and I know my blood pressure wasn't perfect. I'd drive through horrible city traffic and was comprehensively stressed out, so my blood pressure was no more perfect than anything else I've experienced since radically increasing my breast cancer awareness, but if the nurse wants to apply the word perfect to the fact that I've successfully managed to don the ill-fitting beige robe, then I guess I'll accept it.
Today's gold star goes to the phlebotomist who drew four vials of my blood before I even knew she'd stuck the needle in my arm. I generally walk away from lab work with multiple band-aids and bruises on both arms, so getting a good blood vessel in one painless stick is just short of miraculous.
But four vials is nothing--nothing!--compared to what my son and daughter have been experiencing in a different building at the same hospital. My son will be admitted to The James Friday to begin the long process of preparing for his bone marrow transplant, and my daughter spent seven hours this morning having bone marrow harvested, though I reject the use of the word harvest to refer to my child's blood products. The advance testing process had required her to give up fifteen vials of blood at the same time, and for the past week she's had to inject herself with a drug that increased her body's production of white blood cells--and made her feel tired and achy like someone coming down with the flu. But this morning's seven-hour harvest festival produced a precious gift that will help her brother get healthy.
But first he has to get less healthy. Over the next week or so, his diseased bone marrow will be destroyed to eradicate the cancer and make room for his sister's donation. That's not a pleasant process, and for a while he'll have no functioning immune system. But then that perfect gift of healthy marrow should start making him better over the course of the next couple of months.
So right now our whole family is more aware of cancer than we've ever been, and we're trusting in the comprehensive care of a horde of medical professionals to get us through the coming challenges. If one day we get so far removed from all this pain and anguish that we can allow our comprehensive cancer awareness to lapse--well, that would be just about perfect.
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