In her introduction to The Cancer Journals (1980), Audre Lorde, who had just gone through a mastectomy for breast cancer, sets out what she is going to talk about in her book: “the travesty of prosthesis, the pain of amputation, the function of cancer in a profit economy, my confrontation with mortality, the strength of women loving, and the power and rewards of self-conscious living.”
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics, 2006, by Miriam Engelberg.
Suzanne Shea cued me in to this gem of a cancer memoir. It recounts the cancer journey of Miriam from symptoms to diagnosis of breast cancer to chemo to metastatic recurrence. What makes this memoir different is that the journey is told in cartoons. It’s a graphic memoir that brings humor into the presentation, and humor with cancer helps us keep our emotions from hardening.
When the radio said that Susan Sontag died on this day in 2004, I wrote her death date on my calendar so that every year I could remember her, as I do with other dead people who’ve influenced my life. Her birth date was also given, but I didn’t write that down. This struck me as curious. Would I rather grieve her loss or celebrate her birth and coming alive in her writings? One date affirms the beginnings of her creativity; the other boards her in with nails of sorrow.
Suzanne Strempek Shea, breast cancer
It’s in the quiet places that you can hear yourself breathe, places without time or expectations that hold you, where you feel the terror of cancer and find the resolve to live.
When Anne Pinkerton suggested I read Suzanne Shea’s book, Songs from a Lead-Lined Room, I thought it would be a short read because nothing much happened when I spent five weeks in the radiation chamber. You come in, lie down, try not to think about how much radiation is being beamed into your body, get radiated, and go home. Come back the next day, and do it again. Diagnosed at age 41 with breast cancer, Suzanne had surgery and radiation. I finally found a companion to my experience.
At a benefit for breast cancer in East Peoria, world-famous Sylvia McNair sang music from Broadway and opera. Between songs she spoke of being diagnosed with aggressive Stage 3 breast cancer in 2006 and how crucial her community of close friends had been to her recovery. Her diagnosis came out of the blue because she had no family history of the disease, ate a healthy diet, was active, and her mammogram was clear six months before the diagnosis.
Not all of us are poets, of course, and not all of us would take time away from living our last months to look for the words to express what we are feeling and thinking. Rather than write, we may want to complete items from our bucket list that we’ve kept putting off, or focus on sharing everything we’ve learned about life with our children. Maybe we want to stop trying to achieve goals and simply enjoy each day free of outside expectations.
Men get prostate cancer as frequently as women get breast cancer, yet I’m personally aware of only two men who’ve been treated for prostate cancer, while I know a bunch of women who’ve had breast cancer. I think the reason is that women share their struggles more often.
Katie Farris, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, Alice James Books, 2023
Katie Farris showed up on my doorstep the other day, with poetry she’d written about her experiences with Stage 3 breast cancer. It’s about time, I thought. Elizabeth Boleman-Herring put up a post about Farris and her book. It intrigued me enough to order a copy.
I was thankful because I’ve been dealing with Stage 3b prostate cancer that expanded locally for over two years, and my emotions and struggles have been all over the place. It’s a reciprocal cancer – 1 in 8 American women get breast cancer while 1 in 8 American men get prostate cancer.
The difficulty in treating cancer is in determining where it is, how much there is, and what kind of cancer cell is causing a ruckus.
Finding out if you have cancer is the first step, and the sooner you figure this out, the better your outcome will be. So, if your primary doctor suggests you get cancer screening for some part your body, take them up on it. I had no symptoms of prostate cancer, but my annual PSA test with my primary revealed a problem.
