I Can't Believe We Still Have to Protest this Crap

So here it is, just three short years since I last blogged here. Today someone emailed me to ask if I stopped blogging because I was dead. I told her yes. But she really wanted to know if I was okay, if breast cancer was just a dim memory, or if I was in the throes of it again.

I'm fine--it's coming up on eight years since I got the diagnosis of a little bit o' cancer, and sometimes I can't believe it ever happened. And then I look at my right breast, with the divot and the crooked nipple that kind has a snarl along the scar line, and I remember that yes, oh yes, I sure did really go through all that shite.

When I found out I had the BC, I had just launched (along with many others of course) Air America Radio. It was 2004 and we thought that we could help throw the evil empire that was the Bush administration out. It was just one of many delusions. Others included getting paid on time and being told the truth by our CEO.

Now, eight years later, I feel a little bit as if I am getting the band back together. I'm at Current TV, heading up the programming department. And yes, once again I'm hoping to help beat back the forces of Republicanism, although this crowd makes the Bush gang look like sane people by comparison. The war on women, the attempt to turn back the clock to those Leave it To Beaver days when the men were men and the women were girls, the assault on women's rights and privacy and bodies--well, as we say every day, I can't believe I still have to protest this crap. But we do, and every day I go to work glad that at Current TV we have the freedom to say what we know is true, to call a bigot a bigot and to try to make sure that younger women--our daughters and sisters and friends--join us in fighting the yahoos trying to invade our lives. The Jennifer Granholm show, The War Room, hammers this topic home almost every night, and of course, my dear pal and Air America co-conspirator Ms Maddow has been brilliant on the topic.

And don't get me started on Susan G Komen and the hateful attack on Planned Parenthood.

Anyhoo, ladies who find this blog, let me say that I still don't walk or race for the Cure, though I remain willing to skip, skateboard, hopscotch, or bungee jump for the Prevention of breast cancer. And I will march, rally, blog, broadcast and most of all vote to turn back the attempts at assaulting my body in ways far more psychologically damaging that breast cancer ever was.

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?