'All I wanted was a baby, and instead I was tied up trying not to die.'
If I hadn't pushed, I'd probably be dead by now. With a single phone call, I went from being a graduate student teaching university courses and writing papers to. Faced with the likely possibility that chemotherapy would ruin my chances to have a baby, my husband and I opted to freeze embryos.
At the time of my diagnosis, I knew two people who had battled cancer: my grandmother and a professor I worked with in my graduate training. Neither was close to me in age. Everywhere I turned, the cancer world seemed to be built for patients who were much older than me. My doctors couldn't tell me if I should have radiation, because the recommendations were for post-menopausal women. After my mastectomy, they sent me to bra stores where all the shoppers were older than my mother.
On New Year's Day, my hair fell out. It started as I practiced yoga: dozens of tiny hairs sticking to my sweaty shoulders and mat. That afternoon I leaned my head over the bathtub, and began to rub my scalp. My husband, who's a musician, played études on the marimba. The long red locks that were so important to my identity would never grow back the same.
As my treatment marched on, my friends announced pregnancies. All I wanted was a baby, and instead I was tied up trying not to die.As my treatment marched on, my friends announced pregnancies. All I wanted was a baby, and instead I was tied up trying not to die. The anger boiled in me, the disbelief simmered, the confusion about how I could transform so quickly from promising young scholar to bald cancer patient became a constant presence in my life.. I went to support groups.
My healthy friends sent me letters and cards and flowers, many of which I was happy to receive but didn't have the heart to open. I often felt bored with my diagnosis, while everyone else seemed so shocked, but when my treatments ended, I quickly learned that the pain and fear I had endured was sticky. I tried for a while to get back to the old me, but the long, flow-y red hair was gone, replaced with thick, course deep auburn curls — and like my hair, I had become something else entirely.
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