where is it likely to go better?

09 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by Editor in Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Depression, Language matters, Memoir, Mental Health, Northern Ireland, Ordinary Things, World Mental Health Day 2013

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American Cancer Society, Barrys Big Dipper, Birches, breast cancer treatment, cancer like a roller-coaster, Cancer-caused Depression, carnie, confronting mortality, Dana Jennings, depression, fatigue, hormones, identity, Learning to Fly, Northern Ireland, Portrush, power of stories, Prostate cancer, PTSD, Recovery, Robert Frost, taboo, Tom Petty, Words of Wisdom, Writing

BarrysBySixMileImages

Photo: Barry’s, Portrush by Six Mile Images

roll·er coast·er

noun ˈrō-lər-ˌkō-stər, ˈrō-lē-ˌkō-

Definition of ROLLER COASTER

1. A steep, sharply curving elevated railway with small open passenger cars that is operated at high speeds as a ride, especially in an amusement park.

2. An action, event, or experience marked by abrupt, extreme change in circumstance, quality, or behavior.

You. Have. Cancer.

A cliché comes next – the roller-coaster ride. You know its refrain. First, the arduous climb towards an intense blue sky. Gradually, the anxious giggling and chatter subsides. At the top, breath suspended, you wait for the world to fall out beneath you. Not yet. Then a sudden plunge at shocking speed. Might you plummet to your death? Not yet. Still more unpredictable twists and turns await, above and below. White-knuckled, you cling to the bar, only half-believing there is enough life in the clicking-clacking, old machinery to set you back on solid ground. Suddenly it is over. You are free to return to the midway, albeit a little green around the gills and unsteady on your feet. And as he helps you out of the car, you hope no one but the carnie can tell you are not as confident as you were.

In an unguarded moment, decades later, you will recollect The Big Dipper at Barry’s, closing your eyes to better see yourself, a child again hurtling through the North Atlantic air. Curls wild in the wind, mouth agape, eyes squeezed to block out light and noise and fear, and you half-hoping to stay aloft forever, because ‘coming down is the hardest thing.’

But you will land safely, startled to find yourself somewhere between Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers “Learning to Fly” and Robert Frost’s lovely “Birches“

I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I don’t know either.

After Cancer, Ambushed by Depression

September 29, 2009, NEW YORK TIMES

By DANA JENNINGS

I’m depressed.

I’m recovering well from an aggressive case of prostate cancer, I haven’t had any treatment in months, and all of my physical signposts of health are pointing in the right direction.

Still, I’m depressed.

And I’ve been ambushed by it. After more than a year of diagnosis, treatment and waiting, it’s almost as if, finally and unexpectedly, my psyche heaved a sigh and gave itself permission to implode.

I’m not alone in this cancer-caused depression. As many as 25 percent of cancer patients develop depression, according to the American Cancer Society. That’s contrasted with about 7 percent of the general population.

This isn’t about sadness or melancholy. It’s more profound than that. Broadly, I have a keen sense of being oppressed, as if I were trapped, wrapped up in some thick fog coming in off the North Atlantic.

To be more specific, I’m exhausted, unfocused and tap my left foot a lot in agitation. I don’t much want to go anywhere – especially anyplace that’s crowded – and some days I can’t even bear the thought of picking up the phone or changing a light bulb. All of this is often topped off by an aspirin-proof headache.

The fatigue frustrates me most. When I envision myself it’s as a body in motion, walking or running, not foundering in bed. On one recent day, I slept till 10 in the morning – getting 11 hours of sleep – then took a nap from noon to 2. And I was still tired.

I’ve had occasional depression over the years, but nothing as dogged as this. When I first learned that I had prostate cancer, I wondered about depression. But after the shock of the diagnosis wore off, I was sharp and clear-headed. I wasn’t depressed as I went through treatment — surgery, radiation and hormone therapy. I was buoyed by a kind of illness-induced adrenaline.

