David Breasterfield!

I know, the blog title seems to invite death. Not to my way of thinking or to the way a word freak looks at words! To read where it came from, click here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

I don’t know what it’s like, exactly for my wife, but there are long times now where the idea of breast cancer (and the accompanying metastasis possibility) disappears from my life as if by magic.

Between treatments, which she undergoes every three weeks, life returns to normal. Well, not “old normal”, rather the new normal (see “The World Didn’t Fall Off Its Axis” -- May 28, 2011)…

But during this time, nothing seems to be “different” – we still chat, watch TV, go for walks with the dog, pay bills, see the grandchild, talk to people. Nothing seems to have changed. It’s almost like that magician – David Copperfield – worked his magic on breast cancer and made the whole thing disappear the same way he made the Statue of Liberty disappear.

And maybe there’s something to be said for that – we’re NOT pretending. I don’t think I could ever do that. But we’re living in the promises of the doctors and the profound hopes of our friends and other women we know who are breast cancer survivors.

David Copperfield isn’t really a magician, he’s an illusionist, and while we harbor no mistaken belief that the cancer has “disappeared”, it’s sometimes helpful to live in the illusion that the cure is NOW. It’s something that allows us to go on day-by-day. I cannot imagine how terrifying these days just before a chemo session are. But I can help my wife entertain the illusion that she is done with chemo and she has been declared cancer-free.

Besides – that’s only going to be an illusion for a few more months. By Christmas, Liz will be a breast cancer survivor and THAT will be the real magic!

Image: http://youtomb.mit.edu/thumbnail/YouTube/I/7/I7GaM3bbtOw/01c62c29d34ede51f7c12ef645d59945.jpg

Bleak House

I know, the title seems to invite death – but it’s the opposite. To read where this title came from, click here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

Chemo two was [eleven days ago; this was written on the day we came back from chemo.]

It started out well, we had a nice breakfast and except for a few butterflies in her stomach, Liz was in good spirits. We drove to the hospital on what would turn out to be the hottest day of the new century and one of the hottest days in the past 100 years.

But the air conditioning in a hospital covers a multitude of evils and we had no idea the temperatures were soaring.

We decided we were going to watch SERENDIPITY, a movie I’d wanted to see for some time. We got into a private room and started the movie. We KNEW we weren’t supposed to have Benadryl again because of Liz’s idiosyncratic reaction – it causes “restless leg syndrome” and is extremely uncomfortable.

After the first hour, Liz started to get anxious. The movie was intense and a nurse came in to ask if we would mind switching out of the private room for a transfusion patient who needed to lie down. We of course said fine and moved to the public infusion area – right in the middle of everything…

Being there seemed to sap the energy Liz had started with. While others chatted around us, Liz grew quiet. We watched what was going on, people came to talk to us; Mary (the Infusion Center nurse) came to fire The Red Devil into the port garbed in gown, with glasses, gloves and mask. I spent most of the quiet time reading. Then Liz's back began to act up and we changed places; me taking the "recliner" and her the straight-backed chair.

She was hardly speaking now, responding to Mary with a grim smile. When the infusion concluded, she was ready to go, feeling weak and unsteady.

The look in her eyes was bleak knowing that this was only number two of six. That was when she declared that she wasn't going to do this ever again. We reached home and she laid down to sleep, once again, with a bleak look and tears, she said again that she was NOT going to do that again.

Bleak house, indeed.

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7wQF4rYgPPbyp6a55C-vcdj6uhAt_SJlQO5nqpXUvRCjMrWTekhsY3JXA5-ZXU0khLmcw-MyvmqfLcSPYmJvqb2OVO0x35vcXsojIrOs636vZ6LsPeI0gtk9V0jfQMICgQOiyIcyLTm4/s320/blizzardretouched.jpg

__i__ __

I know, the title seems to invite death. Not to my way of thinking or to the way a word freak looks at words! To read where it came from, click here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

There they are.

