Something Evil This Way Comes

So, a friend of mine died of ovarian cancer on Friday morning. Unlike other folks who I sorta know who have died of OVCA in the last couple of years, she is someone I knew in the flesh and knew before her diagnosis.

Marianna got diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer about a year ago. I remember pretty clearly because I was having a crap-tastic weekend. I had just been told my dad has lung cancer, and I had a major appointment of my own at the High Risk Clinic, and in the midst of all that, a couple of friends took me out for dinner, to offer some morbid support. While we were having burritos, one of my friends’ cell phone rang, saying that Marianna was in the emergency department, with her girlfriend. On the way back from dinner, we stopped in to check on Marianna.

She said that the surgeons had drained a litre and a half of fluid from her lungs. She said they were talking about the possibility that it was cancer but, as she said, she wasn’t willing to believe that right off the bat.
I remember thinking, “You hold on to that thought as long as you can, sister.”

Marianna did chemo right up till about three weeks ago.
Along the way, people I know would say that she was dying.
I, as a cancer survivor, have a particular issue with regular folks deciding how much time a cancer patient has left on the clock. But suffice to say that Marianna has been proving folks wrong for at least the last six months.

And on Friday, she died.

I saw her on Monday night. She had been unconscious and, out of the blue, came to on Monday and spent the day on her porch, enjoying herself. By the time I got there, she had slipped back into sleep. But I sat there with her. It was nice. The house was warm like an orchid hothouse, but her bedroom window was open and it was a summer rain happening outside and a nice breeze and the sound of rain falling, and I was happy for her that she got to be in her home.

I had planned to go back on Thursday, but I got the mother of all colds and couldn’t go with all my germs.
And I knew that might mean I just wouldn’t see her again before she died. But then again, I thought, people have been burying Marianna for the last 6 months.

On Friday morning, a friend called to tell me she had died earlier that morning. I hope it was as peaceful as can be.

And now, my head is a jumble of emotions, few of which make sense in any linear fashion.

And tomorrow, I will go to a fund raising walk for Ovarian Cancer Canada.
Last year, after the walk, everyone on the team went to visit Marianna at the Cancer Agency, because she was still in the hospital.
Her fight was intense, and, while it seems to have been so much longer, began and ended in a year.

So, R.I.P., Marianna.

You were so much tougher than me.

So, it’s been a very carcinogenic time lately.

How to explain.

My dad was re-admitted to the hospital for lung cancer/COPD/pneumonia.
That situation remains up in the air.

A friend, who was diagnosed with OVCA last summer, has been given a bed at the local cancer agency while she argues with them about whether or not she is palliative. It is her ferocious intent that she will go home and visit with her cats and work on her garden.
It strikes me that there are people who have, understandably I guess, taken that diagnosis and decided she is checking out, in spite of her kicking and refusal to just go along. I think that’s what people who aren’t sick need to do for themselves; start shifting their connections and, in some ways, pulling up their drawbridges.
I understand, and still, as someone who had plenty of people interact with me in a way that implied I had one foot in the grave, I will always back the long shot, cuz my friends, I am the long shot my own self.

So, that’s happening.
It’s weird on so many levels.
It’s a bit like staring at a fork in the road and seeing how someone else got the much rockier ride.
And do I feel any guilt about that?
More than you will ever know.

And then, last week, as all these things were shaking down, I made the ridiculous mistake of going through my “Copies to Self” file in my e-mail. I confess, I hadn’t gone through that file in several years. And in it, I found so many e-mails I had sent to women who have since died of ovarian cancer.
I’m counting four just off the top of my pointed little head.
Which leads me to wonder why I got to dodge that bullet and these other marvelous women took the hit.

And that’s not to say that OVCA didn’t completely destroy my former life.
It destroyed the most important relationship I have ever been in.
It messed with my work and my career aspirations.
It did strange things to my relationships with my friends.
And still, amid the fucking rubble that is my current life, I am the lucky one. Or one of them.

I’ve been really angry for the last few years about that which I have lost because of cancer. And unless you are a cancer survivor of some stripe, save yourself the keystrokes before you tell me something all sage-like, cuz you don’t understand cuz you can’t understand until you’ve done it.
Don’t mean to offend, just stating some facts.

Anyway… I have been angry. Cuz I was terrified.

And here is an enormous confession.

I remain terrified. Hence the crankiness.
Cuz whether you get it or not and whether you have already exhaled or not, for me… they still send me to a place at the cancer agency called the High Risk Clinic.
The folks at the cancer agency are only willing to say, “you are in the group of people which we view most optimistically”, and that’s when I live in a statistic of having a 20 – 30% chance of being around in 2011.
So, hey… I am one of the lucky ones.
And inside of all that, how weird is it to say that. But in spite of all the losses, I still get to wake up too early and go to work and curse that, and have my heart go in all its crazy directions, and if there are folks crying for me, it’s for things much less severe than because I left this mortal plain too soon.

So, I guess this makes me stronger.

