Can We Dispense With The Pinkapalooza, Please?

There are a million reasons why I hate the pinkapalooza that is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. First of all, when I was writing my book I learned that BCAM was originally funded by Astra Zeneca, the makes of Tamoxifen. Now, I’m sure they had nothing but our best interests at heart, but one way you might look at their involvement is this: telling women to get annual mammograms means finding more breast cancer. And finding women with breast cancer means finding new customers for Tamoxifen.

I say this as a woman who believes I am alive today because a mammogram detected a tumor, an aggressive tumor, that was not detectable by self-exam or even by a doctor’s exam. So I’m not arguing against mammograms. I’m just saying Astra Zeneca has a vested interest in Breast Cancer Awareness Month and for many years, they had final say on how it was promoted.

Now, of course, some 22 years later, it’s completely out of control. We Shop, Therefore we Cure is the clear message. Buy some pink crap, a blender or a dirt devil or a condom, and a tiny fraction of that money will go to breast cancer research.

One of my personal favorites is Breast Cancer Barbie. (Ok, technically, it’s Pink Ribbon Barbie.) What I love most is that Mattel, in announcing that Pink Ribbon Barbie would be working the toy shelves, if not the streets, for breast cancer, they said that the doll would help open a dialogue between kids and their cancer stricken moms.

Really?

How does that go?

“Hey kids, see this pretty Barbie? This is what Mommy never looked like. And now that she’s got breast cancer, she doesn’t look like Barbie even more!”

Most of all, I hate how much the pink ribbons prettify an ugly, tragic, awful thing. We should not be wrapping up this epidemic in pink ribbons. It gives the rest of the world the false sense that it’s all okay, and it gives the women who are victims (yes, victims) the sense that if they complain, if they’re angry, there’s something wrong with them. They should simply smile and be grateful for all the people buying all that pink crap.

As for me, I don’t buy pink in October (although once I filled my pocket with pink M and M’s that were in a big bowl in a shop in Soho—does that count?)

I love that the anti-pinkapalooza is no longer much of a contrarian point of view. Now, if we could just banish those yellow Live Strong bracelets…..

Sometimes, It IS about the Breasts

I have always said that in the television world, in politics, in all forms of public life, pretty beats smart every time. Not that it should be that way--but that it is. Studies have proven the existence of lookism, if you need any proof.

And while there are many reasons, none of them to my liking, why Sarah Palin was chosen by John McCain, I just don't think you can deny that her attractiveness and youth were part of the equation. I'm not saying she isn't smart--I don't know if she is or not, although I think she's wrong on every issue that matters--just that, if it was strictly for her political positions, and ability to attract evangelical Christians, Mike Huckabee, that anti-abortion, pro-creationism, evangelical, regular guy who actually has some experience, would have fit the bill. Also, while I have seen her described many times as a GILF (governor-I'd-like to-F**K) has anybody ever seen Governor Huckabee described that way, except maybe by his wife Janet?

As additional evidence, I offer this hilarious (and yes, edited) video of John McCain, not only checking Sarah Palin out during her speech, but also twisting his wedding ring as he does it.



Enjoy.

Don't Shoot the Messenger

I had the best time this week—the Ta Ta s book club, of which I am a proud member, made Five Lessons their book of the month, and we had a great fun evening talking about it, and many other issues, at the home of one of the members.

One of the things I found most interesting was that, when asked whether they had feared for their lives when they had breast cancer, the majority of women in that room, women whose histories ran the gamut of cancer staging, said no.

“I thought the chemo might,” one joked.
“I wished it would,” another added.

This came as a shock to the group’s ringleader, founder, and icon of love and hope and health, Dr. Bonni Gearhart. If you’ve read Five Lessons you know she was my oncology consultant for the medical facts in the book, and saved me from several dumb mistakes I would have made.

Bonni is one of my favorite people in the world, it must be said. Because her practice is in New Jersey and my boobs, and the rest of me, are in Manhattan, she couldn’t be my oncologist, if GOD FORBID...well, you know. But she is my model of how to be a smart, supportive, funny, beautiful person, who also happens to save lives.

Speaking of boobs, I’ll be speaking of boobs, both literal and figurative, Monday night at my pal Lizz Winstead’s Shoot the Messenger live sketch comedy show, which is hilarious. Probably because it’s August and she couldn’t get anybody really famous, she’s asked me to be the guest in the second half of the show, when she interviews journalists and writers about media. We will be talking about both Five Lessons and my first book, Naked Republicans.

