Living With Cancer: For the Birds
By SUSAN GUBAR
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LIVING WITH CANCER
Susan Gubar writes about life with ovarian cancer.
“There’s nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see others die,” exclaims a dying Ralph Touchett in Henry James’s “Portrait of a Lady.” At my most snarky, it seems to me that there’s nothing makes some people so invigorated as to see others debilitated by cancer or by medical responses to it. To my beloved friends, I hiss what must be tedious recriminations against off-the-wall reactions to my continuing treatments. But here I’ll simply wing it.
What follows is a list of behavioral types hatched from my observation of acquaintances whose responses to chronic disease leave something to be desired. Though my catalog cannot be considered exhaustive, I hope it furnishes a framework for subsequent species identifications of the onlookers who ruffle the feathers of patients and their caregivers.
Some acquaintances — the Crows — sustain their premature gloom and predatory pre-grieving at chance encounters in the bank or farmers’ market. Lugubrious Crows savor all evidence of fatigue or body dysfunction and enumerate the dire side effects of prescribed drugs. Grisly curiosity can take a curious conversational tack as in, “You are doing so well, but how much time do you have left?” Or “my aunt had your kind of cancer and she died in seven months.” Or “I’ve lost my house and a brain operation left me blind, but it is nothing compared to what you are going through.”
The motives of the flighty Blue Jays seem less benign. For if the Crows hover while anticipating the end, jittery Jays squawk and abscond from the get-go. From a distance but with garrulous aggression, a Jay screeches, “Didn’t you smoke back when you were a teenager?” Unlike the Crows, Jays peck as they shriek. “Didn’t you let your Y membership expire, skip annual checkups, and weren’t you too cheap to buy organic fruit?” Or less predictably, “You shouldn’t have had surgery and chemo which only release cancer cells into your system.” The Jays’ creed is their screed — “She brought it on herself” — as they justify their need to flee.
Ostriches, however, stay through thick and thin, though blind to my balding or bandaged state. Some Ostriches, embarrassed by the diagnosis of a fatal disease, find it pretty to think that recovery is right around the corner. “You look fabulous! Be positive and fight! A walk a day will bring your appetite back,” they wook on the phone. Or “what do American doctors know? Try juicing daikon or take a massive infusion of an orphan drug used twice in Tijuana to spectacular effect.” Others search the Web for remedies. “Just saw a fabulous program in which Dr. Cheerio promises a miracle cure for prostate cancer from a kelp and lima bean diet,” one Ostrich wooked, advising me to find it on YouTube.
“CooOooo-woo-woo-woooo”: the plaintive sound of the Mourning Doves accompanies the spiritual direction they offer while sending meditation tapes or crystals from a healer. “Cancer is a challenge, a journey, a blessing in disguise, an opportunity, a gift. It is just a word, meaning you need to visualize yourself balanced or free your chi. We are only given what we can bear. It will teach and enlighten you and make you stronger,” the Mourning Doves preen, as the current case obviously isn’t them, but me. The thoughtlessness of preachers of mindfulness! In the parliament of fowls, their song falls on deaf ears when the everyday horror of tending the wounded body takes precedence, but I know it makes them feel better, which is cold comfort.
Are you birds of a feather giving unto others what you would have others give unto you? You may think so, but your chitchat is strictly for the birds. Like Alice B. Toklas, I can forget but not forgive. Yet what makes forgetting possible may also make forgiving possible, namely my bird brain. Truth be told, I’m skeet shooting, which I have been explicitly told not to do with a port.
At times, I have to admit, there is absolutely no response to my cancer that seems acceptable to me, probably because the cancer isn’t. Chirping about other subjects can seem evasive or boring. Chatter about it casts a confining net. Apparently I’m the only one with the right tweets. Should I be left alone to brood in my bristly nest?
But happily I don’t have to choose between exasperation and isolation, given my dear friends near and far: the homing pigeons bearing their quotidian comforts, the perching owls with their phlegmatic wisdom. How splendid to be under their wing! Surely even a lame duck like me shouldn’t go on categorizing and castigating while delighted by the dappled plumage of their numbers: a host of sparrows, a convocation of eagles, a cast of hawks, a charm of finches.
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