This essay will be included in a fanzine I am currently working on documenting the “highlights” my breast cancer experience.
It took getting breast cancer to feel young again.
A few beats into my fifties, I finally and willingly accepted what I spent my forties denying would ever happen. Aging. I embraced not understanding or caring what side of TikTok I was on, and settled into the fact that I probably check the weather app more than I should. But when I found out I had breast cancer after my first mammogram at 52, it sent me reeling. I have a disease? Was this the final one-foot-in-the-grave phase of my life? I felt vulnerable and elderly.
Little did I know however, breast cancer would be a dunk in the fountain of youth.
The plunge happened at the first stop on my treatment journey, at a meeting with the surgeon who would be doing my lumpectomy. He was going over the details of the procedure but also preparing me for what treatments might be recommended going forward. “You are early stage, but there is a good chance you might have to do chemo and radiation,” he advised, “but you should do fine because you are young.”
Young! I gasped dramatically, taking him by surprise. I looked at his face, clean and bright and just barely able to hold a whisker, and wondered if he was saying it in the way the AT&T salesman called me “young lady” as he was showing me how to use the new home button on the Iphone.
“Well, you ARE young,” he insisted, “And in good health. I think you are in a good place.”
A few weeks later, I was flat on my back staring at a ceiling in a darkened room, left arm above my head, waiting to get an electronic chip implanted in my breast for the surgery happening a few days later. The chip would mark where the tumor was, sending a signal to a scanning device my surgeon would use to map out where he needed to cut. The nurse began slathering gel all over the area where the doctor, using ultrasound, would locate the mass and inject the chip. Perhaps wanting to distract me from how cold the goop was, she broke the silence with “Do you have any questions about this procedure?”
“Not really.” I answered, having already googled it to death, “it’s amazing though, how it works!”
“I know. It really is. In the past, we used wires.”
“Wires? Like little bits of wire?” I asked, not quite grasping what she meant.
“No, long wires. We inserted them where the tumor was, and they poked out of the skin to identify the spot for the surgeon,” she answered, “We would do the procedure right before surgery and then wheel them off to the operating room.”
“Wow, that’s crazy! When was this?” I asked, picturing women with shag haircuts and teashade glasses on gurneys being rolled down a burnt orange and avocado green colored hospital corridor, splayed wires from their breasts like morbid fence posts.
“Only three years ago.” she answered right as the doctor walked in, introduced herself, and gently closed the door behind her.
Suddenly I felt oddly lucky and aware of the timespace I was occupying. How this quick, fairly easy procedure was a completely different experience for the women going through this just three years ago. I felt them all in this moment, generations of women before me, their bodies sacrificed and layered into the technology that lined this room. Their experiences and stories etched into the educated minds of all my doctors. Their hardships and celebrations; all bits of research and data constructing a future of better outcomes for more women.
When I got home later that day, I told my teenage daughter about the procedure, and teased that I had them connect the chip to my Apple Pay. Now all I had to do when I was purchasing something, was to lean my breast over the card reader.
“Really?” she said, uninterested.
“Yeah! You know how sometimes you see women leaning in when they are purchasing something at the grocery store or Starbucks?” I embellished, “That is what they are doing! It’s a perk of breast cancer!”
“Wow, huh. That’s cool.” She didn’t even question me on any of it, much to my delight. I was giddy at the prospects of a prank I could potentially stretch out over the rest of my life.
The next day we went to Target to grab a few things I wanted to have on hand for my recovery. We were in line, and I thought, what a perfect time to launch my ruse. “Hey,” I said when we were almost to the cashier, “I’m going to try out my boob chip. What do you think?”
She glanced at the people around us and back down at her phone. “I don’t know. Why? How?”
“I think just like this,” I said doing a practice lean while grabbing my boob and gesturing the swiping and tapping motion I would do with it over the card reader.
She looked around “No. NO.” she whispered as the cashier began scanning our items. “Please do not.”
“Okay. I’ll try it when I am by myself.” I said, feigning disappointment, and pulling out my credit card. As we walked out to the car, I couldn’t stand it any more.
“Did you actually believe me?” I asked, unable to fathom that my intelligent, sharp witted daughter would be so naive.
“I guess,” she answered half listening, nose in phone, as we walked through the parking lot. Then it hit me.
Why would she not believe this is possible? She was born into a world where data, money, music, movies are all grabbed out of thin air and passed back and forth by merely tapping something against something else. How could I expect her to find the absurd in something that isn’t really that absurd at all? To my kid, I am an embarrassing relic that still physically swipes my credit card on the reader to pay.
The joke ended up being on me, and just like that I am old again.
I couldn’t stop laughing! 🤣😹❤️🩹
This is so so good!