The Few, the Proud, the Forgotten....and the Really Forgotten

Let me preface this article by saying I am in no way, shape, or form trying to discount the battle of ANY cancer sufferer or survivor anywhere ever. It is my intent to discount MY experience and mine alone. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

It's #TellItTuesday here on It's Complicated and Clean!, the day I open a vein....no, not a vein, an artery and let the blood of my meandering existence spurt all over my laptop. There's something about me a lot of folks don't know and it's something I don't often talk about: I am a cancer survivor.

Why would I keep this fact to myself? Doesn't make sense, especially in this day and age when we're all trying as best we can to throw money and attention at an insidious disease that not only robs people of their futures, but of their dignity, their hope, and more often than not, their livelihoods and nesteggs. Thanks, broken US healthcare system!

First of all, I never want to appear to capitalize on my experience. Seems unsavory to me. Also, It's not that my story is too horrible to relive. Not at all and that is the MAIN reason I don't wear my survivorhood on my chest. Compared to most of the cancer battles I've witnessed-- either watching loved ones cling to life after torturous treatment after torturous treatment or at the EDJ as a healthcare professional-- I consider my story insignificant....other than its origin. I have a special kind of survivors guilt. I did not endure enough to claim the title of "survivor".

At the age of seventeen (a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away) I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer? Does thyroid cancer even have a ribbon? I'm sure it does, I just don't know what color it is. It's the three-toed sloth of cancers. At least papillary thyroid carcinoma is. Medullary and anaplastic are full on badass cancer bitches, but papillary... C'mon. It reminds me of the word papillon which means butterfly in French. Hmmm....which is also the shape of the thyroid. (note to self, look up etymology of word "papillary"). Anyway, it's very slow growing, usually stays put in the neck, and, due to the unique element one's thyroid needs to function, it's pretty easy to obliterate. I'll get to what I went through to obliterate it in a minute. First, let me jump to the juicy part.

How does an otherwise healthy seventeen year old have a thyroid so sick it doesn't have just cancer, but also a goiter and Hashimoto's Thyroiditis? Well, that story, THAT STORY, I do want to shout from the rooftops because it makes me so angry I can hardly see straight every time I think of it. And it is this flood of emotion that's kept me from writing about it for twenty-four years. This is my attempt to make peace with it.

Way back yonder in the mid to late 20th century (yes, the 20th century), two of the eight wells on Camp LeJeune, North Carolina US Marine Corps base contained dangerous levels of PERC and about seventy other hazardous chemicals. What's PERC you ask? It's chemical name: perchloroethylene or tetrachloroethylene, better known as dry cleaning solvent. Yes, you read that right, DRY CLEANING SOLVENT. Also turns out that strontium-90 made the list of "seventy other chemicals". What's that? RADIOACTIVE WASTE. Now as to who knew what when, the sense is that the base's upper echelon knew of the pollution early on and still decided to keep the wells in use. Thanks, guys!

Smack dab in the middle of the polluted water timeframe (1953-1985), my mother became swollen with child--yep, you guessed it, little baby Cindy. Thank my lucky fucking stars my Mom craved soda when pregnant with me. We lived on base for another nine months after I was born, but again, Momma Wiggins breastfed me which I'm sure filtered out quite a bit of the poison. I was never directly dosed with PERC or strontium-90 and for that I am grateful. I honestly believe it's why things weren't worse than they were. It's also why the US government states there is no direct causality between perchloroethylene and thyroid cancer. See, even the US government doesn't think my cancer was cancer-y enough. Hey, but given my choices: mouth/throat cancer, breast cancer, leukemia, endometrial cancer, colon cancer, lymphoma, kidney cancer, or liver cancer, I'll take my three-toed sloth any day.

Don't get me wrong, battling thyroid cancer was no picnic. I went through some shit. I endured a needle aspiration (that's a giant fucking needle in the throat for those of you outside the know), two surgeries, six weeks without replacement hormones and then an iodine 131 oblation which made me as nauseous as motherfucker for a week. A year later I had to go off my meds for another six weeks to prep for a scan to be sure I was in remission. Those of you who take thyroid meds to stay alive know being without it for six weeks is no walk in the park. Symptoms include extreme fatigue, constipation, weight gain and minor hair loss.

I have to take replacement thyroid horomones for the rest of my life to the tune of $30 - $40 per month because that's what works for me costs, no inexpensive levothyroxine for me! I also have a gnarly scar at the base of my neck that looks like Mike Meyers slashed my throat but I somehow didn't die. Add to the mix that I was seventeen/eighteen and had to drop out of my first semester of college when all this was going on, it felt as though the world was ending. But that feeling was adolescent hyperbole. I didn't lose all my hair, I didn't vomit for weeks or months on end, I was never hospitalized because I was close to death--not from the cancer, but from the treatment. Nothing ended and life went on.