The objects of our intense admiration and desire (see HOOTERS® Is Not The Name Of An All Woman Brass Band…http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/04/hooters-is-not-name-of-all-women-brass.html).

And then, they’re gone.

Really, no matter what, the 20-something organs of their youth will be gone. Sooner or later, one way or another they will disappear. If they are claimed by breast cancer, what’s left to attract us? What drives our wet dreams? What do we ogle?

Jamie Lee Curtis insured her legs for $ 1 million…

I can think of more than one behind that caught my adolescent eye…

Lips are more than Luscious Lavender lipstick showcases…

I’m a hair man, myself – short, efficient, showing off a well-shaped head (think Ripley Scott’s alter ego, Sigourney Weaver in ALIEN…)

Wrist to shoulder, Gomez Addams could find nothing sexier on his wife Morticia than her slender arms…

Solomon wrote in The Book of Songs 4:4, “Your neck is more graceful than the tower of David, decorated with thousands of warriors' shields.”

Women make a living recording smoky, contralto wake up calls, computer interfaces and acting during pay-per-call phone sex…Certainly, “Hey, big boy,” are words I enjoy hearing from my beloved when they are laced with promise and seduction…

Michelle Pfeiffer’s eyes also reside in my wife. I can’t be the ONLY man who has gone weak in the knees when his wife turns on an amazingly incendiary gaze of limpid pools of jade promise…

The __ i __ __ are gone, man! If you’re tempted to wail, “But that was the best part!” then I suggest you entertain fantasies that include legs, le derrière, lips, hair, arm, neck, voice and them eyes!

Oh, yeah!

image: http://images.sodahead.com/polls/000883187/Addams_Family_tv_01_answer_4_xlarge.jpeg

WHY Do So MANY Women Have Breast Cancer?

I know, the title seems to invite death – but it’s the opposite. To read where this title came from, click here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

The roommate of our foster daughter is somewhat estranged from her mother and through the grapevine last week, discovered that her mother had had a preliminary diagnosis of breast cancer. It turned out to be benign cysts, but Liz raised the immediate question: Why do so MANY women have breast cancer?

A legislator in the district in which I live sent an email to her constituency that she had finished a recent session (though it ended deadlocked and a special session is in the works). She also shared that she was in the final stages of ovarian cancer and she was in hospice. We all raised the question: Why do so MANY women have cancer?

Is it something in the environment? Is it the fast food and processed foods we eat constantly? Is it because we’re living longer that cancers get a chance to grow? Is it because we’re better at detection now and deaths that were at one time “unexplained” now have a clear cause?

Well, a dose of the facts never hurt anyone – it only shakes preconceived notions and perceptions.

FACT: Incidence of Breast Cancer

1975-80 – held steady at 110/100,000 women

1980-87 – increased by 4% per year

1987-1994 – held steady at 140/100,000 women

1994-99 – increased by 2% per year

1999-2006 – decreased by 2% per year to 120/100,000 women

(http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@nho/documents/document/f861009final90809pdf.pdf)

What causes breast cancer? The short, concise answer is: “Don’t know, trying to find out.”

There are risk factors – none of which are related to the environment or food additives. In order, they are advancing age, family history, use of hormones, high doses of radiation (ie – nuclear reactor), obesity, booze and a fatty diet.

So as people get older and exercise less they increase the risk of breast cancer. The perception that it’s everywhere, while frightening, isn’t exactly true – HOWEVER the fact that the longer you live the more friends you have is an observable phenomenon. That increase in the number of friends makes it a statistical certainty that your chance of knowing someone with breast cancer will approach 100%.

This all means…what?

For me it means I will continue to write this blog; next year I will join one of the endurance events targeting fund raising to find a cure for breast cancer and I’ll speak at Cooper’s Relay For Life like they asked me to do this year.

It means we’ll all keep fighting, bankrolling, inspiring and looking for ways that a cure for one kind of cancer can apply to another kind of cancer.

Image: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/glennllopis/files/2011/04/risk.jpg