'How are you?'

I have taken to answering this with a resounding 'I look fabulous!'

Not because I believe it to be true at the moment, all puffy like what I am and all, but because a certain amount of chutzpah is required, and because I don't really know how I am. I seem to be in ruddy health; you know, apart from the tumour and the chemo and everything. Feels inaccurate to say that I'm fine, however, when they keep telling me that I am not.

But honestly, I don't feel awful at the moment. Clearly something is happening: there is a bit of a tingle across my skin, not unlike a gentle electric current; the blisters on my lip are not healing, my gums bleed a bit when I clean my teeth, and I have ominous aches in odd places. (My toes. Why do my TOES hurt?) I am also having hot flashes and painful twinges in lady-places that confirm that the enforced menopause is indeed underway. And I don't want to talk about it.

However, apart from those little gripes, I think I am getting off very lightly. I was even able to go into work Friday. The kids were great: there were squeals of surprise,  a few questions, one 'You're alive!!' (which made me bark with laughter) and a general sense of acceptance that the planets were aligned, I was behind my desk  and still had my hair. No heads were chopped off. 

I gave the end of year staff party Friday night a miss, despite the pull of knowing it was the band's last performance together before our lead singer, Michael, leaves. It was a wrench. Lovelove being behind the mike with those folks, and really wanted to be there for the last gig together, but I don't think I'd have had the energy to sing, let alone do it well. I must confess a naughty hope that the songs suffered a bit from my absence. Just a bit. I'm not mean. Really.

I hear that a cracking night was had by all. I hear that from Gerald who says ‘Oh, you’d have hated it. It was AWFUL. The food was terrible and everybody was really BORED,’ all the while grinning so wide his face cracks in half.  He is cheeky. He and his partner Justin are also very helpful at getting the minutiae of my life organised and distracting me from all the nastiness that is around at the moment. The nastiness includes my school work, which unfortunately still needs doing, and therefore I should be better at resisting their wiles. But picnics in the park are fuuuun, and grading papers is not. If grading papers were fun, everybody would do it.

They have been great, though, and are the sources of most of the bald jokes and pink jokes and the ongoing jest about the T-shirt range we are planning. This last is to help profit from my discomfort with the phrase ‘cancer survivor’, and my growing frustration that something SO many people acquire still has the power to destroy so much. (Just read yesterday that within a few years, scientists expect that half the population of Britian will get some form of cancer at some point in their lives. Seriously???) So far, our slogans are along the lines of ‘I survived chicken pox’ and ‘I survived the mumps’. My favourite at the moment is ‘I survived head lice’, but then on the back it will say ‘...twice’. It could be expanded to cover mothers-in-law, conservative families, the Bush years, the Venezuelan toilet paper shortage... I’d thought of one for the Ontario liquor store strike, knowing that would be a huge seller, but it was averted at the last minute. Shame, that.

A new theme that has recently been brought to mind is the ‘guru’ line, raised when another friend called last week with a breast question. Well, a question about lumps, to be fair, but it’s funny if I suggest that it was just about breasts, and not funny at all if it’s about lumps. At some point in the conversation, the friend referred to me as a ‘boob guru’. Those of you who have seen me can stop laughing right now. Just because mine are tiny doesn’t mean I don’t know things about them. I have seen these ones inside out, after all. And while I would hesitate ever to call myself an expert on anything, I accept that I know what is going on in these two pretty well at the moment, and I am happy to offer advice on other people’s, if that advice is this:

Get. Them. Checked.

In fact, let me move into a bossy-boots paragraph or three for a moment. If you have been reading these posts over the last month, and have NOT taken a moment to go over all your extremities for signs of things new and unusual, why the hell not? Ladies. Seriously, stop reading and have a squeeze. If you don’t think you know how to do it, there’ll be pictures on the internet. You should be familiar enough with your breasts to know when something is different about them: lumps, puckering, hard spots... and don’t think that a clean family history matters, either. Mine is completely clear of breast cancer. Skin cancers, oooooh, yes, jam-packed with those. And that’s what I’ve been expecting and guarding myself against most carefully. But breast cancer was a shocker. I have no business having it, and no intention of keeping it.

Men, you’re not off the hook. You are less likely to check out your own breast areas than you are others around you (Don’t deny it) and the symptoms of male breast cancer are exactly the same for you. Look for them.

And at the risk of sounding rude- well, or of making you do something you rather like doing anyway, give your bulbous naughty parts a good going over. Roll and squeeze them about, checking for anything out of the ordinary. If you’re in front of people, stop it for a moment, or you’ll get arrested, but as soon as you’re on your own, have a good fiddle. Again, lumps, puckering, swelling, shrinkage- anything unusual. And forgive me, you are bound to know what usual feels like.

Check your moles. Anything unusual there? It’s not having moles that causes the problem, it is the change they undergo that needs to be checked. If you’re in my age and older, then you belong to the generation that thought brown was beautiful, and you used to spend days slathering grease all over yourself, turkey-roast-esque, in order to be some shade of bronze. You didn’t know that the burns and blisters were going to bite you one day, or that there was a reason why your grandfather kept having those growths removed from his face. Check your moles. Crustiness, colour changes, ragged edges, any thing that makes that mole look different from the way it did when you were twelve. If you live alone and have them, take your back to the doctor and have them mapped so that you can get them looked at in future check ups.

Folks who are traveling home this summer- visit your doctor for an unpleasant once over: boys- prostate exams, girls- pap smears. YUCK, right?? Ladies, ladies, ladies: get a mammogram. Folks who are AT home, have you had these tests this year? They aren’t nice, no. Cancer is nastier.

Here’s something I now know. The cancer you get will ALWAYS come as a surprise to you. It barely whispers as it approaches, so you need to be listening and watching for it.

Right. Lecture over. I am not the ‘Boob guru’. But I do think it would make an excellent T-shirt slogan, would have a huge following amongst frat boys, and would cause much prudish offense. I will wait before launching that line.

I will say that the first thing I did upon arriving home after hearing about the second tumour was to grab a bottle of wine and a blanket and head to the park- without sunscreen. Going out sans factor 50? I shake my defiant fist at the skies.