But Then I Saw the Donkey
by Jessica Cauchi
I'd like to think that since my diagnosis ten months ago I've come a long way.
I can remember how, when all this started, cancer was suddenly everywhere. You'd turn on the television to watch the news, and there were at least three cancer related stories in one half hour program. You'd watch a sitcom, and you'd happen to catch the "very special episode" where the lead character's uncle gets a brain tumor. You'd go to Borders and find books about cancer on the front display table, the magazine racks packed with healthcare periodicals shouting their cancer headlines and statistics at you while you browse the Vogue nearby. You'd notice women, ones you'd never seen before, with very short hair -- and if you had noticed them, you'd have had every reason to believe they where simply making a fashion statement.
It's a lot like how when you are trying to get pregnant you suddenly see pregnant women everywhere. Actually, it's more like when you are having trouble getting pregnant and pregnant women are not only everywhere, but they're knocking on your door at 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon, inviting themselves in for tea and a chat about how they are planning to decorate their nurseries. Indeed, just when you want to forget for a while, please God let me forget for a while, cancer taps you on the shoulder and rears its ugly head.
But eventually you get used to that. You go through surgery and treatment, you meet other survivors, you feel your body healing, you return to work. And somewhere along the way things get a little less scary. When cancer leers at you from every corner of the room, you learn not to mind so much, finding ways to tuck it back into the drawers of your side table, hide it under the couch cushions, sweep it under the proverbial rug. You manage to go whole stretches of time -- sometimes even an entire day -- where you forget that your body is broken, that it doesn't work like everyone else's.
So at almost a year out from diagnosis, in remission and with a decent prognosis, I've managed to both keep the cancer demon at bay and to cope well when it plants itself squarely in my view. I can talk the talk and walk the walk, assuring those new to the cancer scene that it will be okay. I can site survival and mortality statistics without blinking an eye. I can talk protein expression and anti-angiogenesis, monocolonal antibodies and vaccines. I can remember without agony the panic of waking up from a spectacularly botched portocath placement to an ICU nurse who was both crying at the shock of it all and whispering urgently in my ear, "you CAN breathe, you CAN. I know it doesn't feel like it but you CAN."
I can look at the trajectory of my disease, at the shape and movement of our dance together, and not always feel afraid.
But then, last night, I saw the donkey.
Flipping through television channels just before going to sleep, my husband landed on a program about the Humane Society. After watching the tale-end of a piece on a couple unable to care for the fifty-some-odd canines they had taken in, the show switched to a story about a donkey. This donkey had been rescued from some highly inept, possibly vicious owner. He was in bad shape: hungry, dehydrated, his fur matted and falling out.
He also had cancer. It was a cancer of the sinuses, and given his unfortunate, neglected circumstances, it was already very advanced. Enormous tumors protruded from most of his face, spilling out his nose and mouth. Metastasis had spread to his chest, with sites jutting from beneath his ribcage. The vet said surgery may have been a possibility, but now it was so far gone they'd have to remove half his face. The only thing left to do, the only humane thing to do, was to put him down.
His was different from all the cancer stories I'd seen and gotten used to over the last ten months regardless of whether they had bumped into me unexpectedly or I'd sought them out. It was different because none of the others had shown this moment. I'd seen people feeling tired and sad. I'd seen people getting treatment and losing their hair. I'd watched documentaries of people sliding through PET and CT scans. The experts had plied me with statistics and facts, treatments and outcomes. Numbers and letters on a page, images on a screen.
But none of them had shown this -- this moment when there is nothing left to do. When you can see it even in the donkey's eyes.
I wanted to forget those eyes -- those big, brown eyes rimmed with knowledge and terror, the literal animal instinct of imminent death. We turned off the television to make the donkey disappear. But he didn't. He simply lingered in the eerie afterglow of the dormant, shorted screen.
So we did what we've always done when, even after all this time, the donkey won't go away -- when he shuffles into the room, kicking up the dust we thought had settled, braying so loudly that he sucks out all the oxygen, suffocating us with our fear.
We turned out the lights and called our dog up from underneath the bed where he usually sleeps, knowing he would settle gently beside my torso and belly, and cradle in my arms. My husband nudged up against me, where we connected chest to back, legs to legs. Facing west, we stared out the window into the deepening night, watching lights from far-off houses mingle with twinkling stars etched into a frozen sky like tiny bells ringing in the distance, just beyond earshot.
