happy anniversary, you tumors you!

Five years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and “given” two to five years to live.

I sure hope the biatch who condescendingly uttered her pronouncement when I said I’d try to cure it myself and wouldn’t engage in any of the three allopathic options she presented:

• cut        (surgery)
• burn     (radiation)
• poison (chemotherapy)

reads rant-ology! because it’s just about the five year mark and I’m still lifting weights, doing yoga, writing, hiking, snowshoeing, cooking, kissing, eating, crying, arguing…..breathing…..reading, playing guitar, playing cards, brushing cats, feeding chickens, laughing, ranting and smiling. In other words: living.

Hanging with the aliens—as I fondly call them—is a bit like living with tiny time bombs just under my skin and, yes, one day they could decide to take me out. But not today or most likely any other day in the near—or maybe even far—future. At some point, they may multiply and I may choose differently than I’ve chosen so far. Who knows? But one thing’s for sure: if I had used any of their “therapies” I’d definitely be dead.

I know my own body, thanks, and I listen when she speaks, now and forever. Amen.

Something will kill me, someday, and something will kill you as well. But I don’t make decisions from fear and I don’t make them from my head either, so I’m not going to begin regardless of medical pressure.

Here’s my poem to honor the upcoming anniversary:

Landscape of an Alien Disease

1.

I live with three solid stones

in my left breast throbbing along to my heartbeat.

Some say they’re out

to compose a corpse in my shape.

 

Dwelling with them

is a bit like winning

the lottery. Others hunger

to confer, consult,

nurture. In infirmity

they only want a good look

at what they don’t want.

 

It’s safer to rubberneck the rubble

this life has become. The more I open

my chest, my heart to accommodate

their view, I see their breath

 

flutter shallowly and a quaking develops

as if they spot that toothy crack

of terrain snaking

randomly away from my rock-steady feet,

suddenly eyeing theirs.

 

2.

Cancer can be

like TV: a cop chase and the perp is pressed

by G-forces back to a time where

he felt his free will like dense cool air

just before being delivered

to the ground & hog-tied with hand cuffs.

 

Click channels: a muddy flood snatches homes

from their foundations, snorts trees,

starts a rowdy party of festering cars

sadistically sailing past, some red, some blue.

 

3.

Either way, everyone but me is secure

in their home, snapping off

their sets, rising from easy chairs,

shutting down lamps and heading up to bed.

 

I’m on the run, the head waters still

rising, the cops on my tail,

slippered feet straddling that crevasse

of twisted scenery

as each second spills

into the next and the next

and no one

can predict a thing.

 

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