Shoot the Messenger is Monday night at 8pm at The Green Room, 45 Bleecker street, just east of Lafayette. It costs $12.50.

You'll laugh, I promise.

Sheena and The Breast Cancer Witch

Finally had the mammogram this week, and everything was fine. But man, I was a nervous wreck, much worse than usual, due to the fact that a couple of days earlier, a Cancer Witch tried to put a spell on me.

I was doing a reading for my book in Manhattan. We were standing around eating and drinking before the reading began, and an older woman came up to me and asked how long it had been since I'd finished treatment. I told her it was four years, that I'd waited to get some perspective and also to make sure nothing untoward happened to change the ending, as it were.

“Oh well, four years is when I had my recurrence,” this woman cackled. "I had to have a second mastectomy."

Ok, maybe it wasn't really a cackle, but I felt as though I'd been slugged in the stomach. Who was this woman, some kind of Cancer Witch, casting a spell on me out of jealousy for my better health, my relative youth and my new book?

I am a fact-based, not a faith-based person. I don’t believe in Hope Angels, fairies or the power of positive thinking. But she got to me. Oh yes, she did. And how did I respond?

I just backed away from her before she could offer me a poison apple or who knows what.

I did NOT say to her, “Wow, that was thoughtless. Were you that thoughtless before your two bouts of breast cancer?”

To tell the truth, I didn’t think of saying that until later. All I could think of at that moment was Must. Get. Away.

Actually, I suspect she did put a spell on me. Ever since the encounter, I've been unable to speak up and defend myself. My usual snarky voice is gone. And I'm not referring just to my inability to respond during the spell-casting moment.

The day after my all-is-normal mammogram, I was having my hair washed and blown out at a salon by my office, and I watched, mute, as the "stylist" poufed and teased my hair into a Sheena Easton style, circa "My Baby Takes The Morning Train."

That's right--this guy was actually teasing my hair, and I couldn't bring myself to say, "Dude--where'd you park the Wayback Machine?"

Instead I over-tipped him, bolted from the salon, and then undid the 'do as best I could while gazing at my freakish reflection in a nearby store window. Clawing at the back-combed bangs that made me look like a refugee from an "I Love the '80s" episode, I managed to make my hair look simply odd, which was a big improvement.

People say really stupid shit sometimes. Even those who should absolutely know better. So, if you’re reading this and you know someone with a serious disease in their past or present, be careful, ok? I will accept that you really don't mean to be hurtful and frightening, that in fact you may not be a Cancer Witch, if you will accept that if you do insist on sharing your unrequested advice, your scary story about your own experience or that of someone you know, you will be thought of as a thoughtless boob. Pun intended.

I just hope this spell wears off before I have to get my hair blown out again.

Breasts Unsquished, Fingers Uncrossed

I got a call Thursday morning from the radiology center where I was all set to do my annual, fear-inducing mammogram on Friday. They've had some kind of flood (we are rather far from Iowa so I don't quite get it) and the mammogram equipment is soggy, so the woman on the phone was calling to reschedule me. For some time in August.

"Nope," I snapped, "not gonna work. I had breast cancer and I'm not going to wait that long for my check up."

It's moments like that, when you hear your voice sounding like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist, that make a gal realize just how tense we get around mammo time.

I got a new appointment on the first of July.

Lots of book doings and more coming up. Here's a link to an interview I did with my old friends at GMA.

TALKING HEAD HERE

Breasts Squished, Fingers Crossed

Once upon a time (four years ago to be exact) I was absolutely fearless about getting a mammogram. True, it’s no fun to have your breasts squashed into a device seemingly invented by the same people who invented the panini maker, but I was never worried about getting a mammogram.

Because, you see, I knew I was never going to get breast cancer. Nobody in my family had had it, I didn’t know anybody who did, and in my naïve opinion at the time, it just wasn’t going to be “my” cancer.

But sometime between hearing a doctor say, “hmmm, I don’t like the looks of that,” a biopsy, and a phone call reporting back the lab results, I learned how wrong I was.

Luckily, it was an early catch, as they described it. Very small, no lymph nodes involved. Lumpectomy, chemo, radiation, done. Since then, so far, so good.

But Friday is Mammogram Day, and that means this week there’s a kind of white noise in my head that will get louder and louder until, Lord willing, I get the all clear signal. The noise is like a million tiny voices endlessly saying "what if what if what if what if?"

By Friday I will have to answer back, "Stop it. It's going to be fine."

