About Me and the Big C
About the author (written for me by my dear friend, Tracy Morse): I am queen of all things radioactive and cancer free. I am an independent woman and dedicated mother. I make mean blondies that make academics cry. I dabble in all things witty and academic while pursuing enlightenment on the higher order of life: grammar. I rock.
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Try not to worry about the future of the girls (even though I know that’t what parents do). Think of all the advancements since Mary was diagnosed. Who knows what they will be when your girls are adults. You have found this early and you are young with lots of fight in you. You will win.
Comment by Molly — December 3, 2007 #
Anne,
Please know that I’m here for you, and your family. You are not alone in this season of life that faces you. Know that many are praying for your strength to weather this season. You will get through this journey. Your girls will be stronger from your experiences. Please, let me know how I can support you and your family. I will be avaiable for transports to the upper campus, or to take them to your home. I’ll help in any way. Just ask and it will be done.
Sincerely to one Mom to another,
Carol Beyer
Comment by Carol Beyer — December 5, 2007 #
Hi Anne,
I,too, would like to offer my thoughts and prayers. I had my surgery five years ago this Thanksgiving. My children were of course older than your girls, but I remember very well how much I worried about them. My daughter was 19 at the time, and the guilt I felt for possibly giving this nasty gene to her was overwhelming. No one in my family had ever had breast cancer so hopefully my Joanna will never hear a doctor telling her that she has breast cancer.
You will experience so many emotions during the next few months – fear, sadness, anger, and believe it or not joy. You will marvel at the kindnesses of your friends and family. People you hardly know will send you a card and wish you well. You’ll see first hand what is really important about life, and you’ll wonder why you ever worried about the littlest of things. Truthfully you will appreciate many things you took for granted. Would you ever choose to have breast cancer? NO! However, there are some positives in this situation. It will help you incredibly if you look for everything good that happens to you and you soak in all the love humankind has to give you.
Please call me or email me anytime. I can give you the scoop on chemo, radiation, and hair loss (as I experienced them). None of these events were fun, but what great life experiences. You are such a wonderful writer. Now you have a wealth of things to write about.
Please let me help in any way.
Sincerely,
Trudi Buscemi
Comment by Trudi Buscemi — December 7, 2007 #
Just wanted to let you know that this isn’t some kind of punishment for past misdeeds. You are a wonderful teacher (as proven by the bright smiling faces in your class). You are a wondeful mother. Arden and Elise are bright, maybe talented little girls and that doesn’t happen without a mother’s love and attention (and discipline). You are so much like your grandmother (even in your vulnerabilities). All this is is a broken gene which entered the family many years before you were born. Think of the guilt I feel for passing it through!
But I guess your body IS in control. Luckily, you will get through this. I have absolutely no doubt about that. There are too many prayers sent up in your name. And I see no evidence that the prognosis will point to anything but an excellent result.
Comment by Dad — December 9, 2007 #
I liked your long and philosophical discussion and it was remarkable that our men’s bible class covered the same territory today. The discussion came around to the fact we are not free when we are completely self-reliant but when we turn ourselves over to God. And not the institutions but the Holy Spirit inside of each of us. I volunteered that it is much like Alcholics Anonymous; that alchoholics are enslaved when they are excercising free will by engaging in self-destructive activities that none can talk them out of. It’s only when they turn themselves over to a “higher power” that they regain the freedom they lost when they chose to drink. As early as Step Two of A-A reads something like this (in part)”were entirely ready to turn ourselves over to a higher power.” Virtually all successful treatment programs use some version of the Twelve Steps.
Dad
Comment by Dad — December 11, 2007 #
HI, I got it too. I talked about it in the column “tea in the sunroom”. Sure is a lot to go through and the decisions have to be made so fast. That’s what bothered me. No time to think about it.
Comment by Elizabeth — December 14, 2007 #
I have read quite a bit of philosophy from you in recent days. Some of it was optimistic, some not. One thing about philosophy: It’s useless until you buy in to it completely and this cannot happen with pure reason. It is impossible to reason about an essentially unreasonable situation. Unfortunately, “you,” who most people believe is an inner force that uses and controls the body, are under the control of the body as long as you live. Even death is a bodily function. Most of the time the body works pretty well and we can just use it to work our will (to the degree the rules of civilization do not constrain it). Sometimes, though, our body fails us in the middle of our life and when that happens we are inclined to stop and take accounting.
Our pastor has said that these evils are just are “sins” deriving out of our fallen nature. Not caused by individual acts but by the fact that we live in a fallen world. If you think about it, this is quite a subtle idea. As Clint Eastwood said in “the Unforgiven” “deserves got nothing to do with it.” God has given us free will and we misused it right from the beginning, and mortality is one of the consequences. But love is also a consequence; the quality of altruism also. Remember it was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good AND evil that brought us down. Which meant that we could choose either. Even if you take the creation story as metaphor (which most of us do), at some point men gained a knowledge that other animals seem not to possess and from that derives civilization and the many crimes and blessings associated with it. Pure empirical rationality alienates us from our spiritual selves (which I believe is a manifestation of the Holy Ghost). And it is to our spiritual selves that we should be turning in times when reason alone can not help. It is not possible to fully understand what is happening as it does, but when the time comes you will. Whatever will be, will be. The worship of God, the finding of the Holy Ghost inside you will allow God to work His way from within during the time of crisis. Prayer is the way to make that connection conscious.
