In Gornick’s Fierce Attachments, she recounts how her mother is absorbed in her own grief after the sudden death at 46 of her adored husband, her raison d’être. The bubble of her mother’s grief played out for the rest of Gornick’s childhood and adulthood. The mother’s heightened state of pain, acted out daily in long periods on the couch, whittled her life away in depression – smothering Gornick’s lived life with a mother who existed in abstraction. Decades later, they would end up walking through Manhattan together, their conversations filled in turn with laughter or fierce anger. They would discover things about each other, like the time they both spoke about the abortions they’d had. Gornick’s mother had had three during the Depression. After one, she’d woken from the anaesthetic delivered by a low-grade doctor in a basement apartment with his penis in her hand.
I wanted to be rid of my mother’s burdening book. Its personal, deeply internal, anguished words were my mother’s and not mine to read. Mum never presented herself as inviolable to me but I thought of her that way anyway. I walked outside and threw the book into the recycling bin.
The first thing I did on diagnosis was reach out to learn what to do from women who had survived breast cancer, not died from it like my mother had. I contacted the Choices Cancer Support Centre, who put me in touch with another woman around my age who was a few steps ahead in her cancer treatments. Others’ stories were so vital, experiences I could deeply relate to.
With three friends I formed a support group called the Right Wingers, because we all had breast cancer in the right breast, and planned to have a mastectomy (or had had one already). I also attended Choices’ support group for young women with breast cancer. For our Christmas in July night I’d sat near two other women my age, also with only one child, who’d similarly made the decision not to tempt Ms Oestrogen and conceive again.
The room was plain and made specifically for groups coming for dinner. We had a choice of turkey or chicken. I chose turkey, which was dry, but I wasn’t there for the meal. All the women’s eyes around the table were bright and alert to what the others were saying.
Opposite me was a woman who’d finished treatment a year before, proudly showing pictures of her attractive bald head. She was a surgical nurse and acted as our interpreter for the medical lingo of breast cancer pathology. To my left was an active breast cancer advocate who’d waved goodbye to cancer 22 years before. She said, At the time I thought I would be dead in a year, so I didn’t want to bother with building an extension to our deck. It remains unbuilt all these years later.
The good-news story of the evening was a woman diagnosed seven years prior with oestrogen-positive breast cancer whose fertility eventually kicked back in during her late 30s. It allowed her to have the children she’d always wanted (she remained cancer free).
Stories like hers placed a question mark on my decision not to have another child, but a doctor’s words always returned to match my own concerns. If your cancer is oestrogen positive, he’d said, why would you flood your body with the hormone through pregnancy?
For women going through breast cancer treatments in Brisbane there was an active community of support. Apart from Choices, public hospitals offered social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists, and I could also access a breast clinic at Mater Private, where I went for my surgeries. In these clinics you get assigned a breast care nurse who takes your drains out after operations and is available to keep an eye on you post-operatively.
During chemotherapy, my mood dipped and rose, and I went to a hospital-based psychologist. She did a mapping-out technique where I could step back and do a life review. It helped me to see the situation more clearly and some possible ways out of it: that chemo would end, better health would come, and which personal capabilities I could draw upon to meet Celso’s needs. After my designated six visits the psychologist referred me to a psychiatrist who specialised in breast cancer care. The psychiatrist visited me on chemo days so I didn’t have to make a separate appointment. Once the anti-depressants, prescribed for depression and to reduce hot flushes, elevated then evened out my mood, I could function well.
Both of these professionals were free and based in the public hospital system. I would dip and rise again, but I had the mechanics at hand to get myself mentally competent when required.
The breast care nurses I saw were attached to the Chicks in Pink charity, part of the Mater Private hospital. They raised funds for many things, for example bras for women after mastectomies, and portable DVD players for women in hospital. One fateful day my breast care nurse called at just the right time. I was sinking that day. At this stage Celso had no diagnosis but merely a collection of medical problems including gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, food refusal and delayed speech. He was going through a period of waking up and vomiting at 2 a.m., and remaining awake for several hours. He wouldn’t settle himself in the cot and needed to be held and soothed the entire time. He was still nasogastrically fed and required his nose tape changed every two days, which he fought, screaming throughout. B’s and my days were filled with darkness. B called it eating cardboard.
How are you going? my breast care nurse asked.
Okay, I lied. Tears sprang up into my eyes and I tried not to show them in my voice.
What’s happening for you at the moment?
Well … I said and proceeded to unravel what was going