The bone-smoldering fatigue arrived in late spring/early summer, and intensified as summer deepened. I thought that I might be depressed, but resisted the diagnosis, didn’t want to countenance the idea that I could be depressed after all of my treatment.

I stubbornly chalked the fatigue up to the lingering aftereffects of radiation and my fluctuating levels of testosterone. But I was wrong.

I am seeing a psychiatrist who specializes in cancer patients, and have started a course of medication. My doctor assures me that depression isn’t unusual among those who are on the far side of treatment.

Partly, I think, I’m grieving for the person I was before I learned I had cancer. Mortality is no longer abstract, and a certain innocence has been lost.

And while the physical trauma is past, the stress lingers and brings with it days washed in fine shades of gray. In the same way that radiation has a half-life, stress does, too. We all ache to be the heroes of our own tales, right? Well, I’m not feeling too heroic these days.

Cancer pushes lots of difficult buttons. It lays bare our basic vulnerability and underlines the uncertainty of this life. And prostate cancer attacks our culture’s ideal of manhood. The steely-eyed Marlboro Man isn’t expected to worry about incontinence and erectile dysfunction.

Cancer feels bleaker than other diseases. Even though my health keeps improving, and there’s a good chance that I’m cancer free, I still feel stalked, as if the cancer were perched on my shoulder like some unrepentant imp.

It’s harder to write about the weight of depression than it is to write about prostate cancer and its physical indignities. Cancer is clear biological bad luck. But depression, no matter how much we know about it, makes part of me feel as if it’s somehow my fault, that I’m guilty of something that I can’t quite articulate.

This has also been a difficult post to write because during my dark waltz with cancer I’ve depended on my natural optimism and my sense of humor to help see me through. But depression blunts those traits.

In the end, though, I believe in and trust in the healing power of the stories that we tell each other. And I wouldn’t be truthful to you or myself if I ignored the fact that I’m depressed even as I wait for a brisk wind billowing out of the north that’ll blow this fog of mine away.

looking after Ireland . . . madeleine albright & me

28 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by Editor in Friendship, Ireland, Irish culture, Irish Diaspora, Language matters, Phoenix Art Museum, Shel Silverstein, Social Media, Twitter, Writing

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Facebook, Ireland, Irishcentral.com, Jack Dorsey, kindness of strangers, Madeleine Albright, Read my Pins, rotation curation, social media, Twitter

The Voice by Shel Silverstein
There is a voice inside of you,
That whispers all day long,
“I feel that this is right for me, I know that this is wrong.”
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you– just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.

I’m finding that with age, it is easier for the outside voice to echo that voice that speaks inside. Like most people I imagine, I haven’t been bold enough to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about my own life and “what I really feel” about everything. Thus, I linger somewhere between the public and the private, which made the past week so appealing. For seven days, I was The Voice of Ireland. No, really. On Twitter no less. And, here’s how it works.

Each week, the official @Ireland Twitter account rotates with a new voice introduced to the almost 20,000 Twitter users who follow it. Inspired by the Swedes, ‘rotation curation’ of the @Ireland account began in March 2012 and, as of this week, has been curated by 100 Twitter users. Based on the simple notion that one lone voice cannot represent a country, @Ireland helps connect the global Irish community through the widely varying voices of those who look after it, one Tweet at a time. I was delighted to be handed the reins of the @Ireland Twitter account last Sunday afternoon. There was no manual as such, but the rules were straightforward enough, with the best advice coming from Community Manager, Darragh O’Doyle:

I doubt I need to tell you but you know yourself, as we discussed – no trolling, nothing racist, demeaning or defamatory etc etc. Swearing within limits is fine, but I personally think it’s a case of if you can’t say something nice, say nothing. Not that you ever would of course! Feel free to bring up whatever topics and issues you like but be prepared that not everyone will like what you’re talking about. You won’t really be hearing from me on how you’re doing – the followers will let you know themselves. They’re very on the ball when it comes to what they find acceptable. I hope you get to meet some nice people.

