Post Depression: on to "pissed off"

I was very depressed for a long while recently and when life wanted to show me neat stuff it did. I am more awake now. Forgive the command verb tense, in here. I am telling off the world. Not personal.

i am in awe of the generosity and thoughtfulness of you, my friends reading this. Suzanne M, again thanx so much for the anti yeast powder. Continues to be useful. Monique and Dawn and Jordan and Jocelyne and Chrissy: your food is so good and that matters now that nothing tastes real or good for the nine weeks i am on taxotere.
Keith, Deb, Leean, Lu, Tracy, Timmy T, Joc, Tim Jones: I cannot thank you enough for your moral support and help. Court: your friendship is gold to me. Abby and Suzanne H: thank you so very much for helping me laugh and chat through the last chemo. It went so fast cos of our convos. More than anything, all of you: your friendship and support are bread to me. Dawn: yours is the best canneloni ever! monique, I have to publish your recipes for carrot/squash soup and coffee cake. Joc: wow! so many delish soups! your recipes would be greatly appreciated, esp for mussels pasta.

My sisters Rosemary and Adrienne have been rocks. I am so in awe of how kind you, my friends, my family of choice, as they call it, plus ade and rose and ing, siobhan and sinead....and I know Liz is worried about me out there and her kids Hannah and Conor too. Krys Bryl, Cathy Roche, Leslie, and Deb too, thx for notes. If I have left any of you out, I bad. Sorry. Freya you know I feel your love and care anywhere I am. Tracy I love you and know that were you on this side of the pond you would be here everyday and I feel that so, pls do not fear.Dave you have been very good to me. Thank you.

I look really bad and would post the pic if i a) get the nerve; b) lose all feminine pride/hope; c) suddenly feel like giving you a halloween scare for this time of year.
My eyebrows and eyelashes have been dropping out since taxo began which pricks my eyeballs. Millimetres of dead white hair frost my bald pate and fewer and fewer black follicles exist on my telly salavas/Kojak ‘do.

I ended up getting the port put in under local anaesthetic in a real, all woman, serious operating theater. Christine, thank God, accompanied me. Reaaaallly long. Hate it, but what can I do?

I still hate it on the grounds that they went into my jugular vein with a tube, placed it under the skin of my chest, wound it through my Vena Cava IN MY HEART and I have this Terminator Two button under my skin and a plastic tube snaking along which you can detect under my skin. Yuck. And Gross.

Hate it cos I know i will die with it in me in the next two years. Want to die pretty.

I don’t mind the fact I will most likely be dead in a couple of years. I just know, from the her2 site, that I will certainly metastasize, this is a metastatic cancer. Nobody with HER2 stays in stage three or whatever. Everybody goes on to metastasize. And i want to tell you some of the people found their stage three cancer WHILE THEY WERE BREASTFEEDING and some while pregnant.

I know I will be dead within a coupla years. Here is my bet for any taker: I finish my herceptin this time next year, having received twenty five radiations in january and herceptin at the chemo unit every three weeks till next October.

Then in or around March of the year after next I will metastasize to lungs, liver, brain or bones, or maybe two of those four, and inside three months I will be dead. Now do not write in here telling me no that is not true. You don’t know. Linda McCartney and others chose to pretend they would live and then they died. Not my style. If I live, whoopee!! Great. Otherwise I don’t die a fool.

I read online at the Her2 website and it is commonly what happens. Rarely some women survive long enough to say “eight years or eleven years metastasis under control so considered in remission” but that will not be me. I am telling you this. No, do not give me voodoo crap about “well if you tell your body that it will listen” as you are an idiot if you think that. Seriously.

Do you think the breastfeeding and pregnant women who got stage three HER2 brought it on themselves? Well you are stupid then. And arrogant. And need humility. My mom had breast cancer and never smoked nor drank a single drink in her life. And it is Breast Cancer Awareness month, by the way, so allow me my BCA once in a year rant here without correcting me.

I appreciate your support, thanks for wanting me to live. What I want to say for BCA month is this: don’t be smug. Don’t think your diet means a damn thing and your non smoking. Sorry. I must have read thousands of women’s stories on the HER2 website and i hear their distresses, terrors, and anger on there: They want you to know that you cannot do anything to prevent this monster.

