Tags
#HAWMC 2013 Day 25, Atropos, Breast, Health, Lachesis, Mammography, myth and medicine, scapegoating, Shirley Jackson, susan sontag, The Lottery, The Myth of Illness
Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
If you were diagnosed with breast cancer today, I can almost guarantee that within the week, you will be blamed for having done something to cause it. Just as we have heard people respond to news of a mugging, “What was he doing in that part of town at night?” or that because of what she chose to wear, a woman acquiesced to rape, you will be asked if you didn’t go for your regular mammograms or perform monthly self-exams or you may even be accused of “allowing” so much stress in your life, as though your character is to blame. Is it because we are so afraid of those things beyond our control that we feel compelled to attribute some cause to a deadly hurricane, a random act of violence, a tumor. Day 25 of the WEGO Health Activist Writers Monthly Challenge has me pondering what I have learned since being diagnosed with cancer. While I have learned much about mammograms and mastectomy, tumors and Tamoxifen, pathology reports and patience, the most unsettling lesson has been that which Arthur W. Frank asserts in The Will of the Body:
~ the healthy want to believe that disease does not ‘just happen.’ They want to believe that they control their health and that they have earned it. Those who have cancer must have done something wrong, which the healthy can then avoid. The sick person must have participated in sickness by choosing to have a cancer personality. Otherwise illness is an intolerable reminder of how risky life is.
Consider this. If cancer happened to your best friend, then doesn’t that mean it could happen to you too? Aren’t you every bit as vulnerable? And isn’t it infinitely more appealing to believe that you are not, that you are different, and therefore protected? Otherwise, it is just a matter of chance, and we are no farther forward than those Ancient Greeks who blamed disease on an imbalance of bodily fluids, the four “humors” and The Fates for our destiny.
“These are Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos,
and they give mortals their share of good and evil.” ~ Hesiod
I wonder if the ancient Greeks lived a little easier, because they knew their destinies had already been decided, the thread of their lives controlled by the three Fates – Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Envision the three gathered around a spinning wheel. Clotho, a maiden, upon visiting a newborn baby, spins out a single shimmering thread of life, then the more matronly Lachesis, measures it, casts its lot, and finally, Atropos, a crone, cuts it with “her abhorred shears.” I imagine these three each taking their turn at manipulating the thread of my own life, predetermining its milestones, the very stuff of my destiny. I imagine Lachesis measuring out the various stages of my womanhood, deciding when and where and how things will happen between birth and death. For some reason or no reason, she added a breast cancer diagnosis. Right in the middle of my life. Right when I least expected it to happen to me, when I most expected it to happen to some other woman, someone who had missed her mammograms or who had a family history, someone “destined” for cancer. “It’s just not fair!” “Why me?”
This draws me back to the first time I read Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. Since cancer came to call, unannounced, I frequently return to the stories and poems that have shaped me. I settled into the story, as most readers easily do, anticipating, like the villagers of its bucolic setting, the annual Lottery Day. Unlike the villagers, however, I did not realize, they would be drawing lots to determine who would die that day, so I fully engaged with them, until the scapegoat was identified. By then, there is nothing anyone can do to save her from this fate. She will die that day, stoned to death. We know not why. Her angry screams of “‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t right'” and the final horror of the story
… and then they were upon her.
Reminding me again of Seamus Heaney’s poor scapegoat.
It makes no sense. Like a cancer diagnosis makes no sense. Just like Shirley Jackson’s villagers, I was safe until, like Tessie Hutchinson, my number came up. No family history, three clear mammograms, healthy, and fit. It mattered not. As far as I am concerned, and until I know more, I will attribute to my cancer what Peter Teeley describes as
. . . the ultimate quirk of fate, an unfortunate convergence of a genetic error and an environmental insult.
I have finally stopped blaming myself, even if others haven’t, and accepting the truth that no woman wants to hear, that she is the 1 out of every 8 women at risk of developing breast cancer in her lifetime. In the 1960s, the lifetime risk was 1 in 20. Although I know the statistic means that if all women were to live until the age of 85, 1 in 8 would develop breast cancer, I still cannot help wondering about the fate of the eight random women standing in line with me at the grocery store, or sitting around a table at a conference with me.
I drew Shirley Jackson’s chit of paper marked with the black spot – “cancer.” Perhaps it should have been a pink ribbon. Such is my lot. What then of my fate? What else might Lachesis have in store for me, before Atropos snaps “enough?” Is there enough time for us to distract her with pink ribbons and endless races toward a cure? Enough time for us to distract consumers with inaccurate labeling on the products we use every day? Enough time to lobby the government to make policy changes? Do we have enough time, enough sheer will to shift the breast cancer conversation away from early detection and cure, towards prevention and cause. Are enough of us confronting its reality with appropriate science in our respective villages? Are we willing to bring to an end the pattern of stereotyping, scapegoating, blaming, and shaming those assailed by cancer?
I hope so, because Atropos is already sharpening her shears.
Oh my, Yvonne. Once again, you’ve hit home (and may I just say, I hope someone else in your family is doing the cooking while you are doing all of this incredible writing every day this month???).
Like you, I was healthy, had been diligent about mammograms, had no family history (well, my mother’s sister, but they said that didn’t count).
I can’t remember if it was on my blog or elsewhere that I wrote at one point, “If my having cancer reduces my family and friends’ chances of getting it from a statistical standpoint, I can handle it.” When that thought crossed my mind, I hadn’t yet had the mastectomy, which, I discovered, was a much harder prospect to “handle” than I had anticipated (understatement).
