Stopping by Pots on a Sunny Afternoon

The house has been on the market for three days and we've had three lookers. And you know the worst part? The fear. The fear that there's no upside to having three lookers. That in this economy, we're all simply doomed. My mother, ever helpful, told me that one of her bridge cronies had prospective buyers by the coach-full, but no one ever made an offer. These particular cronies closed up their house and moved on.

But next to the anxiety, I have hated the shopping most. Endless rounds of tchotchke hunting; endless trolling for the Perfect Little Thing that will show the house off to its best advantage. And there were repeat visits to Home Desperate for duct tape, paint blades, window cleaner, grout. Sweet gods of the vine, I'm sick of it. Sorry to sound so negative! But, as I gazed out at a cluster of pots, thinking I'd buy one to smarten the garden up with, I could only think, "One day, they'll all be cracked."

Speaking of crack-pots, my Famous Big Mouth has probably run off the only potential buyer we might have had. A few days before the house was scheduled to go on the market, I sat down to my laptop and quickly flicked through the emails from the neighborhood listserv, a Yahoo group for homeowners living in the Rosedale section of Austin. The rules for Rosedale are sensible: you can talk about home-ownership issues all you like. You can alert others to lost dogs and break-ins (which are rare) and another visit from the Phantom Coyote (Mike prays the Phantom will carry off the Shih-tzu). You can blather on freely about color-safe bleach and organic vs toxic pesticides. But please keep your mouth shut on anything relating to religion, politics, your small business, and anything you want to sell rather than just give away. I have strictly observed these rules all these years. After all, there are plenty of places on the internet to yak shamelessly on as if you were an NYT pundit.

Now, the better part of wisdom says to just be quiet when the rules are broken. But I was feeling a little blue on this particular Friday afternoon. The news had finally reached my ears that Royal Worcester, the manufacturer of Spode china, was no longer in business, that some ropey outfit in China was making my beloved Blue Italian. So I found myself responding to some local gas-bag's advertisement of a community meeting where we could all hear some famous social conservative talk about the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. The gasbag said that this would be good for "us" (by which he meant everyone but himself), since we were Austinites and clearly needed to hear other points of view. Almost before I could engage my conscious mind, my fingers flew, writing, "What a pity I won't be able to come. The Flat Earth Society is meeting at the same time." I hit SEND.

Before I knew it, I was engaged in a bit of an email altercation with a gasbag defender. I was very polite in my response. Just as I hit SEND again, I noticed an earlier email from the defender. Apparently, she had a client who wanted to see my house. Balls, I thought. I hadn't realized that she was a realtor. And, no, she's never brought this client around to see the house. So, you see, that was the guy who might have a) wanted the place and b), have had the money to pay for it. And I royally ticked his realtor off, who has no doubt informed him that the house has a cracked slab, Africanized Honey Bees, and three previous suicides.

******

A few weeks ago, NPR asked listeners to send in their suggestions for what the current economic crisis should be called. I was a little taken aback by how unexciting the suggestions were. "The Second Great Depression"? "The 00 Recession"? I mean, I realize that NPR can't take the liberties that a Jon Stewart can take ("ClusterF**k to the Poorhouse"). But surely there's something a little livelier to be said? Economist Paul Krugman, writing before the recession started, suggested the next recession be called "The Great Reckoning." Dull. If my mother had a vote, it would be called, "The Great Boomer Smack-Down." That's better.

But because I'm a little bit depressed and therefore inclined to look no further than my own ego, I call this recession "It's Time To Give Sherry a Good Pooching". The current recession is -- wait for it -- a bit like going through chemo. And, like chemo, you may end up dead before the cure kicks in.

On that front (do stop and take a nip of gin if all these vertiginous segues are starting to get to you), I have no news. I should know by the end of next week. Or, you know, not. While waiting for the last test to be completed, Mike and I gradually perfect our plans of what we'll do if chemo is indicated.