And with that, I was off. I have to admit, I felt very important, ceremonial even, along the lines of Lady Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham. Mind you, not everyone was as impressed with me as I was with myself. I had to explain to people not only ‘rotation curation’ but that Twitter is actually, important. I digress, but only a little, to point out that before it was even a twinkle in the eye of Jack Dorsey, the simple Tweet featured in my little girl’s pre-school art. (Out of the mouths of babes . . . )

Regardless, my die-hard Facebook friends dismissed me as a narcissist, compelled to update the world with self-promotional trivia like what I ate for lunch. “But it’s not like that!” I protested. I mean, what other medium allows you to consume massive amounts of information and interact with the sources of that information at the same time? In real time? I far prefer Twitter to Facebook. Granted, the latter keeps me in touch with people I love and care about, but Twitter is what connects me with the issues I care about, with people who disagree or agree and share ideas and make me think. Twitter creates a forum for listening and learning from a global community, a perfect opportunity for countries to communicate with each other.

Why does that matter? Well, in these days of globalization and non-stop news, a country’s reputation can go to the dogs in an instant. Whether we’re talking about culture or politics, trade or tourism, the future of a country depends a great deal on how it is viewed by the outside world. So for those who get to take care of the @Ireland Twitter account, there’s a unique opportunity to create interest in and enthusiasm for the island and its people no matter where they live. Anyone can follow @Ireland on Twitter and strike up a conversation. And, truth be told, there were times last week when it felt a bit like being in the pub with 20,000 people.

At 11PM Irish time last Sunday, 3PM Mountain Standard Time, I began my stint from the second floor of the art museum downtown:

Incidentally, I checked, and even the Former Secretary of State has a Twitter account too, having signed up last September:

But back to the “Read My Pins” exhibit, where 200 of her brooches are on display. Each tells a story, none better than the serpent pin she wore while preparing to meet the Iraqis in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s refusal to accept UN inspections following the first Persian Gulf War. At the time, the government-controlled press had published a poem referring to Madeleine Albright as an “unparalleled serpent.” So what did she wear when she had to meet with Iraqi officials? She chose a small serpent pin, a tiny diamond hanging from the reptile’s mouth, and when the TV cameras zoomed in on it and the reporters asked why she had worn it, she responded with a smile that it was simply her way of sending a message. As they would say back home, “Good girl herself.”

With Madeleine Albright to help me get started, the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King the next day, (with a shout out to Bono who had played a role in campaigning for the MLK holiday in Arizona), and so many places in the grip of the Polar vortex, there was much to Tweet about. People from Ireland and all over the globe waxed philosophical, political, and personal. We swapped weather updates, weekend plans, bad jokes, recipes, and pictures of local scenery. There were disagreements about immigration law in Arizona and the recent flack in Northern Ireland over Newtownabbey Borough Council’s banning of the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged). There were questions about gun control in America, which Oscar nominated movie everyone should see, and what was the best concert in Ireland in the past 30 years. (For my money, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band when they made their Irish debut at Slane Castle in 1985 – a summer afternoon that will forever shimmer for those of us who attended.)

But most of all, there was the kindness of strangers, sorry for my trouble, who sent comfort and condolences, bringing me the brightest week since November 15th when the clocks stopped at 1:10PM even as the world kept turning. To all the kind strangers in this virtual home away from home, I am forever in your debt.

If you are interested in being the voice of @Ireland for a week, you can apply or nominate someone you believe could well represent Ireland by emailing Ireland@IrishCentral.com

a cool whiskey for seamus heaney & me

07 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by Editor in Anahorish, Antrim, Arizona, Artisans, Being young, Belfast, Language matters, McClelland Irish Library, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Phoenix, Phoenix Landmarks, Soundtracks of our Lives, Ted Hughes, The Diviner, The Forge, Writing

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craic, Irish craftsmen, McClelland Irish Library, Powers whiskey, Seamus Heaney, stonemasonry

No better way to end a night celebrating the poetry of Seamus Heaney than with a Powers whiskey and a bit of craic. The only thing missing was a turf fire, but this is Phoenix, Arizona, the weather still warm on the first Friday of October. No need yet for a hot whiskey, not the way my father makes it as a cure for the cold or whatever ails you, methodically warming the glass before adding two spoonfuls of sugar and a decent ‘nip’ of Powers. So the glass won’t crack, he’s always careful to place a metal spoon in it before pouring in the boiling water. The final touch, a slice of lemon studded with cloves.