Bottom line in my view, shit happens. Four years later, I’ve managed to make a number of positive mind/body/soul adjustments (starting with the reconstruction!). I meditate daily, exercise almost daily, hardly drink at all any more and eat my vegetables like a good girl. I feel better than I have in my entire life.
But in the end, shit happens. It could all start over tomorrow. And if it does, I’ll deal with it, but I certainly won’t blame myself for it.
Come to think of it, Martha, no. Nobody is doing the cooking!! And it’s almost the end of the challenge, so they’d better get ready to do something spectacular for mother’s day 🙂
I think waking up from the mastectomy with a reconstructed breast made it easier for me to handle. It was all the stuff that happened months later that I never anticipated … Tamoxifen and fatigue and memory loss and dealing with so bad behavior from people who really did not have my best interests in mind at all.
Like yourself, I made all kinds of changes to exercise and diet, but then my parents came over for Christmas and I became,well, slothful comes to mind. Seriously. We baked and ate everything that is just too sugary and good to resist. I stopped running. ANd , here it is APril, and I’m still eating like it’s “The holidays.” So, next week, I’m back to doing 5Ks again because things are a little too snug for my liking 🙂
I do feel better. I’ve always understood that shit happens. but, kind of like living in Northern Ireland, where nothing ever did happen to me during The troubles. I was just lucky. Healthwise, unlucky, but definitely not responsible. No matter what they say 🙂
y
I also fell completely off the wagon over the holidays, Yvonne, especially since we were also hosting an Australian exchange student at the time. I wrote a series of posts on “How To Reboot When You’ve Fallen Off the Wagon” over at http://marthabrettschneider.com (sorry for the self-promotion, but I really do believe they might be of interest to you if/when your schedule frees up a bit). You’re almost at the finish line! Well done!
I am so glad you sent me the link to your blog! Thank yoU!! And, yes, I can see the finish line 🙂
Yvonne, this is such a perceptive post! Getting cancer is very much like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Never connected that before. And I love the quote from Arthur Frank. Spot on. Thanks for always stringing such insightful words together. I don’t know how you do it, your writing consistently brims with kernels of insight! xo
Oh, Renn, thank you. I’m not sure if the insight might just come from being a whole lot happier now that I’m out of a particularly toxic environment. I have been doing a whole lot of leaning back to take stock lately, and it’s given me a ton of material 🙂
Thank you for the lovely compliment which means a whole lot coming from you.
y
So true, illness comes to everyone at some point, we will all eventually have our own unique way out. Not one of us is immune. It’s my belief that it is human nature, a survival mechanism, if you will, to try and “rationalise” on some level, as to why something life-shattering should occur. However, to think that these life events can be explained or to believe “it couldn’t happen to me” is a massive mistake. As I say, on almost a daily basis…… each one of us is somebody else’s, somebody else.
Hi Amanda
I imagine you see so much of it every day, and you’re probably right that so much of it is just our nature, as human beings, to make sense of inexplicable things. I think I trundled along for years believing I was immune. I really did. It doesn’t help when there’s so much “mythology” around illness. I know better now, and, as you say, each one of is is for sure that somebody else for somebody else.
An important point – even well meaning friends and relatives sometimes say things that imply you are at least somewhat in culpable, and if not in the initial disease at least in the outcome. Accepting that it is a chance event is liberating.
Liberating indeed, Oliver. Thanks so much for stopping by.
I am the essence of the Peter Teeley quote for sure. Same as you, no family history, etc. There is no one to blame. Life goes on. xo
Hi Jan,
Isn’t that a great quote – he just nails it. How are you doing today?
I am sure no-one whose opinion matters ever thought that ! The truth is that we are all frightened and waiting for our number to come up….and if we arent , we certainly damn well should be!
Much lovex
Hi Deb
So true. Every last one of us.
xx
dear yvonne,
the three fates, and all the eloquent quotes you cited made this post really compelling – and i am sure it struck many a nerve. and i entirely agree that “shit happens” is a very good description of the randomness of cancer, of all of life. so much is so out of the realm of our control. though we get cancer, lose our jobs, get wiped out by capricious storms, lose money in the stock market, and suffer the inevitable growing pains of aging way before we are ready, there is so much that we can control that assuages disappointment, loss, and pain.
the trick, i believe, in remaining on our hind legs, is to note with relish all the things that bring us pleasure, that make us proud of being ourselves, that inspire us to get outside of ourselves to help others. that’s exactly what you and your wonderful blog are doing, yvonne. well done, dear friend; you’ve put so much into perspective for so many of us, and i am so glad you are finding yourself in a much better place. and to hell with blame – none of us deserve it.
the answer i would offer to your questions -” …is there time enough…?” – there is only now.
love, XOXO,
karen, TC
Hi Karen
yes . . . random chance, caprice, kismet, all of it. You’re right of course, we have only right now.
I don’t know how to begin to thank you for your kindness, your eloquent responses to my rambling musings, because sometimes I’m not sure if I’m making even a dent in the enormity of it.
No, not one of us deserves blame or platitudes or condescension, but there IS much that we can direct and control. I’m getting that. Finally.
Very glad you are in this space with me
xo
What can I say.. except that you hit it out of the park…… As Usual… with grace and eloquence… again… AS USUAL…
xoxox
Thanks AnneMarie!!! Now, if I could just figure out this whole Empowered Blogger thing ….
xoxox
Great post. One of my pet peeves. I’ve written about it and so glad you have, too. It needs to be discussed because too many of us look for what we did wrong, especially after the “well-meaning” comments of others. Love the quotes by Frank and Teeley. Good stuff!
Thank you so much for stopping by and remarking. Indeed we do, we look inward to find the thing that made us responsible and when we venture outward, we encounter the well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning bullshit that keeps the wheels a turnin’.