What's funny about breast cancer?

What's funny about breast cancer?

Nothing.

Searing anxiety sears me. Tonight I was relaxed, casual, jaunting into the last lap of my surgical journey, boasting that by surgery four I don't even care, it's not a deal - just drop me off I don't need anything or even a surgery buddy to go with me. 

But the body knows betrays hurts punishes abandons me. I ate a nice dinner, with a few glasses of good wine, and I took a Valium. A real one -- not a half a lorazepam, not a Tylenol PM, not some Whole Foods valerian tincture, not a Benedryl -- but a real, adult sized, prescription Valium like from Valley of the Dolls. And: I've been laying here for over three hours, dead tired, heart pounding, sweating, unable to get comfortable, wiggling and worming around like a dim dog in a too small patch. Unable to sleep or think or rest my throat constricting, hot and yucky real bad feel real bad horrible. State of panic with a layer of deep exhaustion due to day upon day upon week upon week and hour and minute and second upon second of the underneath river of panic underneath it all. I can't take a Valium to relax? What can I take? Can I take this?

Not one second of sleep.

Cancer is making my family upset. We fight. We fight about this. This! Last night tonight Mike and I had another fight/contest about who is more stressed out. He's working killing himself at his killer corporate job 15 hours a day. Difficult to the max.  I feel guilty for ruining our calm. Doesn't matter that it's not my fault. Tolls are being taken. Toll booths line our halls. Everyone pays. I dream of white hotels. And I peck. Mike boils. Fifi is taking over my me: she wears my socks, my shirts, my shoes (even ripping off literally the soles on a pair when they were not right), my sweaters, my hoodies, my underwear, my bathrobes, my belts. She sleeps with us. She drinks my juice and eats the treats friends bring even before or instead of me. She opens my gifts. And takes them. She's mad at me and at the same time wants me even if she has to inhabit me. Violet hates my blog - calls it "ratchet" (her slang for "wretched"), or "stank nasty" (her ghetto slang [her use of the word "ghetto" itself a slang] for "awful") - her words painfully casual and effective in their off-puttingness, but what this translates into is "your blog is scaring me mommy and I cannot stand to be frightened of you dying." I know this. Child/children: I am writing this for you to read in the future so that you can know the now-me, because I never got to know my mom's real thoughts when she was the mother of the child-me, then, or later, and now I crave crave crave to know this unknowable thing and it caves me in so this is my gift to you my loves my loves my loves.

Just took a break from this (isn't 1:43 a standard break time?) and checked email - only to find a dear sweet note from Ean...a true friend, who said - I kid you not - I just read this at 1:43 am:

Amy, 

I think your blog will be an incredible gift to Violet and Fiona as they get older and their eyes adjust to the world. When this is far behind you and they ask stuff, you'll have a place to send them for your beautiful words. 

What? What? What?! Synchronicity? I don't understand the timing of this world sometimes. Thank you Ean.

What's funny about breast cancer?

Everything.

You see, what is the definition of humor? The scientific objective academic real definition? Is there one? You know when something's funny but have you pondered why it is funny - exactly? 

Actually science is rather delightfully baffledly unclear and it turns out humor is not simple or easy to comprehend. Lots of debate and study and science (my kind of thing - maybe I'll pursue a PhD in Humor?) - seem to boil down to something along the line of: 

humor occurs when something happens that is not expected

Like: you're absent mindedly piddling around and the phone rings. You answer it. But find that you've picked up a stapler and are now holding up a stapler to your ear and saying "hello?" into it, absent mindedly. Hilarious. Or at a fancy dinner party a very fancy and self important man, extremely polite and proper and dressed to the nines, politely and perfectly sits down. But at the last second someone has removed his chair and he unceremoniously and hilariously plummets smack to the floor. Classic. Laughter ensues.

Supposedly if we analyze any humor there will be an underlying element of this unexpected outcome. What is more unexpected than breast cancer?

It's absurd. It's ridiculous. It's terribly unexpected. It is, I argue, downright dada. And I have laughed so much about it. I find breast cancer funny, I do. I've found humor every single day of it. 

But humor cuts too. It's on the edge of pain, sadness, even death. When we laugh too much we cry and oddly - vice versa. Then you enter that bizarro land of surreal emotion and think/say oh my god I'm going crazy I don't know if I'm laughing or crying! And it feels kind of good. Admit it. Maybe it's nature's way to reboot the brain. Because we are chemical electric and this zaps you.

What if I die?

This is the awful/funny question that's not letting my deathly sleepy ravaged starving-for-rest body rest.

Writing, now, at 2:04 am, in bed, on a tiny phone screen with one finger, while my husband breathes and my baby child softly snorts and sighs, in my alternately cold and sweatingly boiling bed (kick off kick on kick off kick on) calms me a little. 

All I want right now is calm.

Now what should I do?

1. Take another Valium? Or three?

2. Drink a cup of gin?

3. Chamomile tea?

4. Milk or hot milk?

5. Go jogging at night?

6. Read?

7. Stare at the clock?

8. Not bother anyone?

I'm too tired to try any of these except #8. And I'm unallowed to even have water now after midnight. After all I have to get up in a few hours. I will just wait. I can't wait till they give me a needle full of knock out. Take me. Hurry up it's time (said T.S. Eliot).

What will I do tomorrow 

And the next day

Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed

BY DYLAN THOMAS

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound   

In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat   

On the silent sea we have heard the sound

That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

Under the mile off moon we trembled listening

To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound   

And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing   

The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,

Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat   

For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,   

We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.   

Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,

Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.