A neighbor has a small apartment she could rent to me for a couple of months, just four houses down from where we live. It may sound crazy to take on a third property while all this is going on, but it's even crazier to live in our beloved house while trying to sell it. I can't so much as bite a cookie for fear of crumbs, or brush a dog for fear of hair. I need to be in a setting where my kid can finish middle school and I don't have to deal with people any more than I'm inclined to and where I don't have to get out of bed if I don't have the energy. The idea of going up to New York while my kid lived in Texas with her gran has fizzled. Keeping Mother mentally organized enough to handle the job would become, for me, as odious a task as making beds and dropping to my knees like a nun to bleach the bathroom floor. If only I had a clone of myself to do the job of being me while I went on holiday for a couple of months.

If the house sold quickly and solidly, I would stay in it until school is out, grateful for the extra time together. And what a lovely time it's been. We brought our 3-year-old into this home, 11 years ago. I knew it was the right place for us on the first night in the house, as I carried her down the hall to put her to bed in her new room. Right outside the door to her bedroom, underneath a dingy carpet we replaced as soon as we could, there was a reliable creak. Nowhere else in the house was there such a noise. Step on that one spot a few inches from the obvious 'Child's Room' in the house, on whatever kind of day it is, humid or dry, and you get a creak, the house's little sigh of contentment. At least a dozen parents before me, also checking on their sprats in the night hours, were doubtless the cause of that imperfection. Others have been here. Please add your own weight.

I need to remember that little creak in the floor as we go house-hunting in the months ahead. I'm sure I'll again be tempted by a property that's spanking new. Years ago, we had a large Queen Anne on the edge of the Blackland Prairie north of Austin. Built of cypress, with a dozen gables, it had been beautifully restored. All the original molding, the golden pine floors, were intact. But the time came to sell -- the commute into Austin was killing Mike -- and there was a frenzy then, too, to get it ready. Old homes require a lot of maintenance, which we had not kept up with. Nearly every surface needed painting. The black clay of the prairie is hard on pier-and-beam houses and there were hairline cracks in the sheet-rock, every one of which had to be filled and repainted. Gormless buyers came forward and withrdrew just as the season was coming to an end. Thoroughly pooched, we stayed in the house another eight months, fixing, and filling, and painting. When at last a buyer who wasn't a feckless idiot came forward, we fled to a new home in Lakeway.

And started loathing it almost immediately. There was simply no there, there. And the people next door, an older IBM exec and his trophy wife, were not our kind of people. You could sense their disdain: "Democrats," they were probably thinking, with a sneer. The house seemed to sneer at us, too. Instead of feeling the lives of families before us, we felt only a builder's lame sense of design and his lust for cutting corners. There was no trim around the windows. The doors were hollow like papier mache. I must keep these memories fresh as I feel myself yearning for the spankingest new house on the North Shore of Long Island.

Must resist the shiny new object. Must listen for the creak in the floor.

Going Fetal

My mom has a serious love for this economic crisis. As she sees it, her kids have spent like sailors instead of living like the virtuous sodbusters she knew in her own youth. And she’s ready, so ready, for “the good Lord” (in whom, it must be noted, she does not really believe) to show her kids and the rest of their wastrel generation that Paybacks are Hell. No more lattes. No more organic beef. It’s time to load up the wagon with Grandma in the back. If we git hungry, by golly we can eat one of the dogs. And maybe soap’ll go back to being a nickel a bar.

So at least there’s one American out there who is having a ball.

My blithe heart, on the other hand, has pretty much collapsed under the weight of Cancer Anger. The anger appeared suddenly when my oncologist cleared up a little misunderstanding. When, a few weeks ago, she said that chemo was a definite, should I be positive for a particular marker, she didn’t mean to imply that there would definitely be no chemo if the reverse were the case. When I got the negative report, I clicked my heels in the air and got back to the business of life. The only niggling worry was the way my oncologist sounded when she left the message about the HER-2 report on the phone. She didn’t sound happy.

By the time I walked into her office, I was half expecting her to say what she did say. “Your case is still under review”.

