The Story of Friendship and One Ovary
Today is tax day.
Strange, really. Ten years ago, April 15th was a Friday. I remember the day of the week because I was supposed to go to Curtis Hensmen's 13th birthday party. His dad was the fire chief and it was a dance in the Horhsam Fire Hall. Curtis was really cute. I bought a purple dress that I never wore.
Today is Russell Hite's Birthday. I remember when he and I figured out that one year, blowing out his candles, maybe he was wishing for me, because we both share this date.
We were on the steps in front of Pearlstone, probably both in red hoodies, sucking up that wonderful air that surfs between two new friends. We were high and giddy on the excitement of meeting someone fantastic and new. We spoke fast, nodded quickly, and laughed hard, realizing that we should have met sooner, way sooner....We should have wombed together and let our umbilicals get all tangled as we danced with little muscleless legs. Have you ever felt this way when you met someone new? Have you ever met someone that you knew would be your friend till you are old and eat too many candy bars because you forgot when you had one last? Well, that's what it was like when I met Russell....And then we found out that we shared a birthday.
I don't know why I count it from the 15th, I mean they found it then, I guess, but I didn't have surgery until the following Monday, and really the pain started the night before on the 14th, but we don't know when it started growing.
Aprils have made me itchy for the past decade. I used to get nervous and flustered and shaky. When I first went to High School and April would come, or my checkups I would leave class sometimes just to stare at the tiny tiles on the bathroom floor, overwhelmed, trying to breathe right. The walls would close in. Sometimes, my eyes would fill up with tears for no reason then. I was just scared all the time, and April was the worst.
I would remember things that I had forgotten: six doctors, surrounding the emergency room cot like pallbearers looming over a one rectangular hole in the ground with looks of terror and amazement. The feel of stainless steel as it touches lightly against your finger tips and makes a hollow sound. What blood looks like when it runs thinner than water. The smell of pink hospital handsoap that you can taste like chalk in the back of your throat. Being scared.
I had forgotten about being scared almost completely. While I was in treatment and getting ready to go back to school and concentrating on "being normal" for the majority of those few years, I didn't have time to think about it. I didn't have time to think about how scary the word cancer is or what it really meant that something was growing in my body without my permission or control. I didn't have time to be frightened. My mother sort of said it in passing. "...And well we were praying..." I knew they prayed, even though they didn't go to church, or love eachother, or remember the words, I knew that they prayed, but I didn't know what she said next..."Because they said that they didn't expect you to make it out."
It was five years after my diagnosis when I found out that they didn't expect me to come out of surgery. I mean, I guess that makes a lot of sense, my mother was protecting me, etc. etc. But that April...Man oh man, I remember my freak out:
I was in chemistry Class. We had an extra hour of it once a week over our lunch period/study hall. I hated chemistry. I zoned out most of the time, writing notes to Jeanne with pictures of eyeballs, robots, and stars on them. And this one class, this one April, I was listening and started thinking about electrons or atoms, or something tiny like that, which lead me to thinking about cells. I can say it isn't very often that I think about cells and how they all sort of gather together and sway in rhythm like a crowded concert of your skin, and blood, and insides. Bumping into eachother, apologizing without looking up, holding their drink or cigarette above their head and looking really, fucking cool. And then, to think about each one, filled with lonely lumpy molecules, with infectious growing depression and cancer and that one cell just pushes into the rest of the crowd and pulls them apart, turns them into two and then four and then 600,000 hard, angry cancerous cells.
They said my tumor was the size of a large grapefruit or a small watermelon. I don't know why doctors compare tumors to fruit. It makes sense to them, I suppose. I wonder if they think about it everytime they are at the market. That that orange was found in someone's colon, that that lemon was on someone's lymph, I wonder if they think like that because I do now that they said it.
That April, that chemistry class, while thoughts of cells humming in confusion and mutiny filled my head, everything boiled up, and I just ran out of the classroom. I was terrified. Like I had been waiting to be terrified all this time. My doctor called it Post Traumatic Stress syndrome and says that it is really common among people that dealt with a sudden, serious illness...like fucking war.
There I was hiding from the helicopters in the high school newspaper office, sobbing into my locker in front of Anthony or Dawn. I went on this strange quest to find Jeanne....Imagine going into you high school cafeteria with hundreds of people in it, while you are in some sort of mind-jungle, grenade in one hand, pin in your teeth.