The same cannot be said for Janey Ensminger, the daughter of USMC master sergeant Jerry Ensminger. She died of cancer at the age of nine. I cannot imagine the pain and outrage her parents went through, but her father turned his profound loss into something positive: It's thanks to Jerry Ensminger, and his advocacy group The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten, the state of the water at Camp LeJeune was finally exposed circa 1999.

I give my eternal thanks to those who would not be silenced so that those of us affected by this travesty could receive the most basic of healthcare, at least those of with cancers and conditions that can be linked to PERC and strontium-90. Those of us with health issues who cannot prove causality, well, we are really forgotten about. Forty bucks doesn't sound like a huge nut to come up with every month, but spread over the course of my lifetime, should I live to see an average US female lifespan, it equals roughly $30,000. Ouch! And that number doesn't even include the infertility issues I've gone through. Six pregnancies with one live birth. *SMH* Infertility and miscarriages can be linked to PERC, but they can also be linked to exposure to myriad other chemicals, too. Fact of the matter is we ingest nasty stuff every day. It is the state of the union no one likes to talk about.

Anyhoo, I shall descend from my soapbox. I choose to be grateful for the things I have and make peace with all I've lost. Turns out I am a survivor after all and that's what matters most....oh, and while writing this article I looked up the ribbon for thyroid cancer: It's purple, pink, and teal. Very butterfly-like. I approve 😄

Cheers,

Cindy

Diamonds and Pink Ribbons

After the past two days of irreverence, I thought I'd serious things up a bit. I came across this entry to my journal from a couple years ago, when a dear friend battled breast cancer. It reminds me that October isn't the only time we should think of our sisters fighting the good fight. Enjoy!



Diamonds and Pink Ribbons

When I was a kid, Madonna's Material Girl video blew me away. How I longed to be that shapely, jeweled-studded, pink satin clad goddess. I later found out the video was a tribute the late, great Marilyn Monroe. Another icon of hourglass curves and feminine power. I worshiped them both and decided I would strive to accomplish what these incredible women had (except for Marilyn's untimely demise, of course). Ahhh, the best laid schemes of mice and pre-pubescent girls. To quote John Lennon, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

These days, the only diamonds I come in contact with are comprised of red dirt and green grass. And as for pink ribbons, well, I could never pull one off perched atop my head, but I do wear one proudly on my chest as I help one of my closest friends deal with the indignities of breast cancer. Far from the clean, neat, sparkly world I dreamed of, my life consists of grass stains, mud ground into the carpet of my Jeep, some crying jags and lots of laughter at inappropriate times. I would not have it any other way. Hi, my name is Cindy. I'm a baseball mom, foot soldier in the fight against cancer, and writer of chick porn. You heard me. I write erotic romance, kinda like that awful shades of grey crap except way better--a senior in college who's a virgin? Do I look fucking stupid? But I digress.

My weekend started with a hangover. It usually does these days, but I have a system to whip myself into fighting shape before my son gets out of bed, which is invariably at the butt crack of dawn...unless it's a school day. At five Saturday morning, I tossed down a Sudafed (to help with sinus swelling from last night's overindulgence), three Advil (for the headache), a Super B Complex vitamin (to get rid of the sluggish, dizzy feeling), and a Vitex capsule (that's for my malfunctioning lady-parts, but that's a whole other story). After a couple bottles of cold water from the fridge, I'm right as rain.

L, my son, staggers into the living room, longish hair a cloud of snarled espresso-colored waves. I can hardly see his eyes, which are lovely velvety brown if you're lucky enough to catch a glimpse. He reminds me of Harry Potter if Harry Potter were a five foot tall nine year old, half Caucasian, half Puerto Rican with the booty to prove it. It's okay. My son has a bodacious ba-donk-a-donk. I am strong enough to accept this fact.

After four pieces of toast and two eggs, he is raring to go. I manage to put off the inevitable by nursing a cup of coffee and puttering around the kitchen for another hour.

"Can you take me to the baseball field to practice pitching?" he asks, SpongeBob apparently at an end.
"I can, but the question is will I."
"Will you take me?" He rolls his eyes.
"Please?"
"Please."

I sigh. This is not my job. I cook, I clean, I scrub red clay out of white baseball pants, I write about engorged naughty-bits. I do not squat behind home plate while my giant fourth grader hurls hard projectiles at me. But I know neither his father nor his stepfather are able to function in this capacity. They are both at work. Damn them for being productive members of society and good providers.

