I Heart My Oncologist

Thankfully, I don't know many people in my life who can say that. Not because their oncos aren't up to snuff, but because they don't have them.

(And then I write that and think about who would and why they don't, and well, then this post gets dark and depressing and I had intended to make it so very cheerful.)

My onco is probably about my age, maybe a couple of years younger. She has reddish hair. I have reddish hair. She has a four year old. I have a four year old. She has two kids. She took away my chances of having two kids. That bitch!

I went to see her today, as I do every three months. The visits are close to routine, but the act of going to an oncologist, of sitting in the lobby of the Cancer Institute with other victims and survivors of this disease, of waiting for my check up, of sometimes not getting the test results I want, well, let's just say that each and every visit to the onco is followed by three (or more) mouthfuls of glucose therapy.

Today, my onco surprised me with a bonus colpscopy! and a bonus biopsy! We had not planned those adventures together.

Last visit, after some suspicious results, she ran a couple of extra tests and that ended up staying mysterious but being "unremarkable." Usually, I can sit with that. Last time, I wasn't willing to let the mystery be. I wanted this to be over. I wanted it to be a part of my past. I wanted to forget and stop being sad about the child I lost and the children I can't have. I wanted to move on and be able to be excited for folks who are pregnant. I wanted to be okay with people who whine about their second pregnancies going slowly and tolerate those who give long, indulgent speeches about how they can wait. And I wanted to have to stop dolling out impromptu noogies to the heads of the aforementioned whiners, or wiping my boogers on their bedsheets.

I think my tantrum my have tipped her off. And hence the detour. It made me uneasy, sure when she announced the aggressive off roading from our previously set path. I thought we weren't concerned. I thought we were comfortable with "just wait and see." But that's my onco. She's patient when I terrorize her with my minutiae of worries and she's vigilant when I just want to put my hands over my ears and go PeeWee Herman.

But that's precisely why I love her. Because she listens. Because she acts.

Vivian

Today, Vivian is fighting for her life. And that's very good news.

She was pulled off her ventilator two days ago. Her parents and friends were at her bedside, thinking that this meant goodbye.

She's five.

Vivian was diagnosed with leukemia when she was just five months old. She underwent treatments and her leukemia went into remission. When she was four years old, her leukemia relapsed. Her parents, friends of ours from graduate school, started a fundraising effort to get Vivian CAM treatments, offered in Europe. Again, she underwent treatment and seemed to respond well to it. We had been getting e-mails about how that was going, how she was fighting, how she was improving.

But last week, she took a turn. And last Thursday, her parents decided to remove the ventilator that was helping her breathe.

Vivian is, well, vivacious, and, as I hear it, just a little stubborn. That puts her in a class of preschooler I know all too well.

We--Bear, Finn, and I--met her when she was about a year old, I guess. Finn was five months. He bobbed his head around in curiosity, watching her run around the living room and eat pretend food off her lap.

We've only met her the one time, but she's a hard girl to forget. Her soul, like her laughter, fills your heart.

This is my very little way of putting her in the hearts and hopes of others. I'm not much into prayer circles. I really can't say that I know what those are. But if you have one, please add her to it.

"Vivian" means life. And whatever happens, she'll always be a giggle, a steady glow, and a reminder of what's worth fighting for.

Soundtrack to the Anal Probe. Humor Me.

I've known, ever since I scheduled it, that some report of Monday's colonoscopy would have to go on the blog. Really now, how do you pass something like that up?

But what to post, pray tell? A play-by-play of the procedure? A description of the day-long starvation and hours of colon prep? Or do I just go with a photo essay?

Uh, three rounds of, No thanks.

So, to get down to business, I must ask myself (because you're not really helping out with the comments box): if I were on the receiving end of the colon post, what would I want to know?

Ah. Yes. Of course. How obvious. The question that burns so brightly . . . scroll for it . . .


What does one dial up on the iPod when preparing for The Probe?

You know, when I popped those ear buds in, I actually thought about it. I really contemplated and weighed my decision. No shuffle. Couldn't just follow instincts. You have to consider that whatever song you choose will forever be linked to That Procedure.

So not just any song will do.

Not just any band can take on that level of responsibility, can hold up against the Anal Probe.

