That Chipped Teacup Feeling: Life after Breast Cancer

Nine years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This wasn't the “do something or die” kind of cancer that my friends Rachel and Kim went through last year. It wasn't even the “lump the size of a grapefruit” breast cancer my mom had removed after getting her first mammogram at age 78. It certainly wasn't the wildfire kind of breast cancer that killed my son's English teacher in high school, when my son and her daughter were both just sixteen years old.

Nope, my breast cancer was, thankfully, the “almost missed it” variety. I had a lumpectomy (described by my nurse as “the size of an orange”--why do they always use fruit metaphors?) Clear margins, no radiation or chemo. Nothing much to go through, by almost any medical standard. Why, then, was I so terrified?

I'd heard a lot about breast cancer—I am a journalist, after all, and I've known plenty of cancer survivors (and others who were less fortunate). But nobody told me about the fear. For several years after my lumpectomy, I felt as damaged as a chipped teacup. I worried that one more time through the dishwasher might shatter me completely.

As a mother whose youngest son was in kindergarten when I was first diagnosed, my biggest fear was that the cancer would return and kill me while my kids still needed me. I had other, lesser fears, too: losing what's left of my boobs, having my husband lose interest in me.

Gradually, though, I have somehow stopped being afraid. I had a couple of new scares, resulting in biopsies. My husband was diagnosed with diabetes, my stepsister with colon cancer, my mother with emphysema. Another good friend just found out that her son—the same age as my oldest boy—has lymphoma.

All of this was scary, but it also made me realize that each of us carries sleeping tigers inside us. That's what it feels like to me: that my cancer is this capricious jungle animal asleep inside me. It could wake at any moment, sharpen its claws, and slash my life to bits. Never mind feeling like a chipped teacup. Now I visualized a caged and potentially lethal animal inside me!

Somehow, though, this image has given me the strength to live without fear. There are some things you can't control in life—you can only accept that you, like anyone else, might experience disease, loss, grief, survival, death, surgery, whatever. We all go through something. Why worry about it until it happens? Let sleeping tigers lie, and get on with your life in the meantime.

After breast cancer, I became resolved to do things I'd always put off. I took a pottery class with my husband and finally made a solid commitment to write fiction and get it published. Our family traveled to England and Spain, and we bought a farmhouse on Prince Edward Island near my favorite beach. I bought a membership to AMC and started hiking in the White Mountains and joined a knitting group. I restored the old garden behind our house and, this summer, I'm going to try laying the paths through it myself. I'm also going to buy a new bicycle and map out some routes through my favorite small towns north of Boston.

No matter how short your life might be, or how deliciously long, why not cram in as much as you can? Sure, live in the moment, but glory in your past and plan for the future, too. Take on every adventure that appeals to you—and you're sure to embrace new opportunities to live with love, grace, humor, and compassion.

Saying Goodbye to a Good Dog

McDuff, my Cairn terrier, looks more like a pot-bellied pig every day. His swollen abdomen is low-slung and his short legs bow out at the elbows—symptoms of Cushing's Disease. Recently we had to put up a baby gate to keep him from going upstairs; the last time McDuff tried to follow us up to bed, he slipped and went bumping down to the bottom of the staircase, his front legs useless as toothpicks against the pull of his massive weight.

He's an old man, our McDuff. Fifteen. Whenever he goes outside to relieve himself, he stands in one spot for a good five minutes, squinting a little, then turns right around and heads back inside. At this point, his medication costs half as much as our groceries. I don't know what we'll do when it snows. Shovel a path for him, I guess.

Or not. We have been debating, lately, about how and when to play God with our beloved pet. McDuff isn't in extreme pain, and he still wags his tail when I call his name. That's something, right?

But is it enough for a good dog's life? Or is it time to say goodbye?

I grew up on a farm where we had nearly as many dogs as we had horses. They were rescue dogs, mostly. These included one shepherd mix that loved to chase cars and always smelled of skunk; a feisty Yorkie mix; and an Afghan hound that bit anything gray, including our coats. I moved away from home before any of these dogs died or had to be put down; coming home and finding one less dog under the table was a source of brief sadness but not much more.

This is different. I can't stand the thought of losing McDuff.

As an adult, I've had to put just one dog to sleep. Ben was an American Eskimo mix that we adopted from a shelter. A frothy, white, joyful dog, Ben used to race around us in circles whenever we uttered his mantra: “Go Ben go!”

When my husband and I were married in our back yard (a second marriage that combined our four young children), Ben wore a burgundy bow to match my dress. As we repeated our vows in front of a small gathering of friends and family, Ben wandered up and sat down between our children, so that he would be included in the minister's blessing.

At age thirteen, Ben's heart and liver gave out. Making the decision to put him down was easier because he was in such pain that he cried out in his sleep. Still, the kids and I all wept: it was the first time that I fully realized a dog isn't just a dog, but a carrier of family history.