A man like my father would have been right at home in the McLelland Irish Library which rises like a 12th century Norman castle from a spot just north of downtown Phoenix, a city that is not even two hundred years old. In my mind’s eye, he is surveying the arch above the doorway, calculating how much limestone and labor went into it, and marveling that it was quarried, cut, and carved in County Clare by master stonemason Frank McCormack, the kind of Irish craftsman who would not be out of place in Heaney’s poetry along with the blacksmith, the diviner, and the thatcher, well-practiced in the techniques and tools of time-honored crafts, just like my father:

If you look at that doorway, you’ll see old history. You’ll see we used the chisel the same way stonemasons did 1,000 years ago.

fde2de8dc1d931b42ef15f018639a020 Within the walls of this latter-day castle, ten of us, including the library’s founder, Norman McClelland, paid homage to the poet, our readings and reminiscences proving again and again that what Heaney had to say applied not just in Anahorish but in Arizona, not only to the Irish but to people anywhere. Lines I had only ever heard read aloud in Northern Ireland were delivered in American voices and then the familiar lilt of Derry, Dundalk, and my own Antrim, as each of us stepped up to the microphone with our notes and our dog-eared collections of his poetry.

Perhaps she was in the audience on Friday evening, the reporter who had asked me if I thought you had to be Irish to appreciate Seamus Heaney’s poetry. Her question caught me off guard, and the way she asked it suggested she was unfamiliar with his work. Still, I responded inadequately. What I meant to tell her was that in the crucible of Heaney’s poetry, she would no doubt find herself represented along with everyone else; she would find “the music of what happens” then and now; she would find not what it means to be Irish, but all that it means to be human and searching, always searching – digging.

After the event on Friday, I remembered a story in The Observer about Heaney and his great friend, the poet Ted Hughes. Young and bold, they were drinking poteen and singing songs in Belfast one evening after a poetry reading, the world at their feet. Sipping my cool whiskey, toasting him silently and so far away from Northern Ireland, I wondered what our poet would have said about the gathering in Phoenix. His words would have been modest and more about us than about himself, I’m sure.

In 1996, he delivered the Commencement address at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, telling the graduating class:

Make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it; you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you will become a bit more deserving of you.

Oh, Seamus, I hope you know you made the world a better one for us. Thank you.

booby-trapped this October?

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by Editor in BC Action, Belfast, bombing, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Language matters, Language of Cancer, Memoir, Memoir, Pink Ribbons, Pinkwashing, Sexism, Shopping, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood

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Breast, breast cancer, Cancer, Health, John Ashcroft, Northern Ireland, Shankill Road, Susan G. Komen, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, The Troubles

boo·by trap

Meaning: A practical joke. Also a concealed and possibly lethal trap.

Noun: A thing designed to catch the unwary, in particular

Verb: Place a booby trap in or on (an object or area): “the area was booby-trapped.”

Synonyms: snare, trick into doing something

“Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November . . .” the rhyme reminds me, as it has done countless times before, that October has thirty-one days, and it is just around the corner. Thirty one days to make us all impossibly more aware of breast cancer. Thirty one days of purchasing pink and running towards towards “the cure” (two words trademarked by the Susan G. Komen Foundation just in case you’re thinking of hosting a similar event “for the cure). The White House will undoubtedly turn pink again and the cashiers at the grocery store will ask me for a dollar towards breast cancer. And when November 1st eventually arrives, the pink ribbons will be unpinned from lapels, the grocery stores will turn from pink to the colors of Thanksgiving. I will breathe a sign of relief, but I will, of course, still have breast cancer.

