These are facts: three years ago you were 23, you were in graduate school, and you had cancer. This wasn’t always the case, of course, but that’s what became of you over a single Thanksgiving break. Other facts will emerge over time, many will begin to feel as though they had always been a part of yourself, but these three are constants. You hold them close to yourself.
If you’d like to help Tall Man and other blood cancer patients, please donate your bone marrow in the country you live in, and if you have money, they’d love you to give it to Anthony Nolan in the UK or to Be the Match in the US.
The poet Joel Brouwer says that marriage is not a story: I believe him. We were almost married, and that is not a story either. In our flat I keep finding scraps of paper with my notes, things I am amazed I ever knew: that, for instance, Scottish registrars will let you cherish and obey, but an English civil service must be entirely areligious; that elope to Scotland?! was once a feasible idea; that you can purchase a…
My last breast reconstruction was a seminar on circulation. Several times a day, the nurses would come in with dopplers and listen. My heartbeat sounds crisp, like someone biting into an apple. The venous pulse in my tissue flaps hit the same beat, but vaguely, a brush on the drums. The arterial pulse sounded like the wind circling the top of a hill. These are the sounds of everything going wrong. I went home flat…
The idea that someone knows whether or not I have cancer but is keeping it from me is ridiculous, but here it is, actually happening. “Your results are in. The doctor is out until Monday. Only the doctor can relay your results. I’m sorry, ma’am. Have a nice weekend.” I can’t even bring myself to do a Lifetime movie style screaming rant at the “Have a nice weekend.” Even in a Lifetime movie, it’s hard…
Taylor Swift's "Twenty-Two" is maybe the blandest song to ever have been generated by a pop-country songwriting machine. For those who aren't familiar, a copy can be found here. (For those who are unfamiliar and at work, it recounts the bland-but-accessible adventures of "ditch[ing] this whole scene" and "dreaming instead of sleeping.") It’s a vanilla milkshake in song form, with a chorus of, "I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22," backed by…
...who passed away over the weekend at a tragically young age, please consider donating to ovarian cancer research via the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Jimmy Fund.
You never ask anyone in the waiting room at the oncology unit what they're in for. You just never ask. You sit there and stare into space, you flip through a wrinkled magazine too fast to actually read anything, you stare at the TV at Kelly Ripa who is too loud, you slouch into yourself and scroll through your phone. You listen to the hushed conversations between moms and daughters, husbands and wives. You study…