Saying goodbye to a dog you've had for years means shutting the door on an era. In our case, Ben's death earmarked the years between our wedding and the year our oldest son set off for college. Shortly after Ben's death, we moved out of our big family home and into a smaller one; my memories of Ben therefore carry complex emotions: joy and love and grief and loss, rolled into one white ball of fur.

McDuff started his life with us just as Ben was ending his. I got him in the worst way possible—on impulse, in a mall pet store—but for a good reason: I was with my stepdaughter, the youngest in our blended family and the one who always felt left out by our other three children. She was newly aggrieved by the arrival of our fifth and youngest child, who immediately displaced her as the baby in the family. Choosing this dog made her feel, for once, that she was in charge.

As a puppy, McDuff was scarcely bigger than the palm of my hand. Like most terriers, he was stubborn, territorial, and ferociously protective. We put a dog door in our basement so that he could come and go at will. His greatest joy was patrolling our yard and barking at any deer, squirrels, or wild turkeys that dared to infiltrate his space.

McDuff became a member of our family a few weeks after our youngest child was born. He has been through a lot since then: older kids graduating from high school and college, family trips to Canada and Wisconsin, youngest child moving through elementary school and into high school, job layoffs and career successes, the celebration of our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Saying goodbye to him means saying goodbye to boisterous family dinners, birthday parties with balloons and water slides, Christmases with so many presents under the tree that you couldn't walk around it, the death of my grandmother and my father, buying a second house in Canada, and the realization that nothing lasts forever.
Not even a very good dog, who still lifts his head whenever I call his name.

Kayak: One Word, One Life

“Kayak.”
The word was written in red ink across the top of the manila file folder. Shaky letters, a modest schoolboy hand. Definitely my dad's writing.
I sat back on my heels in front of the cupboard where I'd found the folder and stared at the word, almost unable to breathe. Like my father, a Navy officer, I never throw anything away that I might use. This folder was stashed among many others in my office. On some, the lettering has been scratched out and rewritten two or three times. How had my dad's folder ended up in here with mine?
I keep turning up odd things that belonged to my dad, despite the fact that he died two years ago. There are the old photos of him in his Navy uniform, for instance, where Dad looks like Gerald Ford on steroids. A collection of foreign coins, with buttons and batteries mixed in, that he gave to my youngest son the last time we saw him. And his wax jacket from England, which I can't bear to toss, even though it makes my hall closet stink like wet goats.
“Kayak.” Staring at that single, scrawled, red-inked word makes me remember, suddenly, that Dad's kayak was red, too. It was crafted out of heavy duty plastic and lightweight enough for him to lift onto the top of his car even after his seventieth birthday.
Dad bought the kayak when he was living in New England, near me, to use on a local pond. That pond is surrounded by houses and probably just half a mile across. Yet, being a Navy man who once commanded ships, Dad bought not only the kayak, but everything you might need to navigate an ocean storm, too: a bright yellow waterproof flashlight, a neon orange life vest, a floating whistle, a box of flares. He wasn't going to be caught up short in an emergency, no sir, not my dad the Commander.
When he was diagnosed with emphysema a few years later and moved to Arizona for drier weather, Dad gave me the kayak and its bulging box of accessories – miles and miles of nylon rope, it seemed – along with this folder. Dad was famous in our family for his file folders, neatly cataloging everything from Sears purchases (the only store he ever shopped) to our school records, right down to faded kindergarten reports claiming that my brother wasn't paying attention and I needed to speak up more in class. The kayak folder was the last one he ever gave me. It had contained maps, a booklet on efficient rowing, pamphlets on how to use flares in an emergency, and a thick sheaf of boater's regulations you wouldn't ever need unless you were caught in a tsunami on the high seas.
“It's always best to know what you're getting into,” Dad said solemnly, giving the folder a fond little tap as he handed it over. “Be prepared.”
By then, he was on oxygen and had to carry a portable tank with him. Being my father, he always made sure that his tanks were full and that he had a spare. He set his watch and timed his outings to the minute so that he'd never run out of air.
“Kayak,” in red ink, on a folder. What had that boat represented to my father, that he would buy such a risky toy at age seventy?
Dad was a boy from Ohio who joined the Navy before he'd ever seen the ocean or learned to swim. The kayak continued my father's love affair with water. It was also a vote of confidence in his own vitality, despite his age and failing health. The kayak let him have a final adventure his way, prepared for a seafaring challenge with a life vest, a whistle, and flares, even on a peaceful pond.
“Kayak.” It was more than just a word. It was a message from my father to me: “Know what you're getting into.”
Know what you're getting into, when you get into a boat on the water, or into a marriage, or into a house or a job. Be prepared for hard work, for joyful play, for travel, for accidental mishaps, for parenthood, for love, for anger, for sorrow, for illness, for taking life one breath at a time, for death.
Be prepared, most of all, with the single word you would choose to write across the last folder of your life, as a way of reminding the loved ones you left behind that you are guiding them, still.