My life’s BFF

Cancer is a cowardly thief. Yawn. You must be bored of my saying the same old thing. But it is true. I have reclaimed much of what that devil unabashedly stole, but a sound sleep still eludes me. I go to sleep fine, content, happy, and too often, I wake in the middle of the night in a putrid, horrible sweat having had a terrible dream. A recurrent dream. A dream where cancer returns and wages a war I am not strong enough to fight, or am strong enough – but get taken anyway. And please know, I don’t only dream about myself. So many nights, my dreams are about Lisa, Brooke, Rachel, Eileen, Jeri, Harriet, Jennie, Diane, my friends who have passed, their motherless babies, my sons and their future daughters, or the more than 230,000 women (and men too) who will learn of their diagnosis this year [sigh, yes, it is very busy inside my head]. One of my worst dreams stems from the reality that my baby sister has a significantly increased risk of getting the same awful disease. My sister is my best friend in this world. From the moment our parents brought her home and I claimed her as my own (literally that’s about what happened), we have shared a truly special, the most special, relationship.

And from the instant of my diagnosis, I have dreaded hers.

Let’s be clear, the fear was not unfounded or even abstract. Following years (years before I was even diagnosed) of being “on watch,” with alternating mammograms, ultrasounds, and MRIs, all designed to interpret the unintelligible content of her breasts, she endured biopsy after biopsy. Each result abnormal but, also, squarely in the grey area of what to do. Add a father lost to sarcoma, and a sister with the queen of nasty cell type breast cancers, Jennifer decided a more permanent and definitive course of action was warranted. I remember one day, while at my father’s bedside in the ICU while he struggled for every gut wrenching breath, Jennifer came upstairs from yet another breast biopsy. Her breasts sore and bound, she joined the vigil at our dad’s side. My thinking, that day, was, it can not be that my sister in her 20’s should have to face a cancer diagnosis after watching her father die of it.   But fast forward, she did that, and then watched her sister fight the very disease the doctors started warning her about her greatly increased risk in her TEENS.

Yet, a prophylactic double mastectomy is a draconian step by any standard. Several months ago when she first asked my opinion, the inner me screamed at the top of my lungs, D-U-H!, YES, YES, YES, DO IT. DO IT NOW. WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG? But the slightly (and I mean slightly) more rational me, tried instead, to go through the pros and cons, to assist with understanding the divergent analysis of the many doctors consulted. At the end of the day, you cannot “book the action” for another adult human being, even when that person is your baby sister.

Oh how I love me some haters. Give me judgmental haters – and a real party gets going in my head. Haters, by virtual definition are D-U-M-B. They lack the intelligence, empathy, functional knowledge, and heaven forbid – actual experience to utter a word. But opine they do…. So…arguing with them though futile is occasionally fun to twist them into knots. You think it is easy to make this decision, decide to endure major surgery, to lop off your girlie parts? Every time I hear someone say how, oh well with close monitoring, they would catch a cancer early, I want to actually spit fire in their eyes. An early catch [while undeniably better than a late or missed catch] does not necessarily obviate the need for chemo, radiation, other surgery, or possible spread and death. Once the beast is unleashed in your body – it is a life long struggle. Disclaimer [I’m a lawyer by trade, I can’t help myself…]: I am not, in any way, shape, or form advocating or condoning surgery as a fix to risk or fear…every person, every patient is different, and this is a decision that is as personal as it gets. You have to consult doctors [surgeons, geneticists, plastic surgeons, psychologists, and more], you have to talk to your family, and the deepest part of yourself, and come to a decision that works for YOUR life. At root, these are decisions that you have to live with [or die by] – and in the end, we ALL deserve peace of mind in our choices, whatever they are.

I will leave the (soft) science and statistics to other wonks (who similarly don’t know what it is like to live with cancer or the very realistic fear of getting it). You want to know what strength and bravery look like? It is a perfectly healthy 37 year old woman with a body to rival any Victoria Secret model, without a documented cancer, who walks, head held high and confident (though trembling to her core) into a hospital when she does not “have to” [but really and truly does] and has her body sliced in half under general anesthesia with no guarantee of survival let alone a particular cosmetic outcome to be become better, healthier, physically stronger, and about a million steps ahead of cancer. Jennifer Karen Hirschfield Leff, you are my hero, YOU the picture of strength and bravery (and you don’t need a cookie in your mouth for that!).

My recurrent dream is ugly, crippling, and sad. It is of days that were so awful I could only work in 10-minute increments. It is of a road travelled for survival that makes a Stephen King novel look more like a romantic comedy. It is of love and heartbreaking loss and fears of what is literally unthinkable. Thank god, when I woke up today, it was after sweet dreams of our future and news that my sister’s prophylactic mastectomy went smoothly. Jennifer, for the next several decades, your sons and husband, and your parents, brothers, sisters, nephew-sons, and friends can have a better recurrent dream of this beautiful life.  Your life!

A recurrent dream! Good morning baby girl, you are a previvior.

much love,

jodi alison