I gave up on finding Jeanne and went to the bathroom. My face was all red and puffy. The hall monitor was one of those dumpy women with a cardigan sweater, she looked like a chipper little weeble-wooble. She made one of those sandpaper paper towels wet and cool and pressed it against my eyes. "Shhh shhh," she said, pulling me to her large breast and rubbing my back. I didn't want to stop crying. I remember trying to catch my breath, but instead, gasping like I was drowning. "Shhh, it will be okay...." She said, and I was calming now, because I realized I was standing in the bathroom hugging the hall monitor and this was all really embarrassing. I should quit this..."What did he do to you?" she asked, "Boys are so mean." .....It was then I realized I looked just like a regular girl with regular problems....And that was kind of nice....Jeanne was running down the hall as I was leaving the bathroom, she found me a snack and took me to the nurse and sat with me under a scratchy blanket while we both skipped chemistry class. We sat next to Robyn who was there because she did too much acid. (Robyn just got married this past summer to the guy that she raced motor cycles with.)
This April, is not like the others. It doesn't really feel like much of anything really. I would post photos here of how I looked without any hair, with my funny backwards drivers cap that moved around, too big for my head. I would post pictures here of how I looked in my red/purple/army green bandana with my hoop earrings. I didn't let people take my picture when I was on treatment, because it was something I thought I wanted to forget. I didn't listen when people told me to keep a diary, I was just waiting for it to be over. So, I don't have many mementos.
But, if you are looking, you can see the scar on my tummy that loops around my belly button and dips down into my pubic hair, separating the triangle and making it look like a little heart between my thighs. You can see, the tiny scars on my hands where I used to get my IV and I could tell you how the veins would roll away when they stabbed at them and say to the nurse, 'you can't catch me under here, under this skin.' You can see photos of how I looked in the aftermath, when my hair grew back too curly to control with little silver tips. It was so confused growing out of my scalp, not sure what it was doing there, like the rest of me. Everything was awkward about me then, when I went back to school. I was heavy from some of the drugs, this strange, squishy heavy like a balloon filled with applesauce. I wore overalls a lot and looked a little like a weeble-wobble myself. When I was on treatment, my mother said that I should smile all the time, because who knows who would look at me, and learn that cancer was something you could beat. We did have some terrific times laughing in the hospital. I could tell you hilarious stories where you will feel awkward to laugh, but you would.
Internet, Thank you for indulging this strange nostalgic post where it sounds rather somber and probably was not very entertaining or exciting to read. And Gosh! If you were my enemy, I bet you feel really strange now, hating a poor little cancer-baby, you jerk! Hahaha. I'm ten years cancer free today. Have an awesome day!
Today is tax day.
Strange, really. Ten years ago, April 15th was a Friday. I remember the day of the week because I was supposed to go to Curtis Hensmen's 13th birthday party. His dad was the fire chief and it was a dance in the Horhsam Fire Hall. Curtis was really cute. I bought a purple dress that I never wore.
Today is Russell Hite's Birthday. I remember when he and I figured out that one year, blowing out his candles, maybe he was wishing for me, because we both share this date.
We were on the steps in front of Pearlstone, probably both in red hoodies, sucking up that wonderful air that surfs between two new friends. We were high and giddy on the excitement of meeting someone fantastic and new. We spoke fast, nodded quickly, and laughed hard, realizing that we should have met sooner, way sooner....We should have wombed together and let our umbilicals get all tangled as we danced with little muscleless legs. Have you ever felt this way when you met someone new? Have you ever met someone that you knew would be your friend till you are old and eat too many candy bars because you forgot when you had one last? Well, that's what it was like when I met Russell....And then we found out that we shared a birthday.
I don't know why I count it from the 15th, I mean they found it then, I guess, but I didn't have surgery until the following Monday, and really the pain started the night before on the 14th, but we don't know when it started growing.
Aprils have made me itchy for the past decade. I used to get nervous and flustered and shaky. When I first went to High School and April would come, or my checkups I would leave class sometimes just to stare at the tiny tiles on the bathroom floor, overwhelmed, trying to breathe right. The walls would close in. Sometimes, my eyes would fill up with tears for no reason then. I was just scared all the time, and April was the worst.
I would remember things that I had forgotten: six doctors, surrounding the emergency room cot like pallbearers looming over a one rectangular hole in the ground with looks of terror and amazement. The feel of stainless steel as it touches lightly against your finger tips and makes a hollow sound. What blood looks like when it runs thinner than water. The smell of pink hospital handsoap that you can taste like chalk in the back of your throat. Being scared.
I had forgotten about being scared almost completely. While I was in treatment and getting ready to go back to school and concentrating on "being normal" for the majority of those few years, I didn't have time to think about it. I didn't have time to think about how scary the word cancer is or what it really meant that something was growing in my body without my permission or control. I didn't have time to be frightened. My mother sort of said it in passing. "...And well we were praying..." I knew they prayed, even though they didn't go to church, or love eachother, or remember the words, I knew that they prayed, but I didn't know what she said next..."Because they said that they didn't expect you to make it out."
