Safe as Houses

This house is not presently for sale, on Long Island, or anywhere else:


But it's a fine example of the sort of thing I'm looking for. Or wish I was earnestly looking for.

Let me back up.

Last November/December, The Fates decided to hand me a lemon with the whole breast cancer thing. Then, someone must have told the Fates that I'd soon be looking to sell my house in Austin and to buy something on Long Island. Intrigued, the gods wondered if there was any way they could add to my miseries. Clearly, they could. They sent along a couple, new arrivals to Austin, who begged my realtor to show them anything, anything in Rosedale that had four bedrooms. My agent didn't pressure us at all to show them our house, which we hadn't prepped for re-sale and certainly hadn't listed yet, it not even being Christmas. But I ignored my inner voice and let the couple come around to see the place. Five times. For several hours on the last visit. Mike joked that this very enthusiastic couple was enjoying his house more than he was. I, patting myself on the back, thought we had some serious lookers here. Being spared all the effort it takes to get a house ready to sell would be some tiny compensation for what I'd been through. I sighed with relief. I could enjoy my last months in Austin riding my bike whenever I could. And I was looking forward to picking out a new family home on Long Island.

When the couple finally made an offer, it was for almost 200K less than the asking price. We politely refused that offer and the next one, a mere 100K less than we were asking for. Finally, the buyers met our bottom line price. They signed a contract and forked over the laughable option fee. As it turns out, they were just wasting another week of the valuable real-estate season. When it finally came time to cough up real money for an inspection, they pulled out of the deal, claiming that something had suddenly come up. But in a classic example of a Freudian slip, the couple revealed that they hoped to get the house for their original price, later in the season.

So now I'm back at the Wee Cottage in Huntington, tooling around with a realtor on Long Island's North Shore, looking at houses with no real relish. Who knows what will still be on the market once we've finally spruced our house up and sold it (not to the aforementioned Fiends from Hell.)? Best not to fall in love with anything. But by not falling in love, I can at least enjoy being an anthropologist, observing the natives in their habitat.

And let me tell you, the natives are inordinately fond of crosses. Being the result of a typically Protestant upbringing, I've always been slightly embarrassed by the sight of a crucifix over the bed that husband and wife occupy. What is that little bit of symbolism about exactly? There you are, walking into a couple's master suite, not thinking about what must sometimes go on in there, and one of those things stares down at you and you're suddenly wondering why they have to put it there. What are they trying to remind themselves of? It seems to be saying, "Don't over-enjoy, darling, this too shall pass." The first house we visited, instead of having some delicately formed little cross above the marriage bed, had a hulking, yes, lurid, example of the form. Christ Twisted in Agony. I all but blushed.

The next house had crosses in every room, some with the body upon them and some without. What, are the home-owners worried about wandering into the kitchen to get some mustard and suddenly forgetting what their most profound beliefs are? I don't get it.

Anyway, in one of these houses, the owner was fond of crosses and dogs. The agent was anxious that the dogs, small but vicious little ankle-biters, would be loose. Fortunately, the dogs were locked up, but there was an oil portrait of them in the main hall. I mean, a nice oil portrait. Two yorkies and a chihuahua, in muted, earthy tones, were hung next to Jesus.

But one thing I can really appreciate is the abundance of in-home bars. A 'bar' is some piece of furniture or cabinetry, at which there is elevated seating and some clear indication that more than just coke is served. I've always felt that a shelf in the kitchen is adequate for the storage of the gin we occasionally enjoy, the wine we buy as needed, and the armagnac we get every Christmas, but clearly I wasn't thinking big enough. Most houses we visited at least had a wine rack in the kitchen or a wine refrigerator or both. Fully half of them had a bar in the family room or in the basement. One house had two bars in the family room, one in one corner, and one in the opposite corner. "One for wine and one for beer?" I thought. You could seat about four people at each bar.

God, dogs, and drink. Long Island may be without mysterious crewes and voodoo cults. It may not have a Willie Nelson or any flying saucer devotees. It may not have irritating Whole Foods fans who drink liquidized weeds for breakfast. It may not be, you know, weird, like Austin. But it's possibly weird enough.