Elizabeth Edwards is dead. Do you understand? She was RRRREALLY wealthy, famous and well connected and so was Linda McCartney and all the other dead breast cancer patients who got the best of treatment, the best nutrition, the best of everything. Early detection. Well that is true, you want that, cos metastasis (your agent of death within weeks, often, not always) is slower that way. But do not delude yourself. Even if you find your lump in stage one, you can suddenly jump within weeks or months to stage four and then to death, boom.

What pisses all these women and me off is that the smug buggers who think that catching cancer in stage one is some kind of talisman against death, are deluded. Countless accounts exist on that site showing the medical histories of everybody who posts on there. Start to read them for yourself. A whole lot of women who find it in stage one are bam, suddenly, months later, in stage four, and then there are the deceased posts.

Women dead, who used to post, like me, on there. But who are silent now.

Do not engage in magical thinking unless, and I say unless, you are fully aware you are just playing a game with your brain.

My sister, Eliz, when she was here, trotted out that line “oh breast cancer is like AIDS now....just a chronic, non death condition...” My chemo nurse trotted it out too. What i want to say to them is this: You are scared. You are nervous. You do not want it to happen to you or your daughter or granddaughter so you cling to the optimistic words of the one breast cancer survivor friend you have, who swears they are alive because they practised/purchased/deluded themselves with X. Or Y. Or Z.

Or they had a good doctor. Or they caught it early. Or there were goldfish selling hotcakes in their underwear drawer the day they found their lump. Or linkin logs took over the Easter Egg hunt, firing the Easter Bunny on the day they found their lump. What i am saying here is that it doesn’t matter. Fill in the blanks. Magical thinking is what people do who cannot stand the pain of the sadness of their own mortality.
I say: Feel that fucker!! Feel it today!

"Kill the imagination and you kill the soul. Kill the soul and you're left with a listless, apathetic creature who can become hopeless or brutal or both." ~Marion Woodman

What is wrong with feeling pain? What is wrong with grief?

What is wrong is that if you avoid it all the time you will lose your voice like shania twain did, or your joy, or you will become so brittle, personality wise that you start to get paranoid, overtouchy and weird. Don’t do that. Feel the fear, feel the grief, yell, pound stuff, cry, mourn, smile, giggle at yourself, and then feel everything cos you are allowed. And it is the only way to become an authentic human being, no matter what your age.

Do not run from pain. Feel it till it releases you and wants to show you other stuff. I was very depressed for a long while recently and when life wanted to show me neat stuff it did. I am more awake now.

Go lie down in your bed and cry for my upcoming death and others u know who could get cancer or who have died from it and also...this is hard... and possibly yours. then carry it around cos i will indeed be dead within a coupla years and breast cancer cannot be prevented. Cannot be mitigated except by Fate.

Cannot be called off except by forces beyond your (fill in the blank with whichever talisman makes you feel better: yoga, nonsmoking, vegetables, fruit, linkin log sandwiches, Easter Bunny deodorant applications, anything that makes you feel safer.)
You are not safe from breast cancer. One in eight. One in eight check it out it is fact. Of those, whether you live or die has nothing to do with what you did or did not eat, stretch, dig, smoke, etc. Not up to you to stop your death. Not up to me to stop mine.

No change in my attitude will save me. Hear that? disagree? bring it. I got the facts to pop ur balloon.

No talisman. No guru. No nuttin’ gonna keep you alive, me alive, your daughter, your granddaughter, nothin. Just try not to say in front of someone with active cancer: “oh it is just like the common frickin cold nowadays...like AIDS is”. You sound insane because first of all only rich white people don’t die of AIDS. So stop that. AIDS is just a chronic condition now? Tell that to the toddlers in Africa being raised by eighty five year old grannies cos BOTH their parents are dead.

What is it about people who don’t smoke, eat right, and do yoga, that they just cannot stop spouting smug, offensive, arrogant crap???

This stuff is not true!! I feel like SARS days are back, where ten dead nurses, who cared for people with SARS in toronto hospitals are lying in coffins while the principal of my school is telling us to lie to the students and get the kids to go around to classrooms squelching rumours that SARS kills anyone. Kids would meet me in the corridor saying “The media is lying! Yah! The principal says it is a big lie!! There is nothing wrong with getting SARS!!” I mean, how respectful is that to the ten dead nurses lying there in their coffins full of SARS!!!!”

Whew. Ok. I got that out of me. But I am asking you if you are reading this to feel your feelings of fear about the possibility you may get breast cancer and you may die from it. I have done that and I have wept.

