My Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

The end of the school year is drawing to a close. And with it the end of chemotherapy. You may think that this is cause for celebration, and for many reasons, it is. Only somehow that isn’t entirely how I’m feeling.

It has been a remarkable year at the American School in London. What my girls have learned, how they have grown and what they have accomplished in about eight months astounds me. Living here has opened up a new world for them and allowed them to gain perspective that comes, I believe, only with the experience of living abroad. Once they transitioned to their new school, having made friends and gotten to know their teachers, they blossomed like well-tended flowers in a hot house. They are lush and gorgeous and powerful. I stand in awe of them.

One reason I’m sad the school year is almost over is that the girls must let go of this year’s teachers and classes and plunge into the great unknown of the summer. But I think I am the one who will have the most trouble letting go, really. The school has provided stability and routine but it has also served as a community of friends, teachers and other staff who poured forth so much help and support that my cup literally ran over and I started to feel guilty about all the meals I was receiving. Guilty that I wasn’t unwell enough to need or accept this help. That it should go to someone more needy, more deserving. Like I was a faker.

The other reason is that the end of school means the end of chemo. What? You say. The end of chemo is cause for celebration! Cause for champagne and party hats! Right. But the strange thing is, having focused so much of my energy on getting through chemo, it has become my routine, my life, my situation. The end will be one big boring-ass anticlimax. And it will mark the beginning of a new era.

The new era has two flaws: (1) it will be filled with the monotony of daily (or at least five days a week) trips to radiation; and (2) there will no longer by any cancer-fighting toxins coursing through my veins, seeking out and destroying any rogue cell daring to remain in my body.

On a lighter note, it will also mean the end of posts about what I will wear to chemo (see What I Wore To Chemo Today and Party in the Chemo Suite). “What I Wore to Radiation Today” and “Party in the Radiation Room” just don’t have the same ring to them. And because radiation will be five times weekly for five weeks, could get old rather fast.

Don’t get all depressed on me. I am not really sorry that chemo is almost over. I never ever want to do it again. It has been, for lack of a better word, disgusting. Still now, about six weeks after my last dose of AC (doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide), the former of which is, disturbingly, bright red, I hesitate when I reach for the mug in the cabinet with the red apple on it. I prefer its green, yellow, pink, blue or orange sibling. I’ll get over it though. And sometimes I use that red one intentionally just to show it who’s boss.

Chemo will end and then radiation will be over in the flashiest of flashes. And that will be that. There I will stand, Emily Rome, breast cancer survivor, having completed almost the whole shebang (there’s the matter of being on Tamoxifen for five years and more reconstructive surgery later this year… but I’m not too fussed over that at the moment).

And what then? What will I do with myself once these treatments are over when thoughts regarding their effectiveness begin to fester?

That’s when it hit me. Why it is so hard to have or to have had a life threatening illness.

Anyone at any time can be walking down the street and be struck by a falling branch, felled by an undiagnosed congenital heart defect, hit by the proverbial bus. And although these things can happen, normally we don’t spend a whole heap of time worrying about these theoretical unknown causes of our death (unless we are of the unusually morbid persuasion). Because they are theoretical. And unknown.

But when you have something that you can name, it becomes this thing, this presence. Even if it isn’t going to get you, it follows you around like luggage.

Did you ever see the movie Ghostbusters? If you are American and you haven’t and you are over the age of thirty then you are a loser. Anyhow whatever your excuse I don’t care — go rent it right now and watch it. Oh — I like my popcorn buttered and salted, thanks.

You know the scene, after the dumbass EPA lawyer (William Atherton) has let all of the ghosts out of containment and all hell’s breaking loose and the end of the world is nigh. The Ghostbusters (Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson) are on top of 55 Central Park West and have been instructed by Gozer to choose a destructor (like, of the world). So Venkman (Bill Murray) orders the Ghostbusters to clear their heads and not think of anything so that the destructor can take no form. No sooner have the words left his lips, however, than Gozer announces that the choice has been made. It seems Ray (Dan Aykroyd) didn’t clear his mind at all but rather thought of something that couldn’t possibly harm them: to wit, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Oh humour me and watch THIS.  Don’t you just love the (Chinese?) subtitles?

Well then. All that was a rather clumsy, long-winded way of trying to explain that when you have a life-threatening illness, even though you might live until you are 99 or get hit by that bus at 25, the destructor has been named. It has been named and it’s in the room with you. Somewhere. Forever.

At times you won’t think of it at all. You’ll forget about it. Other times it will rear its ugly head and be all up in your grill. Big, scary and possibly wearing a sailor outfit.

Cancer is my Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

But just because it has been named doesn’t mean it’s going to get me. Nope.

I know just what to do after school lets out and chemo and radiation are over and I’m just chilling with my new ultra-short hair-do, maybe on a beach in Cape Cod, if all goes well.

I’m going to have me a fuckin’ marshmallow roast to end all roasts. I like mine burnt to a crisp. I like to kill ’em before I eat ’em.

Now if you’ll excuse me. I’ve got to see a man about a beach bonfire permit.