It sure as hell has made me crazier.
And it has made me angrier. But I feel that I am turning a corner.
If I am gonna be here, then it’s time to get going and indulging, and letting go of that which torments me, to whatever extent that is possible.
But I feel so much less interested in being tormented by imbeciles and their presence in my peripheral vision.

Wish me luck.

And wish whatever you wish/hope for for the women still duking it out with this damned disease.

Rodger Dodger
over and out

I have been thinking about what my friend wrote here and one of the details that struck me was her experience of knowing she had cancer and having to wait for several weeks for her surgery.
And I realized that this was so completely different than my experience.

In retrospect, maybe everyone around me who was associated with the medical world was patting me on the head and playing alcoholic family, but even as they had me count backwards from 100, I never believed I had cancer.

Here’s what I did know.

I knew I had something weird and palpable right beside my right hip bone and I knew it was becoming a hindrance to my sex life, hence my eventual willingness to have it checked out. (This mass, gentle reader, would turn out to be a benign tumour, living in the middle of a wasteland of ovarian cancer. Can you say “Irony saved my life”? I know I can.)

I know I went for an ultrasound and the technician actually couldn’t capture an image of my ovaries, because of the moss-like spread of the OVCA, but I didn’t completely grok what the problem was at that point, thinking instead that it was my great benign tumour of hair and teeth and other disgusting anatomical strays.

I recall being somewhat taken aback when, after meeting with my surgeon prior to my surgery, he sent me for bloodwork across the street at the cancer agency. That was the first time I ever walked in the building and I was ready to have a full on melt down and explain to anyone and everyone why I really didn’t belong in that building. I consoled myself with the (idiotic) belief that this was the closest lab to the hospital and that’s why he sent me there (conveniently overlooking the full scale lab right across the street).

I recall my then gf telling me she was worried and me telling her that it would all be okay, and honestly believing that, explaining that “things like that don’t happen to me.”

So, by the time anyone told me I had cancer, the bulk of it had already been cut out of me and was on its way to a tumour bank where it will live with other tumours and scientists will take it off the shelf and figure out a solution for all this anguish.

People with cancer often speak of feeling like their body betrayed them and there were people who asked me if that was my experience. In fact, I felt like I had betrayed my body; like I hadn’t done enough to look after my body in a toxic fast-food world. I have never felt like my body let me down.

In the long run, I made my body sit there and absorb terrible poisons so we could just hope to carry on. And my body, against all odds, did what I hoped it would do.

That’s just a strange detail that has been on my mind these last few days.

I went to visit my pal at the hospital. It was handy because I had an appointment with my oncologist, as weird and ironic luck would have it. I had lots of old ghosts walking with me between the hospital and the cancer agency. And it is completely overwhelming how many things have happened in my life since the first time I wandered from the hospital to the cancer agency for bloodwork. One really significant detail was seeing my reflection in a window and noticing that I was walking alone.
It’s not my ideal, but it’s the best case scenario these days.

And, for those who follow these details at home, things are cool in cancer land for now.

You know, I really like my bosses and my non-bosses who exist in a parallel universe where they have to (apparent) authority over me, but tonight, I could take every one of them over my knee and spank them till my hand was raw.

I’m just sayin’.

And… that’s *all* I’m sayin’.

So, someone sent me a blog comment which basically amounted to them telling me that I should work on a more prolific blog presence. That posting once a month was, perhaps, less than ideal.
Having given it some thought, I think she is right.

How to catch you up on the last month…
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Seattle for an ex-gf’s 60th birthday. At first I was horrified because I thought this meant that I was old, but what I realized is that it really means she is a chicken hawk.
Being in Seattle was good on a lot of levels. Part of what was good was seeing friends who have been in the same relationships for the last twenty years and seeing how they interact. It’s not perfect and sometimes they bicker, but at the end of the day, it’s pretty sweet.
I confess that I try to learn as I go when it comes to those big time relationships. I kinda got knocked back to kindergarten, but that’s okay. I can hone my humility some. It’s still really interesting to me to see how people interact when they have been together for a long, long time. I think it’s easy to get in an absent-minded groove and to be upset about whatever grumbly and annoying things are messing with your utopian vision today. It’s hard to remember to be kind and sweet to each other.
Thankfully, I am no longer put to that test, but for those of you in relationships, I think you should try to remember to be sweet to your sweetie. How else will they know that you care if you don’t extend yourself?

On other fronts, this week has been a week of coming out all over again.
I don’t know how to explain it and this thing has certainly consumed a lot of my mental and emotional energy and… if it needs to be said publicly then let me be the one to do it but after a long haul with sobriety, I have decided that I want to see if I can be just like a normal person.
Like I said, I don’t know how to explain it nor do I know how much I need to explain to the general public.
The details that are available for the general public are that I am awfully tired of being the person who is always different than everyone else in the group.
It’s also true that I have felt more and more isolated with the whole sobriety thing over the last few years, so that ultimately,crossing that line seemed like a way to re-connect with people.
It’s an experiment, and if I screw up, I know where to go to drink bad coffee and be hugged non-consentually. But in the short term, this is where I am at.

