A ten point update
People with cancer are just people who happen to have cancer
One: I am a cancer patient, but I am also an asshole. I was recently banned from a Facebook based support group for members of the queer community with cancer. Exactly why I was banned remains mysterious, but I have a vague idea. I won’t reveal any details out of respect for the community and their confidentiality, and because it’s still a safe space for folks even if I am no longer welcomed. I’m not that much of an asshole.
I will say that I think the ban-hammer was a little warranted, a little exasperating, and a lot mishandled. I will also say that there are major problems with moderators who handle conflict from an exclusively white perspective, that femmephobia and femme objectification are pervasive even in the queer community, that allyship is actively and proactively confronting the discomfort of acknowledging privilege, and that feminism without intersectionality just runs parallel to the patriarchy.
I will also say that while my queerness generally shields me from eye-rolling heteronormative drama like pressure to marry and procreate and narrowly defined gender expectations, it also exposes me to a larger and more intellectually nuanced spectrum of histrionics. I would never trade identities though. And I am sure I will be roasted for this.
You see? I told you I’m an asshole.
Two: There is a sentimental notion that being forced to endure serious illness is a virtuous life journey, and not the messy, desperate, fearful, and anxious groveling crawl to the finish line that treatment actually is.
“This will totally change your perspective on life,” is what some perfectly healthy people tried to tell me. I was too drowsy on anti-anxiety meds to hear them, and too doped up on steroids to wheel my infusion rack into the bathroom without someone’s help. There were days when someone else had to fork food into my mouth, brush my teeth, and wipe my ass for me.
Today marks the fifth or sixth day I haven’t taken a shit, and I’ve gained back ten pounds I worked so hard to previously lose.
My body has been poked, prodded, sampled, cut open, taken apart, repeatedly poisoned, and injected with so many chemicals I should probably wear a California Proposition 65 warning label. And there is nothing noble nor stoic about falling to your hands and knees in wailing despair, with tears and snot streaming down your red face. There’s nothing wise or glorious about running across a parking lot so you can expel diarrhea in the airport bathroom.
I might have cancer, but I also still have my humanity — my deeply flawed, egotistical, fragile and vulnerable, and superficial humanity. I was sent to the emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation after I threatened to kill myself, as well as threatened to shave the nurses’ heads bald after they wouldn’t write me a prescription for an eyelash lengthening topical medication. In fits of rage and fear, I’ve told my cancer doctors that I hope they too get cancer, and die of it.
Three: When I got my diagnosis, the only thing I could think about was losing my hair. “It will grow back — what matters is your life,” perfectly healthy people said to me. First of all, please don’t ever say that to someone who is about to undergo chemotherapy. And second of all, I would rather die than lose my hair. “It will grow back, looks don’t matter,” is something only people who don’t have looks to lean on say.
Four: “I’m too pretty to have cancer,” is something I’ve uttered not once, but a few times — and I’ve believed it. Doesn’t my beauty — the power I cling to so possessively because I know it is so incredibly fragile and finite — make me impervious to illness? If my worth is measured in the gratitude I am told I ought to feel when men whistle at me like a dog, why have they not done more to safeguard me?
Yes, I know I could rock a bald head better than most people with hair, but I don’t want to. You want to take my beauty and my consent? Have you no sense of sanctity?
Five: I’ve frequently used my cancer as an excuse to bail on commitments, avoid social engagements, and receive discounts.
Six: I like to devise new and creative ways to aggravate, frustrate, resist, and generally undermine my oncologist every time I see her. I know she cares a lot about me, but I also sort of hate her because she’s the person who gave me my bad news. It’s not her fault, and my anger is irrational, but I still resent her in the animal-ego part of my brain. Receiving my diagnosis was triggering and traumatizing, and, reduced to my wounded inner child, I tested my doctors to their limits to make sure I could trust them. If I was hurting, I was going to bring them down with me.
Seven: I may or may not have pulled the cancer card in arguments with my partner.
Eight: I was thrilled when I was on AC and too sick to eat, and dropped down to 120lbs — the lightest I’ve been since I was in my early twenties. I’m grateful that, for the most part, chemotherapy hasn’t made me too terribly ill, but I’m also disappointed I didn’t transform into the hollowed-out dark-eyed heroin chic look people usually associate with cancer patients.
Which means I am extra excited about the liposuction that accompanies my final breast reconstruction. Insurance covered lipo and boob lift — fuck keeping my life, I’m getting new titties.