But it ain’t the end of the world. The world is still a beautiful place even if you decide to stop lying. Let me rephrase.

When you tell the truth about the world, the people you love, the qualities in all humans that you adore, the joy you feel from animals and nature, and a good nite out, and hanging out having valuable conversations with special people and watching good films and going to galleries to see beautiful works of art, and reading good books, and admiring all that is stunning about this world, along with the sad, bad stuff, you become authentic. And that is the goal of each of our lives.

To become authentic. To tell as few fairy tales, and lies as possible, to young people and to ourselves and to still feel joy. Life is good. Bad is being rooted out even as I speak, by good people. Bad cannot be rooted out by magical thinking. You honour the fallen when you speak truth to power. So speak it already.
Amen.

Back to the subject of my port in my chest: Hate it cos it is the first truly painful procedure I have had, needle in the nipple notwithstanding, as that one stands alone in a horror chamber all by itself. The port pain was not at the time of initial insertion; But the pain when the nurses at the chemo unit access it....aye karamba. Man it kills when they shove a needle into it, a gripper, or whatever. They flush it with cleaner first and then between the chemo and the herceptin. Then they flush it afterwards.

Am going to add pictures to this blog. Just decided. Black cirlces under my eyes complete the pre death look. Just in time for Halloween. Been invited to a halloween party. Thinking of dressing up as a healthy person.

I wear big frozen oven mitts and footies, asking nurses to change em to more frozen as they defrost at the hospital, for the few hours of taxotere chemo. I willingly freeze these hands out of a pathological fear of yellowed and or brittle/split or falling-out nails. I painted em with Christine’s gift of nail strengthener for the second taxo. Chris gave me a bag of fantastic creams for my dry skin. Freezing your hands and feet during chemo keeps the nails on.

I was one of the lucky ones. Thanks to Keith for the excellent advice. I did the advil, the vitamins, the pain killers and managed to avoid the agonizing bone pain. I do get bone pain for a few days in the first week after taxotere but not too bad thanks to his advice.

Food tastes metallic and i can’t drink much but cranberry juice and water as other drinks taste bad.

Worst symptom by far is the painful gas. You cannot really sleep well for two weeks and going to the bathroom is a drag. In and outa the bathroom all night. Not to gross you out but forcing myself to document anyway as per aims of the blog, you know the piles of raccoon and rabbit poo at a campsite u find up north? Well those are a pain to produce, poor wee bunnies. Takes hours and hours and many trips. Looking forward to end of week two after taxo to stop having to make going to the bathroom this really big painful deal.


Today I am not eating a thing as it has been eight days and I had a long painful night. I simply am eating nothing and drinking only the one coffee till i feel starving enough to eat. Monique’s food is in the fridge and I think i will have some of her soup in a few hours. Jocelyne’s soup and couscous got me through last taxo. I am in very good hands.

I had an awesome Thanksgiving at Chris and Mike’s and will steal photos off facebook to add here. We had a ball, and the food was beyond amazing. Moist turkey and all the trimmins. So grateful to Allah that Thanksgiving fell on the week before a taxo rather than during the two weeks following it. Am going to see Freya in the next forty eight hours so I am really excited.

Had to get out of prison...um...the house. Made Dave take me to Ides of March, George Clooney’s film. Good play that it was adapted from. Must have been good on stage to attract the money to make it into a film.

Trouble with it: Evan Rachel Wood is too plain, flat chested, and big chinned, to play the so called “irresistable” intern. I don’t buy it. And she cannot act her way out of a paper bag. All actors require direction.

She and Gosling got nothin from their director. It was another “actors free for all” where the pacing of their speeches is left to their “creativity” so that nothing comes together in terms of pacing.

Pacing is a dance of tension and release in a film; suited to the arcs of tension and release you, as the director, have predefined. You accelerate their speeches towards a climax in tension. You do not allow them to just do what they like. Actors are not inside a director’s brain so they cannot help you to achieve your vision unless you pace them. “Cut off one another’s speeches before they finish! Accelerate the pace!” I was practically calling out to the screen.

Casting mistakes, both of them. But to be fair, at least commit to your actors enough to direct them. They are hams, actors, by nature. They will take an hour to deliver a single line if it gets them camera time. Wood was worse than Gosling. Gosling can do it; I’ve seen it in other films. But Wood was just the “it” girl of Hollywood, mistakenly chosen by Clooney.