A few days later, I met with my radiation oncologist. I knew he’d be the one to tell me what the docs at the tumor board had decided. I could hear him out in the hall, talking about me. He was referring to his colleagues as “mental masturbators”. He swept into the office, sat down and drew a breath. I drew a breath, awaiting their decision. And here it came: LET’S RUN ANOTHER TEST!

Why all this ire and no decision? There is concern in the breast cancer field that low-risk cases are being over-treated. And there’s the background radiation of collegial disdain: surgeons don’t like oncologists and oncologists don’t like surgeons. Radiologists don’t like anybody. But surely, I found myself thinking, they can put their entrenched positions aside long enough to make a decision about my care. Or maybe it’s time my lead oncologist just brought the hammer down and told them what she was doing. I’ve served on committees, too, and I recognize the signs: you ask for more data because you hope it will stop the argument.

This next test is the new hotness in tumor analysis. In post-menopausal women with stage 1 disease, the Oncotype DX test has been proven the best predictor, so far, of recurrence. But the test is not binary. It has a big fat gray area. I called my primary oncologist and asked her what she would recommend if the test came back in that gray area. I didn’t like her answer at all. Unless I was solidly in the low risk range, she would recommend chemo, partly because of my pre-menopausal status (still a lot of estrogen kicking around in my body) and partly because the test itself is only verified for post-menopausal women in large, randomized trials. No oncologist expects the trials on pre-menopausal women to yield very different results, but it adds extra uncertainty.

So I’m braced for chemo, because my case has been nothing but gray areas. One pathologist grades my tumors at grade 1 and the other at grade 2. I’ve been as yet unable to determine what the recommendation would be if both pathologists agreed on grade 1. Would chemo not be recommended then? If that’s true, then why shouldn’t I just decide that Mr. Grade 1 is in the right?

Yes, I’ll be seeking a second opinion from a separate institution. Right now, I’m awash in second opinions from the same institution, with the exception of the low-scoring pathologist from the Mayo Clinic.

At a recent meeting of the newly diagnosed, I met a woman whose case was very like mine: pre-menopausal, stage 1, Estrogen positive and Her-2 negative. She had thought she was completely in the clear, when her onc decided to run the Oncotype DX test. Her score came back at the very high end of probability for recurrence. She’d tolerated the chemo well. Her hair was growing in nicely. She had emerged from the wretched Babushka Phase of treatment.

The probability of chemo has eroded whatever confidence I had in the future. I don’t think I can face wearing a scarf. Nor a head-tie, or a gimme cap, or a wooly. If I find wigs too hot and scratchy, maybe I’ll wear a burka and pretend to be a member of the Taliban. If I can stand a wig, I want a red one, so I’ll be mistaken for Nicole Kidman. I don’t want to look like what Betty Cracker described as “that crazed fetus, James Carville.”

But fetal is definitely how I feel.

And could the timing be worse? My husband works thousands of miles away. I’m getting my house ready to put on the market. That market is crappy but just buoyant enough, I’m sure, to mean that any potential buyer that does emerge will, unfailingly, want to see the house 12 hours after any infusion. After eight visits, the buyers will disappear into the night, without making an offer. Meanwhile, Jesse’s band director, a malicious sadist, will schedule even more competitions and performances, to which I will have to drive her.

It’s no good telling me not to be shy about asking for help. I don’t want to think about the help I need or who to ask for it. I want Mike here. I want him working here. I don’t want to be thinking about selling and moving or, worse still, moving and not selling. Living in a tiny rental without A/C was fine for a summer, but living in any place that’s not mine would be brutal coming on top of everything else. I could deal with any two of these problems, but not all of them at once.

So something’s got to give and I’m mulling over alternatives. I could pay my mum to stay at my house for two months and look after my kid (taking her out of school early is not an option) while I go ahead and move to Long Island. I would start treatment in LI. My mum would of course do this for free, but it would be a huge commitment of her time and she could use the cash. Also, it’s not good to over-indulge her feelings of martyrdom. In her mind, she’s already Mama Joad in the back of a broken down Model-T. Excite those longings and she’ll be underfoot forever. Paybacks really are hell in the Coldsmith family.