One-breasted Girls Go Wild

You know what worries me? I'm worried that when I'm finally sloughing off this mortal coil, I won't be pondering life's profound mysteries. Oh, no. Instead, I'll be dwelling on really silly questions. Like, "Just how many calories are there in a potato chip?" or "I wonder why Cuba Gooding Jr. didn't make more movies?"

When I was told I would have to have surgery, a few days before Christmas, I let many gloomy thoughts about mortality surface. I suddenly cared about how my family would remember me. My memories of my dad, Pat, are mostly wonderful, but for a long time after his passing from a terrible, debilitating dementia, I couldn't focus on the man I'd known. Images of the withered alien who'd reshaped his body haunted my every thought about him. I didn't want my family remembering my maimed flesh. I banned husband and daughter from the sight of my wounded self, vowing not to unveil my body until after reconstruction, still some months away.

But, hey, I should have saved the gloomy thoughts for later! As it turns out, the pathology finally limped back in from the Mayo clinic: four tumors, two less than a centimeter in size, two more than a centimeter. The second to largest tumor was at the edge of the tissue that the surgeon could remove, leaving a scant millimeter of 'clean' tissue around that particular tumor. Radiation was inevitable. The only good news was that the Mayo clinic confirmed that the lymph nodes were clear, so there was no dispute about the staging of the disease. My wonderful breast surgeon, Dr. Brown, refused to commit himself on whether or not chemo would be part of the treatment. "Ten years ago," he advised, "No one would have treated a Stage One carcinoma with chemotherapy. But that's changed."

Well, I thought, at least my mother will shut up about how they cut my boob off just to cure a case of blocked milk ducts.

The thing I feared most, other than just hearing my name and "cancer" in the same sentence, was having to go through chemotherapy. To steal a line from Molly Ivins, it seemed awfully unfair that they had cut me, were planning to burn me, and were thinking about poisoning me, too. I don't approve of wallowing, but when I got the path report back, a good wallow seemed long overdue. Dr. Brown said to stay positive, but I can't say I much felt like it.

When I want to succumb to utter despair for a few hours, I find the internet very useful. You can't graze the blogs of breast cancer patients for very long before you come across a blog that is no longer active because the patient, usually a beautiful young woman under 40, has died, after months or years of grueling treatment. Pardon my French, but I hate this shitty disease. I came away from blog-grazing feeling lucky again, or somewhat lucky anyway.

After getting the pathology back, my breast surgeon scheduled me for a visit first to the oncologist and then to the radiation-oncologist. The oncologist I was being referred to, as far as I could tell from all my googling, was the closest thing Austin had to a breast cancer specialist in oncology. Her MD Anderson fellowship was in bioimmunotherapy (whatever the hell that is), but at least she had a fellowship from one of the major cancer centers in the US. I could find no oncologist in Austin who was a fellow of any well-known cancer center. Anyway, Dr. K's credentials did impress me. Despite the hemming and hawing over whether I had cancer at all initially, I came to realize that, at the end of the day, my cancer is pretty routine and pretty curable. With radiation, I would have a 95% chance of non-recurrence. And being healthy over all, I had no special considerations that might require an especially gifted clinician. So it seemed at least advisable to meet with Dr. K and see what she was like.

As it turned out, people-feel is not Dr. K's greatest asset. But, then, that's not what I go looking for in a doctor. Better to have the smart one than the friendly one. Dr. K. went to some lengths to get a clear picture of the time-table of my disease, who I'd seen, and what they had said. Then she went through the path report with me at some length. As she spoke, it was obvious that she had a decision table in her head about my treatment. She apologized profusely when she found that a key addendum was missing from the report. Without information regarding a key receptor in my tumors she could not rule chemotherapy in or out. She didn't seem to appreciate how anxious I was for this piece of information, though she did start making phone calls, to find out where the mystery information had gone or even if the pathologists had run all the tests they were supposed to run.

"If you do have to have chemo," she said, a trifle blithely I thought, "You'll lose your hair and you'll have to have a port installed in your chest, but you would not be prone to nausea and vomitting." Clearly, when you've had patients die from this killer, you have a peculiar definition of "the bright side".

