I'm Living with Cancer...

LIVING WITH CANCER, when I first read the title of the reading I smiled because I had written a poem with the same title. As I countinued to read the journal my smile faded. I was reading my feelings and experience. I too, felt like battle lines were drawn up within my own body. Like Audre Lorde I had received treatment at a leading cancer hospital in New York City. I too received a plastic card. I too was infanitlized as this older white male proceeded to tell me about the war going on in my body. I too heard the phrase "well you look like an intelligent girl" when I questioned the effects the toxic chemicals I allow into my body every other Wednesday.

Like Audre Lorde, I felt rage. I dealt with so many emotions. I felt out of control. I spent the last day of finals through New Year's Day in the hospital. I was diagnosed on December 18, 2007 with Hodgkin's Lymphoma after spending 11 days in a hospital bed in Atlanta. I had been tested for almost every disease possible. I was almost pronounced DEAD on Christmas day. I had been given drugs of all types. One was so potent that it produced acute kidney failure. I was on dialysis for two and a half days (thanks to the Creator) and not the few weeks the doctors predicted. For three hours I would lie in the dialysis unit and watch my blood enter and exit my body through tubes through my jugular. Because I had failed to ask questions, because I had entrusted these older white men with my black female body I was throwing up my insides. I could not urinate. I had no appetite. I lost weight, I became a mere 116 pounds. I felt physical and psychological pain of every type. From surgical pain, to the pain of hating myself for not questioning the medication I was allowing to be put into my body, to the pain of having my bone marow removed without adequate anesthesia, to the pain of having tubes pushed down my throat, to the pain of having blood drawn every day two times a day for twenty days, to the pain of having privileged doctors try to subliminally undermine me and my intelligence, to the pain of loneliness, to the pain of not feeling like the young woman I once was.

Reading the journals showed me how important it is to ask questions to take control of yourself. I gained strength. Reading the realness in her words did not make me feel as alone. Lourde describes life and living with cancer as a battle and I agree. "Attending my own health, gaining enough information to help me understand and participate in the decisions made about my body by people who know more medicine that I do , are all crucial strategies in my battle for living," this is a quote I have been living by since I was diagnosed with cancer. I have been victorious come very far within the last four months and "each victory must be applauded because it is so easy not to battle at all." Everyday is a battle but I perservere.