I could possibly delay treatment. Hell, what’s two more months? I don’t know how long the delay between radiation and chemo normally is. The way my Rad Onc talks about it, radiation is a day at the beach. He accepts that I feel tired, but feels that exhaustion is more likely a reaction to the full spectrum of what I’ve been going through.

The downside of delay is that I’d be starting treatment at what should have been a happy time. Whether it’s a spruced up house of our own or a dumpy rental, we’ll be reunited again after a year of separation. Plus, my kid will be very stressed and very needy. But just as I’ve been largely ignoring her for the last few weeks, I’ll be ignoring her again while I have chemo.

My illness has, sadly, brought out the Coldsmith in her. My dad, never sick himself until he was claimed by dementia, had little patience for the ill health of other adults (kids were and are for me too, entirely another matter). His favorite line, upon hearing that some adult close to him was ill, was, “Call me when you’re better!” And he never asked for more sympathy than he was able to give. Doubtless, his attitude made dealing with a semi-bi-polar and somewhat neurotic woman a little easier. Resist, he must have thought, or they’ll suck you in to their own bottomless despair.

My daughter, tired of my whining about all the work our house was requiring to get ready for sale, said over pizza that, “Lately, Mom, you’ve been moody and unpredictable and you haven’t smiled in weeks.”

Funny, I thought. That’s exactly what I would have said about her. “Baby, I’m just a little stressed what with the medical issues and all.”

She rolled her eyes. You could tell what she was thinking: Not the cancer card again. I thought about mentioning my terrors about the economy, because that’s her second most hated subject these days. Must be calm, I told myself.

I patted her hand, said I hoped she would forgive me.

Let me whine a bit. And please forgive.

Taking Advil on Dover Beach

Radiation is not so bad, just grueling. The room is too cold for the patient, who must lie still while others move around. The arm brace stretches my shoulder a bit, so that I have to follow the therapy with Advil. And you have to sit around waiting, waiting. Usually I forget to bring the newspaper (or I remember to bring it but leave it in the car), so I end up having to read some inspirational cancer rag: Mandy Patinkin says cancer is the best thing that ever happened to him. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. The grief made me an idiot.

So, no, cancer is not an occasion for joy. I want to be stuck in a time-warp before I was ever diagnosed.

Years ago, my husband talked me into reading some of his favorite poems. This has ruined me. Now, a bunch of Great Writers have preempted all my thoughts on my own experiences. Whenever I try to formulate what an atheist, particularly this atheist, might see as the upside to a recent diagnosis of breast cancer (low grade!), I find myself giving up. Because Matthew Arnold, writing in 1860, has already said it all:

Ah, Love, let us be true to one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams
So various, so beautiful, so new
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

My daughter finds something depressing in those words, but I find such a solid measure of joy in that first line, it sustains me for the rest of the poem: "Ah, Love, let us be true to one another!" That's all there is. The universe is just one damned thing after another. If you are dealt a terrible hand, the deuce of clubs and the four of spades and some trash to go with it, it means nothing. NOTHING. But we can still be true to each other (exclamation point). The message really isn't so different from that you can hear in the more mystical practices within many religions, particularly, Christianity. In other words, God is, well, God. Try not to take it personally.

And when you have no luck at all, when you find out about the cancer inside or the loss of a loved one, it doesn't mean that those fortunate others, the ones who look on you and count their lucky stars, are more beloved by the universe. And, really, it could have been worse. Think of all the young people who died in crashes and wars while still not out of their twenties. I could have died screaming like my great grandmother, because evolution cursed her with a 10 pound fetus when her hips were only so big. Or like my great great grandfather who died in his youth, fishing off Nantucket, trying to feed his family. Cancer at 53? The universe does not even blink. But I am still here to ponder the one, the only commandment: "Ah, love, let us be true to one another!"

And at least the world offers a little more "help for pain" than when Matthew Arnold was alive. Now where is that Advil?