JM, Lynn, 9.6.08
October 4, 2007 was a sunny day. As Lynn and I were driving down Beverly to Cedars, she said, "Look at all these people on the street just going about their ordinary day." That it would become not just the most exceptional but also the worst day of both of our lives was a possibility, and we were very tense.
We were very tense by the time the nurse called her for her surgery. Her doctor came out moments before the surgery and said, "I'm going to start it now."
It was supposed to last an hour and a half, but it lasted over four. There was no communication about how it was going. It seemed certain as each minute wore on that they had discovered cancer, and they did.
When the surgeon finally came out and informed us about what the oncologist had found and what the likely path was to be, the news simply crushed me. I felt like there was an elephant standing on my chest.
Lynn wasn't scheduled to be coherent for hours, but by the time I went in post-op, just minutes after she had been sewn up, she had already spoken to her surgeon and also learned all the recovery room names (she masters names; she never forgets one). She had already had a discussion with her surgeon about her condition; and, remarkably, she was smiling. Tired beyond anyone I had ever seen exhausted before, but smiling.
"I have cancer," she said to me, still smiling.
"It hasn't spread," I said. "Your surgeon told me all about it. You're in a good position to fight it."
"Will you get the nurse?" she asked.
I only had two minutes, and I got the nurse. I imagined she was in pain, that something felt wrong---how could it not?
But when the nurse came, Lynn simply said, "Maria, this is Joseph, my partner."
That was all she wanted; to do the right thing, to introduce me to someone she had just met. Flat on her back and amidst a tangle of tubes. As you would expect from Lynn, even when nobody else could see into any future, she was already working the room, making the connection---managing a path towards healing.
~~~
The next four days were mostly as dramatic as the time in surgery. I spent four days by her bed; Cedars gives you a cot to stay in the room. There was an emergency catscan. Blood counts were a constant worry. Dealing with Lynn's family was never more difficult.
Lynn would be obliged to enter chemotherapy as soon as possible. It would last up to six months.
~~~
We decided early on that while we aren't crusaders, we wouldn't be reticent about this malady either. We would simply talk about Lynn's ovarian cancer as another part of life; not the all controlling part, but not a trivial part either. We wouldn't dwell on it; we would give it its natural due. It seemed especially important to say things because even so few doctors have good and current information on ovarian cancer, let alone women.
One thing we've learned over the past year is that when a woman, who has been conditioned all her early life to be caring and nurturing, suddenly loses all the organs that generate life, the obvious challenge is to fight the illness; but the less obvious yet equally critical challenge is to remain fruitful, remain fertile.
Lynn baked for others when she couldn't work. She managed her friendships as though they were a great responsibility.
And she wanted to get back to work as soon as possible, especially because her work is an extension of her creative self.
She had six months of agony, attendant hair loss, and the merciless stripping away of the whole feminine side of her. Undergoing such things made her all the more determined to retain her womanhood; if it took two hours instead of half of one to make herself presentable to her own standards, two hours was what she took.
If it were raining and her blood counts were dangerously low, she went out in the rain anyway. As one friend said, "Well, you can keep worrying, but with Lynn, it's when she doesn't do things like that that you should worry."
~~~
Now, on the anniversary of her surgery date, we can't find a way to commemorate the date by doing anything other than leading an ordinary day. We'll see a friend, have pizza, maybe go to a club tonight if the weather isn't bad.
But we have also had a year to consider the one key element of her condition, and that is that many of the things that made her a woman have been taken from her.
We used to label women who could not have children things like barren or childless, implying a lack. But when everything that controls childbearing is taken away suddenly, you are obliged to live life in refutation of such arbitrary verbal stigma. She believes you need to stay fruitful; you need to stay fertile; you need to stay what you have been since ever you were a first coupling of chromosomes: a woman, to wit, a creator.