S’cool?

Monday, February 26, 2007 (SF Chronicle)
SAN FRANCISCO/Friends mourn Fat Bottom Revue creator/Pagan march, service
for performer, activist who ‘didn’t see differences’
Delfin Vigil, Chronicle Staff Writer

Nearly 150 people attended a memorial service and procession Sunday
for Heather MacAllister, the “Reva Lucionary” San Francisco underground
goddess and creator of the Fat Bottom Revue burlesque act.

Many were able to attend the funeral only because MacAllister helped
them avoid theirs. On what would have been MacAllister’s 38th birthday, members of the
gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community gathered to say goodbye to
the performer and activist who ended her life Feb. 13 in Portland, Ore.,
through assisted suicide after a battle with ovarian cancer.

“Heather literally saved so many of their lives. She helped people
who were suicidal and felt worthless and showed them for the first time that
they could be powerful and sexy, even if they were fat,” said Cholla,
the officiating priestess for Sunday afternoon’s ceremony, which included a
procession to El Rio bar led by a woman playing bagpipes.

Cholla wore a black robe and wielded a ceremonial knife to cut a
symbolic
passage in the air to help send off MacAllister’s spirit. Like many in
the crowd, the priestess went by one name only.

It was a misty afternoon at Precita Park in the Mission District when
the elaborate pagan ceremony began with songs and words of tribute to the
performer’s activist work. An enlarged photo of MacAllister was placed
against a tree.

“We waited for Heather to change the world. We cannot wait any longer.
Go out and change the world,” Cholla said to the grieving crowd, nearly all
of whom described themselves as fat.

“It’s not obese — that’s a diagnosis. It’s not heavy. It’s not
overweight. It’s fat, and Heather helped reclaim the word ‘fat,’ ” said
Deva, a 46-year-old San Francisco woman who helped direct traffic as the
procession slowly made its way along Precita Street to the neighborhood
bar on Mission Street.

MacAllister, a Michigan native, moved to San Francisco in 2005 to
create the Big Burlesque and Fat Bottom Revue, featuring and celebrating large
women. The revue not only received critical acclaim but also had a
profound effect on her audience, according to Julia Caplan, an Oakland
woman who came to pay her respects.
“She was a beautiful, brilliant and bold visionary who was courageous
enough to fight for people who don’t have many allies,” Caplan said.

At El Rio, the mourners signed farewell cards to MacAllister and
shared stories of captivating first impressions. In the patio area, people took
turns bowing their heads at her memorial altar. Holding back tears, Anderson Toone, a 48-year-old drag king, paid his final respects.
“What made Heather such a special activist is that she didn’t see
differences in people,” said Toone. “She saw connections between them.”

E-mail Delfin Vigil at dvigil@sfchronicle.com.
———————————————————————-
Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle

For folks who don’t know this tidbit, I work in a sorta healthcare facility generally helping folks who have active addicts, desperate poverty and/or nasty mental health issues.
I spend a lot of time in doctors’ offices, clinics and labs.

So, imagine my flurry of emotions when, for work, I had to take one of our clients to the Women’s Clinic at the local hospital. The clinic where I went when I had to meet my surgical oncologist for the first time. The next time I met him, we were all in those blue gowns and all of us had stupid bandana type things on our heads. Errr, the rest of it is kind of a blur for me, but you could ask the good doctor about it, he may still remember. Though probably not. I expect he has tossed quite a few scalpels in the sharps container in the last couple of years and my innards may or may not ring any bells for him.

Still, there I am, in his office, but not there to see him.

The receptionist called the name of the client I had brought and she trotted off to see her doctor. And I sat there for about a half hour.
I looked at the enormous number of files they had behind the counter and wondered if one of them was mine.

My surgeon wasn’t a terribly chatty guy, but I am fine with that.
In my flood of emotions, one of the things going through my overworked brain was that I’d like to see him again. Shake his hand and say thanks. Thanks for staying two and an half hours for a surgery that was only supposed to take 45 minutes. Thanks for staying late on a Friday afternoon, when I am sure you had some sweet young thing waiting for you on your sail boat down at the harbour. Thanks for explaining all that bad stuff to Elaine, and for writing it down and drawing little diagrams that I still find floating around the house from time to time.
Thanks for doing however many extra years of training it took to become a surgical gynecological oncologist. Thanks for being one of only 5 in my city. Thanks for apologizing when my incision got infected. I really don’t think it was your fault, I blame the rat-bag government who had just got the cleaning staff’s wages by 15% that very week.Besides, it seems to delight more than a few people that I now have 2 belly-buttons.

I work in a crazy ass job where I get burnt out, don’t get enough support, sometimes people throw things at me, sometimes it’s worse than that.
I do that because I really do believe that what we do with our lives is important and trying to help folks who are having a harder time than you is really what it’s all about.
Thank you for deciding to help other people.
What we do, sure, it’s really different, but it’s really the same.

Thanks, doc.

I just, you know, don’t have a boat.