The train pulled into Asbury Park at around seven p.m. I rolled my beat-up suitcase over the tracks, walked past the police station, and down the main drag until I got to Cookman. This was my usual route to Ocean Grove, the neighboring town where I spent many of my weekends "down the shore." I always felt my body relax when I saw Wesley Lake, the narrow slip of water that divides the two towns. Its serenity symbolized the way I felt about this, my adopted home of over twenty years. I'd spent some of my most important life moments here. The first years of my marriage, days on the beach with my then young niece looking for sand dollars, backyard parties with friends who would become family, flea markets, picnics, bike rides, even hurricanes and lost loves.
As I dragged my suitcase behind me I realized that there were pink ribbons everywhere -- tied onto the street signs, in the store windows, festooning the lamp posts -- everywhere. The lights in the shops had been converted to pink bulbs, store manikins were sporting pink clothes and pink wigs, flower pots of pink pansies and petunias greeted customers in front of the shops. There was even a pink line painted on the street leading up to the boardwalk. Everywhere I turned ... pink.
It was then that I knew I wasn't going to be able to escape what I'd come here to get away from -- my newly diagnosed breast cancer.
Now, don't get me wrong, pink had always been my favorite color. As a child I wanted everything to be pink. My ballet shoes were powder pink and the crisp taffeta of my tutu was as pale as a pink rose petal. My Barbie wore her favorite shiny pink satin ball gown with matching plastic pink stilettos. My bedroom was papered in pink roses and my best Easter coat and matching hat were adorned with handmade pink lace. I'm sure I was swaddled in pink blankets when I was presented to my mother after she gave birth.
Pink. It's a feminine color. You give pink gifts at a baby shower if it's a girl. Pink symbolizes innocence. It's pretty. It's chaste. It's ladylike. Healthy cheeks are flushed pink. Romantic love is pink. Pink roses. Pink champagne. Pink cotton candy. And of course, the pink of a woman's sexuality. Yes, pink is definitely a girl color. So it's no wonder that when they choose a color to symbolize the fight against breast cancer they chose pink for the ribbon.
Well, thanks to whoever you are, you just fucked up pink for me forever. Now I can't get away from it. And that weekend, as I made my way through Asbury Park and then onto Ocean Grove I knew that there was no turning back. My cancer felt like a practical joke -- one day I was a normal, healthy woman in the prime of her life and the next day, wham, I was a "cancer patient." Instead of being punked, I was pinked!
But from the first moment I got the call about my diagnosis I knew that a cancer patient was something that I refused to be. I already abhorred the phrase that I'd heard at least a dozen times since my diagnosis, "Breast cancer is not a death sentence anymore." Hey listen, I'm thrilled that it isn't, but I just don't want to go there right now. I'm cranky. I don't want pity. I don't want to hear about Aunt Tillie who had a double mastectomy with reconstructive surgery and is "just fine." I don't want to know the statistics. It doesn't make me feel better that everybody knows somebody who has survived breast cancer. It diminishes me. It diminishes the uniqueness of this experience, my experience.
And what an experience thus far. These four weeks since my diagnosis have already changed me. The inevitable fear of having cancer has morphed into a challenge to overcome that fear. In fact, I woke one morning after days of stress with the phrase "Be a warrior, not a worrier" echoing in my head. Catchy, right? I don't know where it came from, probably some Mademoiselle article I read when I was a kid, but for me the thought resonated so strongly I couldn't ignore it. So now I own it. And I own my cancer too. To refuse to accept that it's a part of me is ridiculous. No, I'm not a cancer patient, but my DNA has been altered by it. I'm certain these upcoming days will be filled with their share of fear and uncertainty. Lord, there are so many decisions to make right now, but to paraphrase the words of the great philosopher Lawrence "Yogi" Berra, when I see a fork in this challenging road, I'll take it.
*Note: "Variant of uncertain significance" is a term meaning a genetic sequence whose association with disease risk is unknown.
