Kelly Corrigan's
memoir of
growing up—
the first time,
and the second time.
[Click here]
....................................

by Kelly Corrigan, 36 years old, Stage III Breast Cancer Survivor
Kelly writes a bi-monthly column on everyday life. If you'd like us to email her columns to you, click -->

Before I started radiation, I thought I might sit down with a nutritionist to talk about my diet. Lara, the on staff dietician, is a slender vegetarian who lives alone and picks her produce up "fresh, every other day, on the way home from the office."

She filled four pages with notes about anti-inflammatories, like flaxseed, and anti-oxidants, like green tea, and warnings about growth hormones, like you might get in any meat purchased from Safeway (or some other hugely convenient place where I shop regularly). We talked about alcohol, how it is best to reduce from a glass or two every day, to a glass or two every couple of weeks. I nodded and then exhaled, wondering aloud, "How am I going to relax at the end of twelve hours with my girls?" She smiled, with some pity in her eyes, and then asked if I had seen the flyers about guided imagery? It's free on Thursdays. Well so there's that. I wonder if I can bring some of my pals, during cocktail hour, and we can imagine pelicans scooping up our stress instead of chardonnay diluting it.

I don't want to be in charge of my body for the rest of my life. I don't want the responsibility. What if I choose to live it up with filets, red wine and cookies? What if the cancer comes back and I have to live with my choices? What if I give up all my treats and indulgences and the cancer comes back anyway?

What if the cancer comes back? That's at the bottom of every thought. If I just strip back the surface and reduce the noise, there it is, plain and unyielding. What if the cancer comes back?

I sat next to a lovely woman yesterday, 63, salt and pepper hair, charming voice, open and articulate. Her name was Julie and in just a few sentences, it came out that her sister had died of breast cancer after a 15 year fight. Her sister sounded like me, too young to have breast cancer, then too spirited to have it again, then too good to die young. Her sister had children, children she raised well in spite of the disease, children who are probably wiser, older and sadder than their peers.

This morning, one of the three technicians who set up my radiation wore a baseball cap over short, thin hair. From my position on the table, I asked her if she just liked her hair short or was she in the club?
"I'm in the club, a two timer."

I hate this fact. I hate that you never know if it's over, for real, or if you are on a break, a 5 year respite, a 15 year respite....
"But I'm all done. Mastectomies, chemo, all done."

She was the first health care professional I had met who had actually had cancer. What a blessing that she is in the field, among the soldiers. But once her hair grows back, none of her patients will know to ask. She will be one of the silent, wise ones.

"It was an unusual case," she promised me, mercifully insinuating that I was probably safe.