"I guess so. I can wear your catcher's gear."
A large-toothed grin lights up his face.
I'm doomed and I know it, but at least L is happy.

We get to the field so early that dew still clings to the grass and the sun hasn't even fully broken the horizon. We shlep his massive bag of gear to the baseball diamond, do some warm ups, and then I put on his catcher's mask and chest protector.

"You should put on the shin guards, too, Mom." He picks up a ball and slaps it into his glove.

"I'll be fine." I sit on an overturned paint bucket behind home plate because there's no way my middle-aged knees will put up with squatting for more than about five seconds. But then I remember he has a strong arm and really could chip a bone with a misplaced fastball so I spread my legs very wide. Yes, I'm a genius. This way there is less of a chance that he'll hit my legs instead of the mitt.

He shrugs and takes the mound. The first pitch goes wild. I don't bother to lunge for it. He has a pile of balls to work through. The second pitch it a little off, too, so I tell him to move over on the rubber. He complains that he's over far enough but then acquiesces.

There's the wind up.
And pitch.

BLAP!

The ball smacks me square between the legs. My hoo-ha feels as if it has been branded. I jump up, howling, tears in my eyes. My genitals are throbbing and not in that good way I love to write about.

Breathe, just breathe, I tell myself.

Holy fucking shit. If guys do indeed have it worse with the same type of injury, I will never again laugh at groin shot on those home video shows.

"Mom, are you okay? I'm so sorry. Is your leg all right?" He runs to me, genuine concern tugging at his features.

"My leg is fine, you didn't hit my leg."

"What did I hit?"

Before I can stop it, the admission has escaped my lips: "You hit me in the va-jay-jay!"

His look of shock dissolves into a fit of giggles. He is still nine after all. Crotch humor is the height of hilarity at nine. I even manage a chuckle.

When we have both regained our composure, I resume my catcher's duties, albeit crouching behind the bucket. Fuck my knees, I am not taking another shot to the clit. I'm sure it's going to be bruised tomorrow. I do not need a trip to the ER, me clutching my crotch, baseball stitching permanently stamped into my vulva. No, thank you.

We make it through pitching practice without another hitch. We go home and I down more Advil. Screw my kidneys, my snatch feels like an over-ripe orange ready to split at moment's notice. I then deliver him to travel ball practice at nine a.m. and sit through an excruciating Little League game from two to four.

Wounded and exhausted, we go by K's house to see if she needs some company for the evening and she does. Having cancer is a lonely kind of worry and pain. She worries about her prognosis through death isn't on the table. Not yet. Just the specters of the same old, same old horrors: chemo, radiation, surgery, possible double mastectomy, stress to her son, her husband, her body which has already been through so much. It's all overwhelming, but I have brought provisions: two bottles of white zinfandel.

"What's up with the pink wine?" she teases. "Does everything have to be pink these days?"
"It was on sale at the grocery store."
She nods, a deep understanding passing between us.
"May I have an ice pack, please?" I ask, easing into a kitchen chair, grateful it is padded.
"Of course, what's wrong?"
"L hit me in the pussy while we were practicing his pitching."
"On purpose?" She furrows her brow, cracking the first bottle and pouring both of us extra large glasses.
"I doubt it. His aim still isn't that accurate."

We laugh and listen to the boys digging through a box of Legos. Swunch, swunch, swunch.

She takes a sip of wine and then runs a finger around the edge of the glass. "The lymph node from the last surgery was positive."
My throat constricts and I wish I could take away the fear crinkling the edges of her eyes. I can't. I know I can't. My world narrows to a pinpoint. I need to scream, but I can't. I need to put my fist through a wall, but I won't. Instead, I focus on the pink liquid in my glass and wish it was something stronger.

"What does that mean?" I ask, knowing the answer full well, but I also know she needs to say it.
Months of chemo, three different drugs, all of which will ravage her body, killing everything, not just the cancer. Neither of us can even cry. Not in any meaningful way. It's just too big. Too shocking. This was supposed to be a tiny thing. A nothing thing. But nothing ever works out for K the way it is supposed to. We often joke that perhaps she ran over Jesus's puppy in a former life and failed to apologize.

She finishes her list of tests to come and treatments to follow, a hitch in her voice.
"So what do you think?" she asks.
"I think it would be easier if you had been hit in the cunt by a baseball."
She huff a chuckle, tears snaking down her cheeks. "Me, too."

I want to tell her how sorry I am. I want to shout. I want to burst into tears, but none of that will help. I lift my glass of wine to my lips. I may not be able to take away the pain, but I can sit with her and listen to our children play.

It's not enough, but for now, it'll do.