I am not an optimist. I don’t believe that the glass is half full. I am the granddaughter of four Eastern European Jews who fled Poland to escape pogroms. When it is sunny, I look for rain. When the phone rings after ten P.M., I start planning the funeral. My favorite joke is: “Jewish telegram—‘Start worrying; details to follow.’” I tell you this so you will not think of me as a perky, upbeat person, in denial of every dark emotion she has ever had. Nor am I religious, or even sure I believe in God. I am dark; my hair is dark; my eyes are dark. And so, as both an intellectual and a cynic, I have trouble admitting this but here goes: Having breast cancer changed my life—for the better.
Lots of survivors say something like this. I have even heard some say, “Breast cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.” I had always viewed this remark with skepticism—“Boy, that must be one great antidepressant.…”
I had the bad mammogram on March 13, 2001, the first day of spring break. I was forty-two years old and had two daughters, six and eight. The year before, the technician had taken one picture, come back and said simply, “You can go home.” “I can?” I asked. I had expected worse. In 2001, I got it. The technician took the first picture and came back for another. And another. And then they made me wait for a sonogram. Then they made me wait to talk to the radiologist. He was unsympathetic—grouchy even—and unmovable. “You are going to want to have this looked at,” he said. He didn’t say, “It’s probably nothing, but…” That’s what all my girlfriends had heard. But he wouldn’t say that. Instead, when I pushed him for any comforting words, he said gruffly, “Well, if it’s cancer, we’ve gotten it early.”
I have nothing cheerful to say about the next three and a half months. It was all horrible—the waiting was the worst. After that initial mammogram, I waited three weeks for a biopsy. I knew it was cancer. “But your mother never had breast cancer,” friends said. I knew I had cancer. Just as I’d known I would not “just lose” the forty pounds I gained during my first pregnancy. “Oh, it just slips off,” women said. “Slips off?” I thought. “On me, it is not going to slip off.” And I was right. My mother’s friends said, “Oh, she’ll have a lumpectomy and radiation and be done with it.” I didn’t believe that either, and I was right. After two attempts to get clean margins, I had a mastectomy on the right side; the following year when the tech found precancerous cells on the left side, I had one on that side.
So after having a double mastectomy by the time I was forty-three, where is the bright side?
First I noticed that I was noticing my life. It was as if someone had stood next to me in the supermarket line and yelled in my ear, in the loudest voice imaginable—“Wake up!!!!” I stopped sleepwalking through my days. I started paying attention. I won’t say clichéd things like “colors seemed brighter” or “flowers smelled sweeter.” I am not sure they did. I just felt a new sense grow in me—I became conscious of time; I was alert in a new way.
Second benefit: I realized I’d spent too much time in my life doing things I didn’t want to do. When my in-laws wanted the family to fly across the country to celebrate Thanksgiving, I actually said to my husband, “No, I am tired and I don’t want to spend my vacation traveling. I am not doing that.” I joined a highly compensated committee where a belligerent and simpleminded colleague bullied me—and, get this, I quit. Just like that. “I don’t care about the money. I am not going back,” I said to my husband. And I didn’t.
Third: My husband and I stopped quarreling. Why did we ever bother? What could have been that important? My relationship with my sister got better. Half a lifetime of sibling rivalry evaporated like smoke.
Most important, having breast cancer focused me on my children like a laser. I was always an attentive mother, but a working one, and a conflicted one. The feeling that I should always be in the other place trailed me like a whining dog. Now I want to spend every minute humanly possible with my children. They are far and away more important to me than anything on earth. I want to spend time looking at their faces, building their strength and courage. And since cancer, I have, without the slightest twinge.
Finally, and best of all, I have stopped expecting the worst. Worrying should prepare you for disaster, but it doesn’t. I learned that nothing prepares you. We spend so much time in our lives suffering, we don’t need any dress rehearsals. The worst will find us, and you know what? We will have to deal with it when it does.
My life is better now; more heartily felt. Last year I returned to writing poetry—all the poems are about the possibility of finding joy. This past soccer season, I met my breast surgeon at the field where his children play alongside mine. We embraced like survivors of a catastrophe who meet again after a long while. “Who was that?” my daughter asked afterward. “You really like him.” “Yes,” I replied, “I do really like him. He was my doctor when I was sick; he is a wonderful, wonderful man, and I am better for having known him.” Would I have chosen a life where I did not get to meet him? Yes. Would I have been happier in that life? No, I don’t think so.