I am an unwilling conscript to this battle against breast cancer. I don’t want to be a fighter or a survivor or a pink warrior. I’d prefer living without having to hold my breath every so often, wondering as I did some forty years ago in Marks and Spencers on Belfast’s Royal Avenue, if the bomb scare is just that. A scare. A hoax. In my world today, the suspicious devices come in the form of tumors and test results, in waiting and worrying, in scheduling more time to spend in waiting rooms. And they come in pink ribbons and half-truths about mammograms and early detection. The whole sorry business saps my energy. I have things to do. Mundane things, but they matter nonetheless – laundry and shopping. I like my clothes clean and the refrigerator stocked. But in October, I avoid the dry-cleaners, but I cannot avoid the grocery store and its shelves of pink merchandise.

For eleven months of the year, reconnaissance missions to the dry-cleaners or the grocery store pass without incident. No camouflage is necessary and only minimal intelligence required. In October, it is impossible to pass through the Safeway checkout line without being hijacked by a cashier whose job it is to ask me to donate a dollar for breast cancer. If I say yes, she will bellow into the intercom, “I just got a donation for Breast Cancer. Can I get a Woo Hoo?” And, as they scan coupons and fill bags, paper or plastic, with other people’s groceries, a chorus of cashiers and bag-boys will, as automatons, respond, “Woo Hoo!” and I will flee. I will feel only slightly guilty that I asked how much of my dollar would support breast cancer research, knowing that my question rendered her uncomfortable. But I will be more concerned that she has not been told how to answer my question except with a receipt and a “Have a nice day!” The young woman at the cash register is caught in the same trap with me – woo-hoo!

There are other grocery stores, less pink-ified, but they are few and far between. Even speciality stores are dressed out in pink, in an almost festive observance of breast cancer awareness month. I suppose you could call it a breast fest. Bizarrely, this brings to mind Loyalist areas in the Northern Ireland of my childhood. In anticipation of “marching” season, Union Jacks and flags bearing a red hand hung out from bedroom windows of council houses, proclaiming allegiance to the Crown. Red, white, and blue bunting stretched from house to house, and pavement curbs were roughly painted in homage to British rule. Slogans spray-painted on otherwise scrubbed gable walls, echoed an imperative “Belfast Says No” that hung above the city’s hall in the 1980s and in our faces. It was unavoidable even for those of us who wanted to remain anonymous, ordinary people for whom the moral imperative was peace. Boldly marking territory in no uncertain terms, those banners and badges were divisive, as incendiary as the booby-trapped cars that lay in wait for the part-time police officer who, in a hurry to get home for a birthday celebration, failed to check under his car before turning the key in the ignition.

Perhaps it is over-wrought to compare breast cancer awareness campaigns to shows of loyalist strength that often culminated in sectarian violence and murder. The parallels are real to me. The bunting that zig-zags across the skies of the Shankill Road is not much different from the arch of balloons that float above the “KomenPhoenix” finish Line in downtown Phoenix. I did not participate, much to the chagrin of acquaintances who know I have breast cancer. Why wasn’t I part of Komen’s “circle of promise?” they asked. Couldn’t I tap into the power of positive thinking? Why do I have to be so negative about breast cancer? Come on! Can’t you ferret out a silver lining? Make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

“Imagine a life without breast cancer!” the Susan G. Komen Foundation urges. Alright. I imagine it every morning when I wake up or when I push to the back of my mind the possibility that the twinge in my hip is a harbinger of recurrence. I imagined it during an unguarded moment in Bed, Bath and Beyond, the sole item on my agenda, a new duvet cover. I had barely crossed the threshold, when I was told to Fight like a Girl:

Even the tic tacs on display were pink, as was the pasta and the over-priced machine used to make it. I did my due diligence and visited the The Pasta Shoppe website, where I learned that 10% of proceeds from the sale of fun-shaped pasta will go directly to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Susan G. Komen was only 36 years old when she was killed by metastatic breast cancer In the blink of an eye, just three years, it ravaged her body. The organization subsequently established by her sister, however, has failed to appropriately address the kind of cancer that killed her. Instead, the Komen foundation has relentlessly emphasized early detection and awareness. Sealed it with a pink ribbon, it is just not good enough. Not for me. Not for my daughter. Nor yours.