We felt the warmth radiate between us. We breathed slowly. We breathed softly and deeply. We touched and wondered.
written 10/8/04
I can remember how, when all this started, cancer was suddenly everywhere. You'd turn on the television to watch the news, and there were at least three cancer related stories in one half hour program. You'd watch a sitcom, and you'd happen to catch the "very special episode" where the lead character's uncle gets a brain tumor. You'd go to Borders and find books about cancer on the front display table, the magazine racks packed with healthcare periodicals shouting their cancer headlines and statistics at you while you browse the Vogue nearby. You'd notice women, ones you'd never seen before, with very short hair -- and if you had noticed them, you'd have had every reason to believe they where simply making a fashion statement.
It's a lot like how when you are trying to get pregnant you suddenly see pregnant women everywhere. Actually, it's more like when you are having trouble getting pregnant and pregnant women are not only everywhere, but they're knocking on your door at 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon, inviting themselves in for tea and a chat about how they are planning to decorate their nurseries. Indeed, just when you want to forget for a while, please God let me forget for a while, cancer taps you on the shoulder and rears its ugly head.
But eventually you get used to that. You go through surgery and treatment, you meet other survivors, you feel your body healing, you return to work. And somewhere along the way things get a little less scary. When cancer leers at you from every corner of the room, you learn not to mind so much, finding ways to tuck it back into the drawers of your side table, hide it under the couch cushions, sweep it under the proverbial rug. You manage to go whole stretches of time -- sometimes even an entire day -- where you forget that your body is broken, that it doesn't work like everyone else's.
So at almost a year out from diagnosis, in remission and with a decent prognosis, I've managed to both keep the cancer demon at bay and to cope well when it plants itself squarely in my view. I can talk the talk and walk the walk, assuring those new to the cancer scene that it will be okay. I can site survival and mortality statistics without blinking an eye. I can talk protein expression and anti-angiogenesis, monocolonal antibodies and vaccines. I can remember without agony the panic of waking up from a spectacularly botched portocath placement to an ICU nurse who was both crying at the shock of it all and whispering urgently in my ear, "you CAN breathe, you CAN. I know it doesn't feel like it but you CAN."
I can look at the trajectory of my disease, at the shape and movement of our dance together, and not always feel afraid.
But then, last night, I saw the donkey.
Flipping through television channels just before going to sleep, my husband landed on a program about the Humane Society. After watching the tale-end of a piece on a couple unable to care for the fifty-some-odd canines they had taken in, the show switched to a story about a donkey. This donkey had been rescued from some highly inept, possibly vicious owner. He was in bad shape: hungry, dehydrated, his fur matted and falling out.
He also had cancer. It was a cancer of the sinuses, and given his unfortunate, neglected circumstances, it was already very advanced. Enormous tumors protruded from most of his face, spilling out his nose and mouth. Metastasis had spread to his chest, with sites jutting from beneath his ribcage. The vet said surgery may have been a possibility, but now it was so far gone they'd have to remove half his face. The only thing left to do, the only humane thing to do, was to put him down.
His was different from all the cancer stories I'd seen and gotten used to over the last ten months regardless of whether they had bumped into me unexpectedly or I'd sought them out. It was different because none of the others had shown this moment. I'd seen people feeling tired and sad. I'd seen people getting treatment and losing their hair. I'd watched documentaries of people sliding through PET and CT scans. The experts had plied me with statistics and facts, treatments and outcomes. Numbers and letters on a page, images on a screen.
But none of them had shown this -- this moment when there is nothing left to do. When you can see it even in the donkey's eyes.
I wanted to forget those eyes -- those big, brown eyes rimmed with knowledge and terror, the literal animal instinct of imminent death. We turned off the television to make the donkey disappear. But he didn't. He simply lingered in the eerie afterglow of the dormant, shorted screen.
So we did what we've always done when, even after all this time, the donkey won't go away -- when he shuffles into the room, kicking up the dust we thought had settled, braying so loudly that he sucks out all the oxygen, suffocating us with our fear.
We turned out the lights and called our dog up from underneath the bed where he usually sleeps, knowing he would settle gently beside my torso and belly, and cradle in my arms. My husband nudged up against me, where we connected chest to back, legs to legs. Facing west, we stared out the window into the deepening night, watching lights from far-off houses mingle with twinkling stars etched into a frozen sky like tiny bells ringing in the distance, just beyond earshot.
We felt the warmth radiate between us. We breathed slowly. We breathed softly and deeply. We touched and wondered.
written 10/8/04