Then came the news that she wouldn't be seeing me for two weeks. Two more weeks to find out if I would have chemo or not. I left the hospital near to tears. If she did declare chemo a necessity, I would get a second opinion, though from whom I wasn't sure. How's that for a scientific approach? I will challenge all the doctors who tell me what I don't want to here and sweetly agree with all the ones who tell me what I do want to hear. I called her the next day, to see if the report had turned up, but she never returned my call, possibly because the nature of my message, which of course had to go through Dr. K's nurse, was not conveyed.

Two days later, I went to the radiation-oncologist for a consultation. His nurse went through the pre-consult drill, going over the pathology again. I asked her if the addendum regarding certain receptors in my tumors had come back. Of course, nurses aren't really paid to break bad news and she would have been well within her rights to ask me to wait for the doctor. But she very kindly studied the addendum and said, "Woo-hoo, no chemo!" I felt the air rush back into my lungs. As my grandmother would have said, I felt like the extra chicken who the kids have picked to be the family pet.

By the way, do you know how to tell a good nurse from a great nurse? A good nurse weighs you and writes the numbers down as she sees them, not listening to all your yapping about how much your shoes weigh, how much your wedding ring weighs. A great nurse takes your own assessment into account and writes down the adjusted number you give her. I've had one great nurse in the past week and one good one.

Anyway, the radiation-oncologist (another Dr. Brown!) came in and turned out to have a lot more people-feel than Dr. K. I bonded with him instantly, especially when he whipped out his Iphone to check his dates. He would clearly allow himself to be drawn in on discussion of his apps vs. my apps, but I decided to play it cool. At least for this first visit. Plus, and I guess this says something about the nature of a radiation-therapist's work, he gave me his cell-phone number and said to call him personally with any questions I had. I've never had a doctor do that and I expect this to be the last time I get such an offer from any doctor.

So, now, I'm officially on the Cancer Train. There'll be years of appointments and nerve-wracking tests. There'll be tamoxifen and the arrival of menopause-like symptoms that I, even at 53, have seldom experienced. I've warned my husband that I may go crazy. But, though the news is worse than I was ever willing to contemplate, I'm no longer scared.

I realized just how not scared I was when I came back from a bike-ride with Mike. I'd dragged his butt up a few hills and he'd survived it well. We were having a lovely post-ride talk about nothing in particular. I had no desire to end our chat just because it was time to hit the shower.

I mean, this is The Shower. The place with a beautiful echo and two shower heads. The sea-foam tile is lovely, which means we couldn't afford it when we ordered it some seven years ago. We call it the Bob Dylan tile because, when we tried to rescind the order for the tile (Mike the Math Boy had never troubled himself to work out just how much these beauties were going to cost), the tile company sent us a list of all the stars and celebs who'd bought the very same tile. Bobby was on it. Joni Mitchell was on it. We would have canceled the order anyway, but the tile company refused.

So, anyway, we're in the bathroom, staring at The Shower. It was time to break up our chat so I could keep my body unseen until reconstruction. But whatever thoughts I had about mortality suddenly didn't seem worth the sacrifice of time I could be spending with a loved one. I decided it was time to forget about dying. It was time to stop insulting my husband's humanity. Just as he trusts me to love an imperfect body, I trust him to do the same. It was time for a good wash with a great guy.

Don't Parton Me

"Lures slung around her neck," wrote Germaine Greer of the human mammary gland. Anthropologist Marvin Harris wrote more or less the same thing, speculating that the human female has larger breasts than other primates because human males, preoccupied with cave paintings and interesting piles of dung, won't man up for just any ordinary pair. Big boobs are the two-by-fours of human reproduction.

Or not. I really have no opinion on how the human breast got to be so large. I just know that for many of us, the size is over and above the demands of mere lactation and pleasurable sensation.