What would Susan G. Komen say about our progress, or Rachel Carson, who fifty years ago, warned us about pesticides and their link to cancer. Breast cancer killed her too. She would have something to say, I know, about last year’s limited edition pink ribbon tic tacs. While I do not know how much of the tic tac proceeds went towards breast cancer research, I know they contain corn gluten, which is cause for concern. For Susan and for Rachel, for you and for me, Breast Cancer Action urges us to ask these Critical Questions Before You Buy Pink:

Does any money from this purchase go to support breast cancer programs? How much?
What organization will get the money? What will they do with the funds, and how do these programs turn the tide of the breast cancer epidemic?
Is there a “cap” on the amount the company will donate? Has this maximum donation already been met? Can you tell?
Does this purchase put you or someone you love at risk for exposure to toxins linked to breast cancer? What is the company doing to ensure that its products are not contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?

Breast cancer can no longer be covered up with pink ribbon purchases that manipulate us into feeling good about ourselves. It is an epidemic but it has been trivialized, glamorized, feminized. In October, it is more about the boobies and less about the disease. The slogans and the pink wristbands, the trappings of breast cancer become fashion accessories. For thirty-one days, we are told “to save the tatas” and reminded to “feel the boobies.” Baby-talk, sugar and spice and all things nice, the stuff of fairy-tales. Even the President of the United States will sport a pink breast cancer awareness bracelet.

I may be way off the mark, but somehow I cannot imagine our nation in the grip of a “Feel my Balls” campaign. Can you? In 2013, America is still confounded by sex and gender; thus, guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone, ring hollow. Somewhere within the ‘Spaghetti Junction’ of stories that spin to advance political agendas and generate massive profits, lies the truth about the way things are and how they appear to be. A glamorous pink ribbon wrapped around an Estee Lauder model seems more socially palatable than a bald and fragile, vomiting cancer patient in the throes of yet another grueling, poisonous chemotherapy treatment. And then there are the men with breast cancer. What about them? What about the families of over 2,000 men who died from breast cancer in 2012?

Confronting the chilling reality of breast cancer is non-negotiable. It is time to ask the questions that will quell the rising tide and to demand answers, to hold accountable those in power to mandate mandate meaningful action, beyond the breasts and into research of the cancer that kills.

It was a decade ago when BBC News reported that then United States Attorney General, John Ashcroft, asked the United States Department of Justice to shell out $8,000 for drapes to cover up the exposed right breast of The Spirit of Justice statue. The offending art-deco figure was often photographed behind him while he spoke to the media. Was it too life-like? Too real? Too much woman for him? Would a pink ribbon in front of the White House have been more acceptable? Regrettably, I think it might.

Breast cancer is ugly, and it hurts. Awareness campaigns hurt too, especially when they focus on the same old stories of early detection and treatment regimens that have been prescribed for decades – some combination of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormonal therapy. Especially when such campaigns focus on everything other than what must be done to figure out what causes breast cancer in the first place, how to prevent it, how to stop it from metastasizing. What I wish I had known before running all those races and believing that the mammogram was the perfect test is what METAvivor President, CJ (Dian) Coreliussen-James warns:

“People do not realize that metastatic breast cancer is widespread and deadly, and that it strikes on whim and takes 41,000 American lives every year. Survivors think they are safe because they are 5 years out … or were diagnosed early … or were told they are ‘cured,’ but MBC plays by its own rules.People diagnosed at stage 0 as well as 30-year survivors can and do metastasize. You feel great one day and the next day learn you have MBC. Your life can change that fast.

So what will you do this October? How will you navigate the sophisticated booby-traps all around you? Be vigilant. Don’t fall for it just because of the nice pink ribbon. Ask questions.

It’s not all about the boobs . . .