Chicago and My Ever After

I’ve gone there and back since I last wrote. The days before departure were hectic with preparations. The days after returning were muddled with playing catch-up. All the while, I thought, “I should have done my homework ahead of time and had posts scheduled to go up on Sundays.”


But almost everything that starts with “should” is something I don’t want to do. This is the problem with e-mail and blogs and, if I were ever to take the plunge, facebook: I like them when I want to use them. When I don’t, they hover on the horizon each day as something I “should” do.

Bah!

***

It is October again. No longer do we need the trees or pumpkins or vests applique’d with scarecrows to tip us off. Ditch the calendar. We have pink.

You all know my feelings on this. As I become farther removed from treatment, I’m getting more critical. And noticing how pink exercises a certain tyranny. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t had breast cancer is allowed to be critical of it. What kind of jerk would say, “I think we’re aware enough, don’t you? What are they spending those pink portions of profit on, anyway?”

But I think some people are with me on this. I was at the egg case in the commissary. I picked out a dozen and a half box, noted that a portion of the profit Egglands Best would make on that box with “go to fight breast cancer,” and then opened the lid to check them for cracks.

Staring back at me were 18 Susan G. Komen running ribbons. Every egg had been stamped.

I remarked to a guy standing next to me, “This ribbon is everywhere!”

He shrugged and rolled his eyes. A daring display on his part.

***

As I wrapped up that shopping trip, I asked myself what about the pink ribbons bothered me so much more than last year. I realized that seeing them infringed upon my sense of closure. Kind of like: Will I ever be done with this?

I wrote the story of breast cancer. I am still writing it in that I sense the memoir should not end with the last surgery, or the last treatment, or with Dr. Science telling me that the scan has come back clean. (A scan I will take in about 3 weeks.) Bryan and I are forever changed by our experience with this disease. I think a few pictures of that change belong in the story.

But when will it end? When will I stop thinking, “And now, ladies and gentlemen: the rest of my life!”

It seems cerebral as I write it here, but as I loaded Bryan’s yogurts into my cart (each of which had a pink ribbon. . .) I was nearly crying.

A couple paces down, I turned from the shredded cheese to see a tall man coming towards me with a Creighton shirt on. I caught his eye and said, “Go Bluejays!”

And then realized who he was: one of the ICU nurses at Evans who tended to me following that first surgery. I asked him if he was a nurse there, then reminded him who I was.

He said, “Oh that’s right. . . but you didn’t really need to be in the ICU.”

Right, I recalled. It was a precaution because my surgeon thought he might have dropped my lung. The nurse chuckled at this.

(I think medical professionals like to hear about mistakes surgeons make so long as they don’t hurt anyone. Surgeons are the confident-jocks-big-men-and-women-on-campus. There is a certain rejoicing among the others when they biff it. I don’t think I ever remarked on that last year when I observed it.)

I caught up quickly with this nurse—done with treatment, feeling good and so forth. His wife came up the aisle towards him, and instead of making him tread the HIPPA line, I said, “Thanks again,” and rolled on.

Seeing the nurse who had stripped my drainage tubes in the middle of the night while I’m grocery shopping? Geez. Either I’ll need to manufacture or decide on my own ending to this story, or it will never end.

***

Travel with the kids to Chicago was great. They each had their own airplane TV to watch. That kind of cartoon access was a Top 10 highlight for them.

***

We got to enjoy a lot of time with my family. I saw all of my sisters (except #1, who was travelling—but, bonus!—this meant my parents were already slated to housesit for them and take care of the cats. And that home happens to be in downtown Chicago. More later on city adventures).

I soaked up one of parenthood’s unexpected pleasures: seeing my kids play with their cousins. And what a terrific herd of children those cousins are together. No one sour in the bunch. All of them for each other. I just loved it.

***

Speaking of children, we spent a day with my friend, Sarah (a.k.a. SEL) and her two children. Another delight. We walked up to Visitation, our alma mader, where we met in 6th grade, to pick up her son, Luke, from kindergarten.

We arrived to find a line of cones in the parking lot with a crowd of mothers and strollers standing behind it, waiting for the classes to get out.

Sarah and I and the kids, however, were standing in front of the cones, in no particular order.

“Are we in the right place?” I kept asking Sarah. Yes, sure, she repeated.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling: at any moment, a nun is going to pop out and tell me that I am wrong. About something.

***

We rounded out our day together at a park. The kids played hard. Sarah and I remarked that here we were, 20+ years down the road: The Mommies at the Playground.

***

We spent 5 days downtown. Sister #1 has two cats, one of which didn’t want much to do with us, the other, Sammie, was very social.

Joshua was dazzled at how Sammie could jump up to the top of a thin wall divider, by how he stalked his little cat toy, by how he purred.

Gemma couldn’t have cared. Surprising, really, because she’s a nurturing kind of girl.

After 5 days with this cat, I wanted one myself, for one reason: Every time I looked at him, how he moved, how his fur was striped, how his little white chin jutted out, I found myself marveling at his Creator. Seriously. I looked at Sammie and then thought, “God is amazing. Creating a work like this would be a lifetime achievement for me. Yet, he’s just one of a billion miracles of God.”

By the time we got home, I had decided I don’t want to deal with cat hair.

***

Each day, we went on a little adventure with my mom, got home in mid-afternoon, rested a bit, then played at the park down the street before dinner and bedtime.

We went to Navy Pier on Monday. Saw many people wearing their Chicago Marathon Finisher shirts from the day before. They were all walking funny.

One guy, not as much. I remarked, “Looks like you’re walking OK!” He shook his head and said, “Downhill is murder.”

On Tuesday, the Art Institute. The key to enjoying a place like that with kids is going in with no expectations of them. They loved the Thorne miniature rooms. They liked seeing the Serraut in person. They were underwhelmed by the Rembrants. (“But, kids! Those are the actual paintings we have only before seen in books!”)

On Wednesday, we took the train out to Naperville to meet Sister #4 and her 3 kids and went to the DuPage County Children’s Museum. Very well-executed place. Plus, we rode on the upper deck of a double-decker commuter train, which G and J had not even known existed.

On Thursday, we strolled on Michigan avenue and did a bit of shopping, most notably at the Lego store. Who knew Legos could build so much?

On Friday: home. Another great trip. Colorado Springs smelled really good.

***

What’s that? The reason we went? Right. Friday Night Fun for Funding.

Sarah, who did all the organizing, and I didn’t say up front what we were hoping for. I guess at least 100 guests. At $20 a piece, I guess: $2000. I don’t know. . .

What happened? A crowd of about 100. Plus several on-line donations from people who couldn’t make it. All told: $6700. Wow. I mean—wow. What generosity! And, I think, goes to show how far and deep cancer touches.

Why a night like that? I guess. . .after our big ParTAY, our grand celebration of looking forward after a hard season, it just didn’t feel right to move along as though I had no obligation to people who came before me. God used a state of the art medicine to heal me, and that medicine would not have been developed if other people hadn’t paid a foundation to pay a scientist to do the work.

In a most basic sense, I wanted to both pay something back and, when I think of people I love being diagnosed at some point in the future, pay something forward.

And I’m so thankful to have a friend like Sarah who would help me discharge this responsibility, and a family and community that was so glad to jump in.

One more happy chapter in a story that goes on.