Most of the time, I don’t worry about breast cancer coming back. But there is that Moment of Truth when you’re standing with your breast flattened between cold plates of glass, your heart pounding, as you try to read the expression on the face of the technician running the machine. And you realize how close you are to being terrified.

Not that I wait for the annual Squishorama to check myself out. I’m pretty much like a fifteen year old boy when it comes to feeling myself up. But I never felt the first tumor, even when I knew it was in there, somewhere, and when, the next year, I had what turned out to be a benign tumor in the other breast, I didn’t feel that either, so my frequent self-exams are not much comfort.

I’m not exactly dreading the mammogram, and I’m not looking forward to being reassured that all is fine, either. I guess I just resent that ever since having breast cancer, there is this thing that looms over my head.

In my book, I write about how difficult it is to find yourself forced out of your warm and happy home in Healthyville, exiled to Breastcancerworld. And even if you’re just there for a short stay, you don’t quite get back to your old neighborhood in Healthyville. You’re kind of camping out on the wrong side of the tracks, with the other breast cancer hobos who just want to get back to their real homes.

That annual mammogram is just another reminder that once you’ve had breast cancer, you can’t exactly go home again.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, ok?

Ratso and Me

So I’ve been doing interviews to promote the book. Brian Lehrer, Rachel Maddow at Air America, a really fun one this week at The Bryant Park Project on NPR, which, if you don’t know, is a kind of groovy morning show and website.

The trouble was, I’ve had a really horrific cough for a week. Last week in fact I had to postpone some interviews because my voice was so croaky. And then this cough thing started and would erupt at any moment, completely out of the blue. It would go on and on.

I felt like Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, except for not peeing myself or dying on a Greyhound bus. At least not yet.

The thing is, by Day Four, I really was starting to think What If. What if this is something serious? What if I have

Tuberculosis
The Plague
Whooping Cough (my husband’s contribution)
Or…wait for it…
Lung Cancer

This is what happens to people once they’ve had a shocking case of the Big C. You get a little paranoid. Okay, a LOT paranoid. And even when you tell yourself, as I always do, that you can’t have cancer if your systems can be cured by over the counter drugs, you can’t help being hypochondriacal. (Tums is a great cure for my regular bouts of “stomach cancer”, by the way).


HERE is a link to my interview at The Bryant Park Project.


And HERE is a link to the interview I did with Brian Lehrer on WNYC. He is such a good interviewer. Plus we got to take phone calls from the audience, which I love.

Random Thoughts About This Blog

This blog, which is about how women and our society deal with breast cancer, with body image issues, and the larger questions of who and how and why we are the women we are, is an epiphany-free zone. The title, if you didn’t guess already, is a tip of the dynel wig to Lance Armstrong’s story of conquering testicular cancer, It’s Not About the Bike.

Unlike Lance, I did not find beauty and triumph and truth in cancer. It was not a gift.

There aren’t going to be any posts about how it was “worth it” because it made me a better person. When the dust (and my stomach) settled, I wasn’t a better person. I wasn’t a worse person. I was just me, minus a hunk of flesh.

Many vivid thoughts go through your head when you first learn you have breast cancer. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean. You wonder if you’re going to lose your whole breast, (and maybe whether you should have it removed even if your doctor says all you need is a lumpectomy). You wonder whether you’ll need chemo, whether you’ll lose your hair, whether you might die. And if you’re like me, the Queen of Denial, you wonder if the doctor is absolutely positive there hasn’t been some kind of mix up with another woman’s mammogram.

What you don’t wonder, I’m pretty sure, is, what will I learn on my cancer journey? How will it transform me?

And yet, you hear that question so often from friends and loved ones. Cancer, and especially breast cancer, is somehow an opportunity for an extreme spiritual makeover.

Maybe you will have an epiphany about the meaning of life. Maybe the experience will change your outlook, your values, your spirituality.

But maybe it won’t. And maybe you don’t want it to. I didn’t. I was having a fine time when I got breast cancer—great family, exciting career, lots of friends. All I wanted was to get it over with and get the hell back to my life.

The only growth I experienced was the one my surgeon removed.

Our attitudes about breast cancer don’t exist in a separate universe apart from the rest of our lives. We bring our wisdom, and also our issues, to breast cancer treatment.

In my case, my concerns about the disease were no match for my lifelong issues about my weight. I was thrilled to lose ten pounds during chemo—sadly, when it was over, I developed a local recurrence of chubby thighs.

It’s how we view our bodies, before, during and after breast cancer, that I find really interesting.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the shallowest woman on the planet, and if so, whether there’s a reality show on Bravo in my future.