WebMD Feature from "Redbook" Magazine
One writer reveals what it's really like to live with the disease day-to-day — and honors the woman who helped her through the darkest moments.
Last October, REDBOOK asked readers to send in their stories of how breast cancer had touched their lives — whether they themselves had the disease or had witnessed a loved one facing it down. The entries we received were poignant and powerful, making it difficult to select the grand-prize winner. Its author, Lauren Reece Flaum, 48, was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly 13 years ago. Since then, she has had a mastectomy, been in and out of chemotherapy, and been on and off the drug Herceptin; Flaum's cancer would disappear for a while, but inevitably it would return, after shorter and shorter intervals. "I used to be disease-free for years at a time," says the Iowa City, IA, mom. "Now we can't get it to go away."
Flaum's essay also appears in the new anthology
A Cup of Comfort for Breast Cancer Survivors. She received a $5,000 prize from the book's publisher, Adams Media, which donated an additional $5,000 in her name to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. When she found out she'd won the grand prize for her bittersweet ode to her chemo nurse, Inga, "my heart skipped a beat!" Flaum says. "It was such an overwhelming feeling to have made it through to the end." Her proud clan — her husband of 22 years, Michael, 54; her daughter, Georgia, 19; and her son, Chester, 16 — immediately took her to dinner to celebrate. Just as gratifying to Flaum, though, was the reaction from Inga's family. "They were so delighted and moved," she says. "They felt like I got her completely, which is the best reward." Read on for Flaum's moving essay.
I played a little game with Inga's face — well, her chin mostly, her deep, plunging chin that reminded me of an icicle with its tip snapped off. I'd never seen another chin like it; it was more a caricature than a real feature. And I had nothing but time to study it, watching her enter and exit my room, sometimes with a Styrofoam cup of chicken noodle soup, sometimes with a printout of the day's blood counts, all too often with thick plastic bags of toxic fluids targeting my tired veins. I'd seek out that odd triangular shape, and in recognizing it know that, somehow, Inga would yet again get me through the difficult day ahead.
My little game involved finding this same slightly askew triangle in the patterns that adorned Inga's clothing, in the vee of her nursing smock, in the turquoise stones of her bracelet, in the spaces created on her feet by the crisscrosses of her sturdy shoes. I don't know if she knew she had a triangular theme going, or if it was some deep unconscious reiteration of what she saw when she looked in the mirror each morning getting ready for her hard day's work as head nurse in the chemotherapy suite. For me, scrutinizing Inga and her chin and her crazy triangular patterning became a ritual. The triangles kept recurring — in her cheekbones and her barrettes and the creases of her eyelids — and finding them never failed to bring me a surprising measure of comfort.
I've been in and out of the chemotherapy suite for nearly 13 years now. Besides the nurses and the aides and the volunteer coffee ladies, I'm the rare person who continues to call the chemo suite my home away from home. Thirteen years in and out of those antiseptic doors, rounds and rounds of drugs whose lists of side effects take the nurses 15 minutes to recite: nausea, vomiting, hair loss, headache, diarrhea, fever, chills, bruising, achy bones, itchy skin, toe fungus, shortness of breath, blurred vision, compromised motor control, loss of appetite, not to mention the swift and premature departure of any sense of personal well-being or peace of mind. And that's supposed to be the good news, the things that happen when the chemo is
working.
But Inga, always Inga, made it better. Each Thursday she reserved my favorite bed by the window with the view of the gray parking ramp and the grayer Iowa skies. She padded into and out of the room quietly. She spoke in a soothing whisper, and only when necessary. Inga didn't laugh at me the time I brought in a stack of bills to pay during chemo. And she didn't bat an eye when I couldn't even hold the pen between my fingers when signing the first check and she was left to gather the tumbled bills at my bedside. She didn't panic — as her colleagues did — the time the tubing unhinged from the IV pump while I was asleep, and blood and chemo fluid flooded the floor.
