My Truth: Women Speak Cancer
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
MY TRUTH WOMEN SPEAK CANCER REBECCA A. HOUSEL Ph.D. in Creative Writing 2007 Housel ABSTRACT: 1) My Truth: Women Speak Cancer is a creative nonfiction based on three years of interviews with twelve survivors told through the lens of the author's experience as a three-time, sixteen-year survivor of multiple cancers. Each chapter features a different survivor and her story; the cancers discussed include non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Osteosarcoma, Melanoma, as well as brain, ovarian, breast, and thyroid cancers. Current definitions, treatments and statistics are included at the end of each chapter. The book ends with a comprehensive After Words, combining poetry and prose, taking the reader on a further journey of introspection on life, love, friendship, and loss. 2) The Narrative of Pathogynography is a critical exegesis using established theory in the fields of creative writing, sociology, ethnography, literature, and medicine to examine and further define the sub genre of the theoria, poiesis and praxis involved in creating women's illness narrative, or what Housel terms, pathogynography. Housel develops original terminology to define yet undiscovered spaces based on her work in My Truth: Women Speak Cancer. KEYWORDS: Pathogynography, autopathogynography, embedded autopathogynography, entrenched narrative silence, ethnogynography, meta- ethnogynography. ii For all women who have suffered and grown with cancer, as well as their families and friends. Acknowledgements First and foremost, my thanks go to the women of this book, eleven individuals who generously shared their stories, their truths. The help of their families and friends is also greatly appreciated. For my own part, I must thank my husband, Bob, and son, Gary, both of whom gave me unending support and joy, allowing me to have the courage to sit in my red room and write for three years. Suzanne Eggins and Anne Brewster, at the University of New South Wales, receive thanks for their supervisory support and expertise, patience, careful editing, and last but certainly not least, friendship. Bill Ashcroft, Peter Alexander, Paul Dawson, Soren Brunkhorst, David Choe, and Simon Watson at the University of New South Wales also deserve gratitude for their help and consideration. Ethan Schwartz, my brother, receives my appreciation for making himself available to listen, and also, to help find resolutions when a problem needed solving. Many of the interviews for this book took place at Tastings, a neutral zone that provided both good comfort and hospitality—my thanks to Deb, Jill, Kelly, and Nicole. Jean Lourette and Amy Libenson Shulman receive thanks for editing efforts and friendship. Chris E. Arnold is acknowledged for her part as a friend and supporter, as well as a person who helped me to locate a very special person to interview for the volume. My mother, Marguerite Thomas Schwartz, as well as Eva Schwartz Barson and Mary Conley Thomas, my grandmothers, are thanked for instilling a love for all stories. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements............................................................................................................iii Table of Contents...............................................................................................................iv 750 Words about Cancer..................................................................................................... 1 A Prologue, Written in Eight and Eight.............................................................................. 4 Marina’s Story .................................................................................................................. 11 Sue’s Story........................................................................................................................ 26 Stephanie’s Story .............................................................................................................. 46 Teri’s Story ....................................................................................................................... 63 Jacquie’s Story.................................................................................................................. 85 Ivy’s Story....................................................................................................................... 103 Alanna’s Story ................................................................................................................ 116 Joan’s Story..................................................................................................................... 131 Maxene’s Story ............................................................................................................... 146 Kathryn’s Story............................................................................................................... 163 Rebecca’s Story .............................................................................................................. 190 After Words … with commentary .................................................................................. 210 These Words ............................................................................................................... 210 For Stephanie .............................................................................................................. 211 Saying Goodbye.......................................................................................................... 211 Unstoppable Woman................................................................................................... 212 String Theory .............................................................................................................. 213 Wait for Me................................................................................................................. 213 Special Relativity........................................................................................................ 215 My Friend Sue............................................................................................................. 220 Questions..................................................................................................................... 221 SHaKeSPeaRe............................................................................................................. 222 Ode to the Young........................................................................................................ 229 For Always.................................................................................................................. 230 750 Words about Cancer1 The ceiling creaks with every step. My family moves in clandestine patterns while I type at the computer in my red‐room below. The room is red for a reason, not just because I enjoy the color, though I do. The red is for passion, the kind of passion that can take a person to the extremes of joy and pain. I’ve been marked by both, and so paint my writing room red, to remind me. I seek the shrouded truth of Vedanta, the light of God in Christianity, the sechel, or reason, in Judaism, and the compassionate wisdom of Buddhism. All keys to the universe, just not mine. As a cancer patient, there is no single key. How can there be? The universe is a large, complex place with many white‐ coated gods in sterile hospitals. Mine is a polytheistic world. I have survived three cancer diagnoses in the last fifteen years, two brain tumours and Melanoma. I’m thirty‐four. Is there sense in sensibility? Is there brevity in wit? And what about the soul? Lots of questions, very few answers— that’s something you get used to. You have to. There are a great many “have‐to’s” when you face cancer. You don’t want to have your skull drilled full of holes, then, listen to doctors play connect‐the‐dots with a surgical saw, and lift out your skull, exposing the fragile gray matter beneath. You don’t want to be awake with a valium drip for the seventeen‐hour surgery. You don’t want to recognise in hour‐ten that you cannot move the left 1 This piece was first published in Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction in September 2006 and reprinted in Survivor’s Review, January 2007 2 side of your body in panic and fear, and have an anesthesiologist named Surriel tell you to not be upset because you are going to sleep now. You don’t want any of those things, but it doesn’t matter what you want. You have to. You have to face weeks in a rehabilitation hospital with nurses who disguise bullying with care. You have to go on to endure nine months of intensive chemotherapy where you lose ninety‐pounds, your balance, and your feelings…about everything. You have to consider the unthinkable: What will happen to my family if I die? What will happen to the $60,000 in student loans? Will my husband have to repay that, if I die? Will my son grow up to be a good man? Will my husband find a new wife? Will anyone remember I used to sit in a red room and write? Lots of questions. No answers. I’ve made a discovery though, now being an expert on questions without answers. The question of why is always irrelevant. The only true question is why not. Why not? Why not get sick? Why not die? Why not get well? Why not travel to Australia? Why not live every moment to the very fullest? Why not? Not why. The language is important. You predict the future with your words. Coelho’s conspiring universe will help, too. You’re like an alchemist trying to turn lapis exillis into gold. But there is no holy grail—it’s a stone called Moldavite, found