“My dream team!” I texted, and hit send. But even as I looked at this tidy, phone-screen-sized glimpse at my at cancer-treatment-related activity for the next couple of months, I could also foresee the appointments disappearing from the list, one by one. “When will I see you again?” I want to ask each of them. “And then what do I do?” Perhaps not improbably for those who know me best, the movie scene that flashed to mind is from The Princess Bride. At the end of the film, Inigo Montoya reflects on the fact that he finally fulfilled his 30-year quest to avenge his father’s death by killing the five-fingered Count Rugen. He says to Westley: “You know, it’s strange. I have been in the revenge business for so long. Now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with my life.” I don’t know for sure the cancer’s dead, but I can say this: Now that nearly a year (okay, eight months as I write) since my breast cancer diagnosis is in the books, do I know what to do with my life? January feels, as good as any other month, the right time to ask the question. If only I didn’t have a bit of a problem with January. I’ve never been keen on fresh starts or resolutions. It never feels right to “start,” much less “resolve,” anything in the dead of winter. (It’s my suspicion, in fact, that’s why so many resolutions fail so quickly. It’s winter.) But if cancer changed me (and it certainly did), then I’m coming around to the idea that I need to rethink words and phrases like “fresh” and “start” and “new year, new you!” I was 55 when I was diagnosed with cancer, which is an age that’s suspended somewhere between young and old. In the months between turning that age and turning up at my (COVID-delayed) mammogram, I’d just begun some tentative, middle-aged, near-empty-nest reflection. My family had emerged from the worst of the pandemic mostly unscathed. I was going to redefine, to refocus. I was going to finish the novel I’ve been writing for years, take up Pilates again, expand my cooking repertoire, eat more omega-3 fatty acids. Instead, I got diagnosed with cancer and had surgery and ate more refined sugar, what with all the baked goods people dropped off as I was recovering. Reflection and self-assessment, along with vigorous exercise and sleeping on my side, took an extended pause for a while there, but they’re back. And now (forgive me) another movie line is coming to mind, this from my husband’s favorite, The Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” The wall I’m running into as I try to think through these issues is that there’s no “end” to cancer. No, “when I’m done, I’ll sign up for that class,” or “after cancer, I’ll finally refinish those cabinets.” When it comes to cancer, as best I can tell, unless it gets you, you get it. For good. I’m lucky; my prognosis is excellent. My treatment choice for the invasive lobular carcinoma in my right breast was a double mastectomy, with DIEP flap reconstruction. A rogue few cancer cells in an excised lymph node meant radiation was a smart follow-up, so I did that. For the next five to seven years, I’ll take a hormone-blocking drug to forestall recurrence, the chances of which, I’m told, are very very low. From what I can tell (and I’ll know more once this round of check-in appointments is done) I’ll be seeing someone on the team every four months or so, monitoring me for changes and drug side effects and just, you know, saying hi. But that still doesn’t mean cancer is done with me. Like I said, it’s mine now. The scars will fade but not disappear. This isn’t like the time I decided, briefly, at age 31, after a bad breakup, to be blonde. Eventually my natural color won out. This time, it’s permanent. January is coming soon. My novel, many more interesting salmon recipes, cabinets that could use a refresh, vacation spots that remain unvisited — all are out there. I can’t wait for some sort of sign. The time, as they say, is now. It was hard to slow down and wait when I was compelled to, and now, amazingly, it’s also been a struggle to stop waiting. For a while there, most of what I had to do involved biding my time, being patient, being kind to my healing body and frightened mind. Patience requires time. I granted myself time. And now, I have to get busy living.