Inga was the mother of two — older daughter, younger son — just like me, and hers were a couple of years ahead of mine in school. During the summers, when I would leave my kids home alone so I could go get the chemo, she would leave hers home alone so she could give it to me. We would laugh together, musing at the state the house would be in at the end of the day: chores undone, empty pizza boxes open on the counter, the potential of a summer's day squandered in front of the TV. Beneath my laughter, I'd envy the sense of security her children had — their mother heading out in nursing scrubs and sensible shoes, strong and ready to help people suffering from cancer — versus the insecurity my children were dealt, their mother sick with cancer, coming home sicker from treatment. I envied that truth of Inga's life along with all that I admired in her cool competence, her quiet authority, and her deep, calming heart.
Occasionally, I would bring small gifts to Inga: cream for her healing hands, a linzer torte I'd baked. I'd write her notes about what she'd taught me about illness — its sanctity, its otherness, its necessity as a third, urgent presence between life and death.
Inga became a sort of muse to me. I imagined her to be a gardener of root vegetables — beets and carrots and rutabaga, goodness planted so deep it would stoically endure the harsh Iowa winters, so deep her hardy hands would be thick with soil when digging in spring. I imagined her loving her solitude and her family in equal measures. I imagined her in prayer. She could have been a nun.
It was in the spring of 2005, when I was climbing out of the depths of another round of chemotherapy, that I heard Inga was sick. Inga, cancer's caretaker, was stricken with cancer — a rare cancer of the tongue with a poor prognosis. I wrote to her that day. Inga, how could it be? But Inga's disease was fast and vicious. I never heard back. She soon lost the ability to speak, then to eat, and within a year she lost her beautiful life.
This past autumn, the nurses and doctors in the cancer center dedicated a painting of a nurse to hang in the chemo suite in Inga's honor. They invited me to attend the ceremony and to read the letter I'd written in praise of Inga that had been published in the local newspaper. The event was held in a back room of the cancer center, a room I'd passed a hundred times when it was buzzing with physicians in white coats and pictures of luminous bones on light boxes. This day, it was laid out with cheese and crackers and a lime green sherbet punch that looked a little too much like a chemo agent for my taste.
I was the only patient in the room among a sea of faces who had saved my life over and over during the last 13 years. But one face in that room stood out. And it stood out at the chin. Inga's daughter, Susan, was at the far end of the room, standing between her father and her brother. They were both leaning on her, heads inclined toward that deep narrow chin, like an icicle with the tip snapped off. The daughter is a replica of the mother, I thought to myself, her complexion as soft, her strength as apparent, her movement as graceful. And before I even realized what I was doing, my eyes sought — and found — in Susan's boots and her bag and her jewelry a series of elongated misshapen triangles.
I read my letter about Inga, about how her dignity made an unforgettable difference in the life of a patient. Reading the words, I worked really hard to hold back my tears so that everything wouldn't become a blur. I couldn't stand to miss a moment of watching Inga's unparalleled brand of comfort still, apparently, so hard at work.
My Third Lung
My new physician entered the room. I told her I had many doctors who had been poking at me every day. It was getting old. But my new doctor crossed her arms and looked through me with intensity. She then placed her delicate hands on the right side of my ribs. I would not deny her this exam. It was important to both of us. She was my daughter, Morgan. She was 6, and just trying to cope with my latest bout with breast cancer.
-Laura Walsh Plunkett, 36, Overland Park, KS
The Friend Who Came and Went
"Wanna see my scar?" Shelley asked suddenly.
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," I answered.
We lifted up our shirts and stared at the mirror images of our mastectomy scars. Another person might have looked and quickly averted her eyes. But we knew that our scars deserved more than a fleeting glance. At that moment, we weren't just looking at each other's scars. We were looking into each other's hearts.
-Sheryl Kraft, 53, Wilton, CT
Code Red
The day of my first chemotherapy treatment arrives. Blatant in my show of false courage, I put on my red cashmere sweater, brush my long hair until it gleams, and paint my lips with my favorite Chanel lipstick. I'm going in style. I wonder how the chemo will affect me. What will it feel like as it courses through my body? How sick will I be? When will I lose my hair? Will I lose those 10 extra pounds? I'm about to get all the answers, and then some.
-Nikki Marchesiello, 62, Corte Madera, CA
Comfort for a Cause
For more inspiring stories about breast cancer (including the complete essays from our runners-up), check out A Cup of Comfort for Breast Cancer Survivors. For every copy purchased, the books publisher, Adams Media, will donate 50 cents to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
Originally published on September 22, 2008
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