It was no accident I had my epiphany at the darkest, most irrational point in my life.
Comment by Dad — December 21, 2007 #
Respond to your 12/17 blog entry:
You probably know all this – but it bears repeating. I have a little experience in feeling like a “bionic man.” Eight years ago when I had my prostate surgery…well, it didn’t go so well. It was supposed to be minimally invasive.. microwave surgery. Without going through the gory details the procedure hurt a lot more than I thought it would. Afterwards I was supposed to carry around a catheter with a bag that strapped to your leg that you had to empty periodically. It was messy as hell, awkward to manage, and you really didn’t want to go outside because you had this lump under your pants and it slid around. Top that off with the awful bladder cramps I had that first night. Every eighteen minutes it felt like somebody who weighed about 275 was stomping on it. They prescribed a drug which partially dealt with the pain, but it stayed pretty painful. Then when I removed the catheter after a week it didn’t work and I had to be rushed to the emergency room. I waited two hours there in agony before the staff replaced it and I produced a bag-and-a-half. And that’s only part of the story.
Later, I thought about the catheter and the people who have to deal with it all the time…and also the partly botched surgery and wondered if this was what old age was going to be about. It was depressing.
Not nearly what you’ve been through but enough so I could really empathize with the feeling of having been beaten up and hooked up to something unnatural day-after-day and wondering if it would ever return to normal. Luckily, for the most part it did despite a number of physical and mental “complexities over the next few months.
Comment by Dad — January 20, 2008 #
Anne,
Your thoughts, words, emotions and feelings have touched me. I know that we don’t really know each very well but be assured that you are in my thoughts and prayers. Keep the faith and hold on to those who love you.
God Bless,
Kim
Comment by Kim mollick — January 24, 2008 #
Dear Anne,
It’s been years since we’ve seen, or probably even thought of, one another–but when I checked my e-mail while boarding a plane last night and saw Susanne’s words of “did you know Anne had a mastectomy” it made me pause and forget everything else about my hectic day. I followed up by phone this morning and she shared this blog address. First let me say that you are in my prayers. I pray now that you will beat this beast and that you will find calm in the chaos of the fight. Second, let me say how reading your blog gave me the same reaction of reading Susanne’s words—-it made me pause and forget everything else about my hectic day. Your words reminded me of what is important and how easy I can forget that. I thank you for the reminder.
Take care,
Julie
Comment by Julie Scoggin — January 26, 2008 #
I tears me up to hear you’re having such a time of it. You’re about the strongest person I know (stronger still because you have an inner life and you don’t sink into your own stuff; always more concerned about what it’s doing to the girls. I wish there were something I could do to alleviate the discomfort. But you WILL get through it. One small consolation for me is that through the blog I’ve learned more about what a great woman you are and what makes you tick than I have in all the years of our lives.
Dad
Comment by Dad — February 25, 2008 #
Anne,
In 1988 after my mastectomy, my first waking thought every day was, “Is it back?” Memories were couched in darkness,”Was this the last time I would . . .?”
Gradually, these thoughts peeled away and disintegrated like the crisp dirty brown skin of a newly planted bulb. Green shoots appeared–”You’re alive! You’re here today!” they shouted. Sturdy and persistent, green daffodil stems pushed away mesmerizing negative thoughts, replacing them with sunshine-bright petals of joy and hope and perspective.
My life is much better now, since and because of my cancer. I am kinder and gentler. I am more patient. The cup is half full. I can laugh at adversity. I am more here than I have ever been in my life. I have more to give because so much was taken away.
I wish for you that your spring will come again really soon. You are in my thoughts every day.
xoxo Sara
Comment by Sara Calhoun Davis — March 7, 2008 #
You must know that I love words also. One of my favorites is “loathesome” pronounced in that fruity, drawn-out English way. Another is “unctuous.” Don’t you loathe unctuous people. Another is “refractory.” How about “pissmire.” And “adore” when referring to a loved one with its implications of pedestals and unreason. “Beserk” with its odd finishing k making it almost an onomatopoeia. And the Greek names for some flowers, “narcissus” and “hyacinth.” And “phlegm” which would be onomatopoeia if you pronounced the g.
Comment by Dad — March 27, 2008 #
Hi Dr. SG!
You have been in my thoughts and I wish you brighter days ahead. I lost my own mother to cancer years ago, I know what your girls are going through with seeing the effects of the treatments and so on. I know you will get through this, not a doubt in my mind. You are one of the strongest women I have ever met and my own personal hero.
This is a great book for them… http://www.amazon.com/Our-Mom-Cancer-Abigail-Ackermann/dp/0944235166
And you have to see this movie!
http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Sexy-Cancer-Rodney-Yee/dp/B000YV1KVI/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
All of your Digital Rhetorics class is still behind you 100 percent!
Kick some butt!
~Amber
Comment by Amber Osborne — April 11, 2008 #
This is inspiring. Keep writing as my best friend’s mother was a survivor. Remember that you are surviving. Count the days, celeberate each day because you know you are alive.
Comment by moiexplained — May 25, 2008 #