July 9, 2007
For as long as I can recall, I have had one single phobia — being trapped and suffocating in a deep dark tunnel where there is no room to manoever. You can just imagine how hard MRI’s are for me! So far, my cancer treatment experience has been a rather too perfect enactment of this, my worst and deepest fear. Every procedure is just like that tunnel from my most intense nightmares. I am sucked into the tunnel - there is no room to move - it’s hard to breathe - there is no chance to turn around - it seems endless - and just when I think I can’t stand it one more second the tunnel releases me. The tunnel is ruthless and narcissistic. The tunnel doesn’t care how I am feeling. The tunnel has only one function, which is to hold me in a way that I loathe, in large part because the tunnel encroaches completely on my sense of self/control. Cancer is all about treatment tunnels, and each one seems deeper, darker and longer. And I have no propensity here to go into the language of karma. Cancer is not “teaching me” about how to inhabit a series of tunnels, each one progressively darker and longer. It just is, itself, located within and dispersed across a set of medical treatments and practices all of which serve to wrest away control - just like getting sucked into a conjugated series of tunnels.
At the moment I am lodged in the mastectomy tunnel, with its associated strictures, like the drains that are lodged on both sides of my chest and that I must scoop up and take with me everywhere I go. It’s impossible not to live in a constant state of terror about catching the tubing from one of the drains on any one of the thousands of obstacles that a house is made up of. Yesterday I experimented with putting the drains in the pockets of an apron so that I could have my hands free and bake Janice a cake. It seemed really clever, until I realized that the reason my fly wouldn’t close properly as I was getting dressed was because one of the tubes was caught in my fly, which I had not been able to see because the apron shielded the tubes from easy surveillance. How to navigate space when every object becomes an obstacle?
July 9, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Next to chemo, MRI’s were the hardest part of my treatment.
That said, if you are willing, Ativan can be a good friend when you are sliding down the big shrieking tube. If you indulge in that sort of thing.
Spike
July 10, 2007 at 12:28 am
Mary, my friend who has just had a double mastectomy wears a pocketed hoodie inside-out, and keeps the drainage bags in the pockets, and the hoodie sorta zipped up to contain the tubes.
More by email…
July 10, 2007 at 3:18 am
Cake? Did someone say cake!? Lucky Janice. I admin a group on flickr called “behind the pink” (an online photo thing). I named it a long while ago- I should rename it “far far away from the damn pink” now. Anyway, I don’t think this member would mind my linking to her photo. I find it to be a damn fine example of simple invention… http://www.flickr.com/photos/sentenced2live/396727063/in/pool-behindthepinkandyellow/ (just tuck ‘em in)
I was sent home with a fancy post surgery bra/contraption (more like a cropped fitted tank with a velcro closure in the front) with little loops for the drains to hang from so that they wouldn’t dangle loosely. A surgeons wife had designed them and it was actually quite comfortable. I forget what the hell I did in the shower… I have conveniently filed that deep in my brain.
btw: how is the drainage going?
July 10, 2007 at 4:42 am
Right now, I am riding high on my pain meds and looking to the none too distant future when these %$#@@*** drains will disappear — the visiting home nurse, who is incredibly nice, thinks the drains will be out by Wednesday, which for this over-achieving type A bad cancer patient is not a day too soon. I love the concept of the post-surgical velcro contraption — trust a woman to invent such a thing.
July 10, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Mary, I am speechless as I read through the backlog of entries about your cancer. I am struck by how, as you note, “survival” has overtaken any other way to imagine dealing with this disease (as if “failure” is the only possible counterpoint). It does have a tinge of overeager overachievers proving their metal. But, you have absolutely nothing to prove. Or, you’ve already “proven” a profound capacity for illuminating things (about women, media, sexuality, and a host of other topics I haven’t had the pleasure to read or hear about first person). So, I’d love to see what alternative to the “survival” discourse your insights bring us. There’s got to be something other than the militaristic “battle” out there?
All my best–I’m looking forward to whatever you share on this blog.
Sincerely,
Mary Gray
July 11, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Hey there Mary - It’s so great to hear from you. Big hugs to you. - another Mary
July 11, 2007 at 6:54 pm
I’ve had a few MRIs and discovered that I am pretty claustrophobic in the process. What makes it tolerable for me is that they have goggles and headphones that you can wear and watch TV during the process. Anything to get me out of the tube, you know?
July 11, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Big tunnels suck. When I had surgery, having an MRI was the second scariest thing that happened to me. Hang in there. How about calling yourself a “member of the cancer club”? That’s better than survivor, anyway and your friends could make up decoder rings, secret handshakes, etc.. I had a friend who started a group called “The Young and the Breastless” because she didn’t like survivor discourse either. Whatever is funniest, go with that! Thinking of ya…