One Down(downdown)

I had Unsolicited Advice Nurse today. I've seen her in action before. I once saw her tell a severely nauseated pregnant woman, who kept returning to the hospital for hydration and vitamins, that she should "enjoy this exciting time".

She gave me an earful today. This is what she said: Cancer is a road, and you don't know where it ends. You have to be flexible and just kind of go with it. Many woman tell her that cancer has been really good for them. They appreciate life more and really savor the good times. That's what I need to try to do.

And then she patted my leg.

I didn't tell her what I think of that nonsense. I'm accustomed to hearing it from sick, sick, woman who are desperately trying to make lemonade. I've heard the cancer-is-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me-before speech. I consider that attitude an illness.

I smiled and nodded at the nurse. I plastered a phony-ass smile on my face, because that was the path of least resistance. I didn't tell her that I KNOW where the fucking road leads. It leads to my death and my husband's sorrow. It leads away from Christmas trees, summers, vacations, dancing, dreaming, and vanilla ice cream. It leaves my brother Paul the last of the "little kids" to survive. It leaves my sister Jane the last living member of the RedHairFreckleFace Club. It leaves my sister Mary without her baby sister.

And I didn't need any life lessons about appreciating time. I appreciated time. I have a craft box full of glitter and pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks and crayons and pens and feathers and sequins and paints and papers and glue and I DON'T HAVE KIDS. I own three different disco balls. I've used a case of champagne to make punch for a party, I buy Mardi Gras beads by multiple gross, and I was Reno's highest ranking female craps player. I got married in a black mini dress and there's a camp named after me.

That nurse doesn't know my life. She doesn't know that I've already learned the lessons I needed to learn about mortality.

Fuck her.

And fuck me. It's my own fault. I started it by saying that I didn't want to lose all of my hair in two to six weeks.

She asked me if I'd been to the Look Good Feel Good Class. And then she launched into her Cancer Can Be Good bullshit.

The woman next to me has chemo every day, from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM. She does that every day for a week, then has two weeks off, except that during that two weeks her blood counts tank and she usually has to come back to the hospital. Her spine was "double penetrated" with radiation, and now her stomach lining has thickened. She has a hiatal hernia. She has a rare cancer in her pelvis and lungs. She's in pain. She has bad side effects from chemo. At one point they had given her 6 months to live. She has a four year old and nine year old. Her husband is divorcing her.

Another woman in the Chemo Suite said, "oh, I'm sorry...." and the woman with the cancer, the all-day-for-a-week-chemo, the sickness, the pain, the asshole husband who's leaving her, and two kids to care for said: "Oh, it's not so bad".

Oh, it's not so bad.

I started laughing.

I think that we're mad. I think that the professionals who help us have to turn off some kind of compassion switch -- because being present to so much pain every day must be impossible for them. So they offer platitudes and Look Good Feel Good classes, and if they're sensitive by nature they probably have to work to stave off depression.

And the sick women -- well, some of them have hope of a cure, and that's cool. I was one of them once, and I wore that possibility as armor. I didn't spout platitudes, but I was generally upbeat. Being bald didn't phase me and I plowed through treatment the best I could.

But this is different. No one -- and I mean no one -- needs to be thinking that stage IV cancer is the best thing that ever happened to them. If people want to find dignity in accentuating their cheekbones and hope in pink t-shirts, then they can knock themselves out.

As for me... I'll never complain again. I'll suck it up. Because along with the cancer, the pep talks are killing me.