A Pox on You

Cancer can bring out the best in you. It can also evoke the worst. For example: At a VERY low moment, I put a pox on my friend Amy.

It was my 43^rd birthday and I was in my plastic surgeon’s waiting room in a terrible funk. The previous day, I had learned the six sentinel lymph nodes removed during my bilateral mastectomy a week earlier were not all negative, as the initial pathology had determined. Cancer had metastasized to one of them. In a snap, my elation over clean lymph nodes had morphed into despair over a cancer spread.

Plus, I was in a lot of pain, hadn’t showered in seven days, three hours and 42 minutes, and my surgical drains were still leaking copious amounts of bodily fluids – which meant they wouldn’t be taken out at this  appointment.

I sat slumped in a club chair watching a muted “Regis and Kelly” on the plasma screen TV, wondering why it was taking so long for my husband Pete to park the car when in he sauntered with a mini Heidi Klum – no doubt a cosmetic surgery patient there for Botox or a laser peel.

“You know Amy,” he said as they approached me.

My mouth dropped open and I sunk deeper into the chair. Amy had undergone a bilateral mastectomy on the same day as me, performed by the same plastic surgeon and had spent two nights in the hospital room next to mine. Pete had befriended her husband, but I’d only met Amy briefly in the hallway while out for a walk with my mom and my IV pole.

I don’t remember much about the exchange because I’d been heavy-handed with the morphine pump that morning, but I do recall she was briskly striding to and from the nurses’ station wearing a stylish black sweatsuit. I was in my stained and smelly hospital gown that hung open in the back, too zonked to care that my butt was hanging out for all to see.

Now, here she was again, a paragon of pep and fashion, wearing jeans, boots, an elegant sweater and make-up. And her hair … a fresh blow-out.

“Why do you look like you’re doing so much better than me?” I barked pulling on my hood to hide my greasy pony tail (see above: seven days, three hours and 42 minutes without a shower).

“I guess I have a high tolerance for pain,” she said.

Shamefully, I thought of my empty pill bottle and my urgent call to the doc for a refill. I wondered if it would hurt if I punched her.

“I haven’t had to take any Percocet,” she continued, ignoring my pulsing neck vein and twitching eye. “And I got my drains out the other day, so I’m like a new woman.”

My mouth opened wider, but before I could marshal the energy to form an upbeat response about my own Herculean recovery (read: big fat lie) the receptionist beckoned and swept me into an exam room. Once inside, I cracked. I sobbed uncontrollably through the entire appointment. And in my scared, mad, crazy head, a wish took root. I hoped for Amy to get a little fat.

Fast forward another week: I ran into Amy again in the parking lot of my breast surgeon’s office. I’d shed my drains a few days prior and had just been to the salon for some pampering. I felt more like me than I had in weeks. We compared notes for a few minutes about oncologists and chemo. Amy no longer seemed so hurtfully superhuman.

A few days later at my next visit with my plastic surgeon, the receptionist slipped a yellow Post-it into my hand, explaining someone had left it for me. It was a note - from Amy.

In the weeks before and during chemo, Amy became one of my lifelines. She was a sounding board, a comrade and a cheerleader. She brought me ginger candies for my nausea, and a bag of wigs and scarves to add to my cache, and she generously shared her positive attitude.

I almost forgot I’d once been so unbalanced that I prayed (in my post-surgical, still-anesthetized, Percocet-saturated mind, let’s not discount) she would pack on a few pounds – until she did.

To add insult to injury, chemo often causes weight gain, though you’d think it would be the opposite. While I know I had nothing to do with Amy’s extra 10, I’m sorry I was so petty and mean-spirited.

I offer my sincerest apologies to my friend and to the universe. I’ll think long and hard before ever cursing another woman with fatness. Unless, of course, she really deserves it.