Nine: So I concede that folks were correct when they said I’d undergo a paradigm shift, and that paradigm shift means I can grow impatient with the troubles of my friends, which sometimes seem so trivial from my perspective.
Ten: I sometimes really, really hate other cancer patients.
I sometimes walk into the cancer hospital, all done up in a tight dress and heels and makeup, and I toss my hair — my beautiful hair that I fucking kept on my head with the help of friends, determination, and money — and I feel hot contempt for the older white women, slouched in the waiting room chairs with their heads in scarves, their frumpy friends leaning in to say something to them. I hate them. I loathe them. I sometimes feel like if they die, they deserve to — for giving in to cancer, for giving in to comfortable shoes, elastic textiles, and their hair in clumps on the floor.
I am young — a brilliant, vain unicorn. As I stride into the waiting room, refusing to look the other patients in the eye (they don’t even deserve acknowledgment of their existence) I am impatient and dismissive with the receptionists who don’t immediately recognize me. I refuse to let the nurse take my vitals, tersely waving them off.
I know the name of this feeling — of this posturing performance. I imagine some of the nurses who have been there the longest can see through me, through my defensive shield of spit and spite. They can see how scared I actually am.
It is my internalized ableism. My internalized misogyny, my internalized ageism. My internalized envy. My internalized darkness, and sheer hatred of my own flesh. My internalized trauma, somehow trying to convince myself that my illness is my fault, that I deserve it for being the spiteful person I am because cancer is just bad blood and bad feelings that a clove of garlic in lemon water and sixty hours of yoga and quaint platitudes and sassy pink ribbons can cure — right?
It is every time I have a strange, out of tune heartbeat, and I contemplate how one day more severe side effects of my chemotherapy might manifest in crippling ways. It is every time I wonder if this fatigue will ever go away. It is my new dependence on medication to maintain my mental health, and the fear of possibly losing access to healthcare because I now have a preexisting condition. I am no longer a healthy, invincible, ignorant young woman. I know I am just one bad scan, one bad blood test, one false move away from becoming one of those patients holding a paper cup of water, the end of her headscarf draped over her shoulder as she leans forward in exhaustion.
More than that, I know that if I don’t become that patient, one of my friends will, because I am just the first to get sick. Growing older really is just about developing better and better tools to deal with the grief and tragedy of the precious gift of being alive.
And I am scared. I have never been so scared in my life.
I have never been so vulnerable, lying on an exam table with my breast out, the doctors hovering over me with their probing instruments in their hands. They tell me it won’t hurt, but it hurts, and the nurse strokes my hand as I cry and tremble like a frightened animal. I say over and over again, “I don’t want to lose my hair, I don’t want to lose my hair.” The nurse tries to distract me with stories of her Cuban family members when I tell her that’s where one of my parents is from. It takes the doctor more than once to get an adequate sample. Every attempt is agonizing.
After they bandage me up, apologize meekly, and offer some weak words of encouragement, they throw me disheveled back into the waiting room. The older white women there, dressed in smart athleisure wear, put their magazines down. It strikes me how unusual I must seem, young and not white, tattooed and pierced, the streaks of mascara down my face belying the results of the tests the other patients are about to undergo.
I hate them all.
It may or may not have been a sentiment like the above that may or may not have earned me my exile from the Facebook group which may or may not have been justified.
Because I am still kind of an asshole, and a bad cancer patient to boot. There is nothing strong about this. Cancer isn’t really a fight — it’s dark days clinging to life like the “Hang in there!” kitten. I’m too weak to handle this with grace, and petulantly take the anger of my fate out on people who deserve it the least.
It’s tragic when children fall ill and die, but at least they’ll never know just how bad it can get. It’s heartbreaking when older people get sick and pass away, but at least they got to know just how beautiful it can all be. To get cancer at just thirty-one, when I am in the full bloom of my person — having experienced both the bewildering sadness and tremendous grace of life, both still naive and worldly — I mean, I know life is unfair, but this is really fucking unfair.
Even though I hate the other patients sometimes, I know we can all agree on that.
I am a queer Hispanic woman and trauma survivor who was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer at the age of thirty-one. Devoted to social justice and advocating for mental health understanding and resources, I was just six months into my new career as a backend software engineer trying to make space for marginalized people in tech when I was struck with Stage IIa Grade 3 triple negative metaplastic breast cancer. You can read more about my journey in my publication Never Tell Me the Odds.
If you enjoy my writing and you are able to, please consider donating to my medical expense crowdfunder. I’ve got a yearlong treatment plan ahead of me, and I need all the help I can get. Thank you so much for your generosity.