I knew that at the start of this breast cancer journey,that I would probably have one, maybe two revelations that would come as a complete surprise. The nature of my revelation begins some six years ago, after my return from a spectacular vacation in England and Wales. On the first day back, I made the as-it-turns-out helpful mistake of stepping on the scales. The dial whizzed up to an astonishing 177lbs. On that 21-day holiday, there had been much feasting, many steak-and-kidney pies consumed with many pints of bitter. Get me going and I can strap on five imperial pints of Wadworth's 6X before the night is out.

So, not too surprisingly, I'd gained a pound every three days while on that marvelous trip. This new peak in weight was the crowning moment of a long march towards obesity that had begun when I'd returned to work after the birth of my daughter some seven years before. Stressed and unable to exercise, I'd packed on pound after unhappy pound. Jeans got too tight and then were discarded entirely in favor of nice, roomy chinos. To this day, I keep one dress from this period, The Tarp, as a chastening reminder of the whole process, a process that often had me looking in the mirror, and wondering where I went. I recognized the face, but nothing else seemed to belong to me.

But thanks to a kind spouse and a benevolent employer I returned from England, ready to go part-time. Seeing those unfamiliar numbers on the scales, I shelved plans to paint the house in my spare time and decided instead to get into shape again. I'd been a runner in my twenties and thirties. Where had that girl gone? As it turns out, I'm not cursed with a particularly fat-prone metabolism. All I needed was time on the bike. Within a few months, I'd shed the first 30 of the 47 pounds I needed to lose.

But nature is cruel. I lost weight from my face, my hands, my ankles, my fingers (I still wonder exactly where that first wedding ring slipped off, never to be found again). I even lost weight in a few places that clearly needed it, from a bum that, as David Sedaris' father would have said, was large enough to land a chopper on. But things weren't so happy in the upper hemisphere. True, I wouldn't have to buy my bras at Wal-Mart anymore, but neither did I dare attempt naked jumping jacks, lest I break my jaw. My knees were getting a break and were very thankful for it, but my upper spine, already curved from scoliosis, wasn't happy at all.

It never occurred to me that there were any options in dealing with the largely undiminished boob fat. I figured if I ever lost that last 17 pounds, my boobs would become something my spine was built for. Why I would have thought this is unclear, because I'd been buxom if not downright Partonesque ever since my teens. But, determined, I trained very hard for the Livestrong bike ride one year. I lost another ten pounds and was intrigued to note, again, how little came off the chest area. Just cursed, I thought. The very idea of a surgical reduction struck me as the sort of bourgeois self-indulgence that would get me hung when the revolution came. I didn't even consider it.

And now we return to that revelation that came with being diagnosed with breast cancer, be it stage zero or one. When I realized that I would have to undergo a mastectomy, I consoled myself with thoughts of a return to a perky pair. I didn't ever consider that I might just feel better with some of the weight gone. Even with the differential weight on one side, I feel stronger, less jiggly and ridiculous. At least on one side! Sure, I hate the scar. I hate the loss of nerve endings and I loathe the unnatural numbness that I suspect will always be there. I would never trade the healthy skin and nerve endings in the good boob for the lifeless concavity on the other side.

But in losing that one vat of jelly, I now glimpse, in those few hours of the day when I don't have The Blob stuffed in my bra, what it would be like to be normally proportioned. If you don't believe how much I'm looking forward to a further reduction, walk around with a five pound weight for a whole day, then walk around for an hour without it. You'll never go back.

If I could talk to that 49-year-old woman who'd recently done herself proud in the Livestrong ride, who was almost at her ideal weight but who still had to carry those swaying jugs around, I'd shout at her: "Get a reduction! Nature has done you no favors!" Big boobs may have been good for the species eons ago, but since the future of the species seems assured, perhaps now we could worry about what a bother these pockets of excessive flab really are.

(Though, thinking back on it, having a reduction just as I turned 50 may not have worked out. For my 50th birthday, my husband took us on another trip to England. I gained ten pounds in two weeks.)

I'm still awaiting pathology. I still don't know if radiation is in my future, or even worse, tho this seems unlikely. But I do know that more fat is coming off, with the help of a diet and a knife. I'll worry about the revolution later.

Which will arrive at about the same time I get around to painting the house.