Nothing too cheery, bouncy, or titular connected to the colon, so Fischerspooner's "Megacolon" (three strikes) was out. Because you must not laugh in the face of colonoscopy. That's just not allowed.

You could tear something.

And honey, I'm thinking that's the last place you want a leak.

So I opted to go Hippocratic, and tap into the melancholic, the calming, the weighty. And it appeals to my literary sensibilities to be able to quote the four humors as I'm about to be scanned, to be so sonorously connected in time and tune.

And so, I chose Cold Play as the band I will forever associate with my colon, with my melancholy, with my uncertainty, with my expectation, with my tender hope and overwhelming hunger. As if I didn't before. And as if that wasn't exactly what you were thinking.

(I wonder how it feels to be the band colons choose?)

NPR Promo

I just heard a promo for an upcoming program on NPR about the HPV vaccine. In the very brief spot, they offer a program appetizer of what sounds like a teenage girl asking, "Do you want me to get the vaccine?" And what sounds like her mother responding, "Well, would that make you think you had a clear light to have sex?"

What?

I'm not quite sure how to unpack this. Are there people out there who are thinking, "Yes, sex causes cancer! Now my daughter definitely won't have sex. Ever."

Folks, we're talking about a vaccine for HPV, a virus that can lead to cervical cancer. So in some very real ways we're talking about a cure for cancer. And this soundbite is concerned that we're ripping the fear out of sex, and thereby giving full reign for adolescents to just go after it. Like in cars. Like before they're married. This--this--is the thing that will give them the permission to fornicate that they've so earnestly searched for.

Forget the hormones. So overrated.

As a not-entirely-intact, so-far survivor of cervical cancer, I think mom is missing a point. To understate. Honey, get the vaccine, so when that day comes when you're not afraid of sex or babies, when you actually really, really want both, you can have them.

Survival Rate

This time last year I was in the hospital.

I had just recovered from what has to be my worst nightmare--a squatty imp was sitting on my chest suffocating me, an image straight out of Fuseli's Night Mare--only to wake up and find that I had just survived, or maybe I was still living through, my worst nightmare.

Earlier that year, at the top of 2006, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. It looked easy enough to manage at first, but then proceeded to scare the shit out of me as a conization turned into a radical hysterectomy. We had just spent the past year trying to have our second child. Miscarriage after miscarriage was frustrating enough. Now, this, My Cancer, would put an end to that.

This time last year, I was mad that I couldn't have more children, that we didn't catch this earlier, that I could die from this--and that the doctor who came in that morning for his rounds with his gaggle of grinning interns just smiled at me while I cried.

This time last year, I didn't know if there would be a this time next year.

I don't know how I feel about this anniversary. I thought I'd be happy, elated, cupcaking it through the rest of the week. I'm alive and cancer free after all. But I guess I still have some that ol' bitterness about. I don't know that I particularly like feeling grateful about being alive. I thought old age and the first hints of death would sneak up on me through bad vision and knees. I might have preferred just being oblivious.

And I'm suspicious of good news, of all-clears. Just because I made it through this year, just because it was "just cervical cancer," that doesn't mean I'll make it through the next. Even though the cancer is gone, it still echoes.

Wherein I Launch a New Label and Use "Wherein" in My Title. Again.

Every three months, I go to the oncologist.

They have a nice fishtank there. Very clean, very polished. The fish seem to just float in it rather than swim. You really have to squint hard to figure out if there's water, if the fish are even real. I often wonder as I flip through Travel&Leisure's "25 Best Places I Can't Afford to Visit," glancing every few at that fishtank, how often they have to come out and put the Windex to it.

It's all part of the small touches of escapism that are the oncology office--fish tank, travel mags, origami opportunities (seriously, last visit their was a little origami crane competition going on)--and that are balanced out by the Surviving and Thriving class that meets on the other side of the office.

I suppose life lessons can even be found in waiting rooms. (Oo, that metaphor could just keep on going. I'll let you keep it alive.)

So far (test results pending) the visit was, in the parlance of the field, "unremarkable." Except that I'm signed up for a colonoscopy. My doc doesn't seemed concerned about it. Invasive microscoping--maybe not cause for foghorns, but really, very much not the parting gift I was hoping for.

I was thinking along the lines of lollipop.

Or even Scooby-Doo bandaid.

Not sure where they'd put that, though.