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I was diagnosed with breast cancer during the week of September 11, 2001, and these two events will always be locked together in my memory. I have combined images from both to express something of my experience.
I found and welcomed this image during an all-night web search for breast cancer information, in the weekend between my biopsy and diagnosis. Although I was certain of the outcome given what I had seen on the mammogram, yet I did not KNOW, and the waiting was a time of deep anxiety, a time of holding myself and letting myself be held.
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In the week following my surgery, I dreamed that I -- my body, my self -- was the Twin Towers, and a plane was crashing into the left tower. This poem, by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, spoke to both the September 11 tragedy and my own body experience. The pictures, of course, are of the destroyed towers. Even though my tumor was small and the surgery a lumpectomy, my psyche correctly understood it as a terrible and nearly inexpressible assault.
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On October 13, less than two weeks after my surgery, I gathered with a small group to create altars for the coming Day of the Dead celebration. Again, both September 11 and my breast cancer were joined in my heart and in the altar I created. The images surrounding the woman -- who appears to be deep in grief -- are of the destruction of the towers in New York. The picture on the bottom is, by contrast, one of cherry blossoms in full spring bloom The small silver charms are butterflies.
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My experience of radiation was one of being -- psychically and physically -- in a tunnel. My dreams -- and much of my work in therapy -- became pared down to a processing of literal details of the setting, the equipment, and my body sensations. The tunnel was sometimes surreal -- the darkened room with its laser beams seemed like the setting for a Star Trek episode . . .
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. . . and then, lights back on, ordinary time and space returned. There was a collection of stickers on the gantry and a framed poster of swans (why swans?!) on the ceiling. I tried to relax and breathe through 5 seconds of radiation . . . clicks and whirs . . . another 5 seconds . . . repositioning of the machine, and a quick moment back on the Star Trek deck . . . then 15 seconds . . . and a final 15 seconds, after which my body -- which I had thought was quite relaxed -- melted with relief. It sometimes seemed as though I had been waiting with the prisoners in the tunnel underneath the lions' dens, and then had suddenly been released.
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AND NOW . . . I am finished with treatment, and the light has broken through into the tunnel. The weeks after radiation have been filled with dreams, many of something new and valuable being given without effort from me -- gifts of grace.
At first I was concerned that I wasn't DOING SOMETHING, but I am finally beginning to understand that -- given my stage 1 cancer, family history, and the good pathology reports -- my chances of cancer appearing again are the same as the chances of all the other women my age out there -- no better, no worse. I now get to live once again with the same uncertainly everyone does. In a paradoxical way, this is a relief . I've done what I needed to do to get rid of the cancer I had, and there is no way I can make things perfectly safe for myself. I couldn't before, and I can't now. Of course I can and will take good care of myself physically and emotionally, and I will do and get regular exams, but that doesn't come with an iron-clad guarantee -- not even a plastic-clad one. I can't erase what happened --nor would I want to. It has had an enormous impact that won't go away. Not all of the impact has been negative. Cancer was definitely not a gift, but there was gift in the experience and in how I navigated it. Breast cancer will always be a part of my memory, my anxieties, my strengths, my life. I don't need to let it hold center stage.
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Credits
Photos from Webshots: Tunnel of Light, Disneyland; ancient tunnel beneath the lions' dens, Tunisia; Arizona cave