It was five years after my diagnosis when I found out that they didn't expect me to come out of surgery. I mean, I guess that makes a lot of sense, my mother was protecting me, etc. etc. But that April...Man oh man, I remember my freak out:
I was in chemistry Class. We had an extra hour of it once a week over our lunch period/study hall. I hated chemistry. I zoned out most of the time, writing notes to Jeanne with pictures of eyeballs, robots, and stars on them. And this one class, this one April, I was listening and started thinking about electrons or atoms, or something tiny like that, which lead me to thinking about cells. I can say it isn't very often that I think about cells and how they all sort of gather together and sway in rhythm like a crowded concert of your skin, and blood, and insides. Bumping into eachother, apologizing without looking up, holding their drink or cigarette above their head and looking really, fucking cool. And then, to think about each one, filled with lonely lumpy molecules, with infectious growing depression and cancer and that one cell just pushes into the rest of the crowd and pulls them apart, turns them into two and then four and then 600,000 hard, angry cancerous cells.
They said my tumor was the size of a large grapefruit or a small watermelon. I don't know why doctors compare tumors to fruit. It makes sense to them, I suppose. I wonder if they think about it everytime they are at the market. That that orange was found in someone's colon, that that lemon was on someone's lymph, I wonder if they think like that because I do now that they said it.
That April, that chemistry class, while thoughts of cells humming in confusion and mutiny filled my head, everything boiled up, and I just ran out of the classroom. I was terrified. Like I had been waiting to be terrified all this time. My doctor called it Post Traumatic Stress syndrome and says that it is really common among people that dealt with a sudden, serious illness...like fucking war.
There I was hiding from the helicopters in the high school newspaper office, sobbing into my locker in front of Anthony or Dawn. I went on this strange quest to find Jeanne....Imagine going into you high school cafeteria with hundreds of people in it, while you are in some sort of mind-jungle, grenade in one hand, pin in your teeth.
I gave up on finding Jeanne and went to the bathroom. My face was all red and puffy. The hall monitor was one of those dumpy women with a cardigan sweater, she looked like a chipper little weeble-wooble. She made one of those sandpaper paper towels wet and cool and pressed it against my eyes. "Shhh shhh," she said, pulling me to her large breast and rubbing my back. I didn't want to stop crying. I remember trying to catch my breath, but instead, gasping like I was drowning. "Shhh, it will be okay...." She said, and I was calming now, because I realized I was standing in the bathroom hugging the hall monitor and this was all really embarrassing. I should quit this..."What did he do to you?" she asked, "Boys are so mean." .....It was then I realized I looked just like a regular girl with regular problems....And that was kind of nice....Jeanne was running down the hall as I was leaving the bathroom, she found me a snack and took me to the nurse and sat with me under a scratchy blanket while we both skipped chemistry class. We sat next to Robyn who was there because she did too much acid. (Robyn just got married this past summer to the guy that she raced motor cycles with.)
This April, is not like the others. It doesn't really feel like much of anything really. I would post photos here of how I looked without any hair, with my funny backwards drivers cap that moved around, too big for my head. I would post pictures here of how I looked in my red/purple/army green bandana with my hoop earrings. I didn't let people take my picture when I was on treatment, because it was something I thought I wanted to forget. I didn't listen when people told me to keep a diary, I was just waiting for it to be over. So, I don't have many mementos.
But, if you are looking, you can see the scar on my tummy that loops around my belly button and dips down into my pubic hair, separating the triangle and making it look like a little heart between my thighs. You can see, the tiny scars on my hands where I used to get my IV and I could tell you how the veins would roll away when they stabbed at them and say to the nurse, 'you can't catch me under here, under this skin.' You can see photos of how I looked in the aftermath, when my hair grew back too curly to control with little silver tips. It was so confused growing out of my scalp, not sure what it was doing there, like the rest of me. Everything was awkward about me then, when I went back to school. I was heavy from some of the drugs, this strange, squishy heavy like a balloon filled with applesauce. I wore overalls a lot and looked a little like a weeble-wobble myself. When I was on treatment, my mother said that I should smile all the time, because who knows who would look at me, and learn that cancer was something you could beat. We did have some terrific times laughing in the hospital. I could tell you hilarious stories where you will feel awkward to laugh, but you would.
Internet, Thank you for indulging this strange nostalgic post where it sounds rather somber and probably was not very entertaining or exciting to read. And Gosh! If you were my enemy, I bet you feel really strange now, hating a poor little cancer-baby, you jerk! Hahaha. I'm ten years cancer free today. Have an awesome day!
posted by j-e-s-s-i-c-a at 11:35 AM
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