Ryan Canadian Gosling is similarly so plain I have to look at the furniture to get a rise in any scene he is in. Not a leading man, but someone, like Ed Norton, i believe. Talented and ambitious enough to be cast in psychopath, not leading man roles. Blue Valentine, if you can stomach your way through that awful project, is exactly the vehicle for Gosling. He ain’t leading man material but he can act. If you direct him.

Clooney is...well...great as usual. As an actor only. Was a good director. Not in this film. I said to Dave on the way out: “wow, never seen anyone take a decent idea, a decent script, and kill it with NO directing. “ It isn’t that it was poorly directed. It just wasn’t directed at all.

The director is supposed to have a vision. Take a look at any film directed by Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, the Taviani brothers ( Fiorile is a 1993 Italian film about a family curse caused by greed. It is in subtitles, but it is fantastic.) or the Gilroy brothers for what I mean by good directing.

Tony Gilroy governs each camera angle and chronology of scenes, audio, visuals, styling, cinematography, everything, to fit into the story arcs. He takes apart a script, works through what he thinks of the possibilities, and chooses actors, clothes, colours, shots, with his brother, the film editor, to create a masterpiece of good directing. (Michael Clayton, and Duplicity, for example, show cohesion among all the elements for which a director is responisible. Fabulous films.)

James Cameron is a brilliant director: True Lies and ALL the Terminator films reflect the sense of humour of the director in every single choice in one of his films.

Nobody, of course, beats Peter Weir as a director. My favourite films are all his: Master and Commander: The Far Side of The World; Green Card; The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness. Classics no matter which genre he chooses to direct in: they kill. If you have never seen a romcom that did not suck, please rent Green Card.

In conclusion, I found Ides of March undirected. Check out the last scene where the most arrogant, egregious sin I have ever seen, occurs: Clooney, a guy who can direct, has directed good films, knows how to direct, simply chose not to mike the last speech of the film. Incredible, except that he also chose to simply not light some of the scenes as well. How can this happen?

“Hey guys! Hung over today. Decided you all can dress as you like, mike yourselves or not, boom mike or no, who cares...not directing today. Just do as you feel.” Is this what happened?

I knew this was coming back in the early nineties when everybody who is into film was in juvenile paroxyms of joy over Tarantino (Yech) and films like Pulp Fiction and Scarface became every teenage boy’s answer, in Drama class, when i went around asking what their favourite films were. Expressionism, as in visual art, is an inferior artistic decision. Period.

You cannot take the director and give him a script that might represent years of a writer’s lifeblood, and say, “just take your ego’s expression, your own personal self aggrandisement as the purpose of directorial endeavor on this one. Carte blanche. It’s all about you.” Yet, sadly, this is the definition of expressionism.

What is a director if not the artiste, the auteur, the co creator of a project bigger than his/her ego, yet governed by a structure? You serve the story. Period.

I will sound ninety years old if I give you my whole theory here about how Hollywood writers are told (this is fact) to aim every film at the teenage male as he is the one that pays for all box office films, and how that equation (because it is true, the teenage male is the only one keeping films in the black; they are too young to go to bars, so they simply have to pay box office for their entertainment , while we adults rarely venture farther than the video store so that we can watch films at home while we drink and smoke, things we cannot do at a cinema).

Even Scorsese dabbled in expressionism back in the early nineties when it reached its sad height, courtesy of overgrown child/Tarantino. Scorsese directed Casino, his worst film ever.

Forgive the review. Supposed to be abt cancer. But I live for film. Have taken many courses including ones at UCLA online in scriptwriting. Have directed plays in toronto and of course teenagers’ plays. So yeah, I have a right to my opinion.
you also, i figure, have a right to my opinion.


Of course, I would be remiss if i didn’t mention Jane Campian’s The Piano, an incredible piece of directing. Another woman director, Patricia Rozema, and a Canuck, at that, did I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, but unfortunately both The Piano and Mermaids are the only films of these two women directors work that I think are truly great.

I will be back here to add photos and fix the grammar.Hungry now for monique’s soup!

Later: Monique! Dave heated me two bowls full of the carrot squash soup. I can't stop the readers of this blog from demanding the recipe, cos ladies and gentlemen: it is beyond. thank u! Dawn just picked up jaida. Ellen and Joanna: Bobbi becomes a spin top toy when she sees her!! Just adores her!! So nice for my little nurse to get good Dawn energy!