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.
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