Petty Woman

Yesterday I treated myself to a visit to one of my favorite clothing boutiques in Pasadena. During their semi-annual 50%-off sale, the prices begin to enter the realm of affordability.

I tried on a feminine, empire-waisted, brown and white polka-dot dress with cap sleeves and a scoop neckline. As I twirled in front of the three-way mirror, I felt, well, pretty. The cap sleeves floated gently over the slack skin on my upper arms but revealed the PICC line on my right arm. No problem, I thought. That's getting yanked out on Wednesday.

But then I remembered that the PICC line is being replaced by a Hickman catheter in my chest. Instead of the two inch plastic tubes that dangle from my arm, the Hickman will feature tubing that's long enough to serve as a Boogie board leash. So much for the feminine scoop neckline. I shimmied out of the dress, waved my apologies to the owner and burst into tears as soon as I hit the sidewalk.

As you're reading this, you're probably thinking what a petty (not pretty) woman I am. After all, the Hickman catheter is a temporary, not a permanent fixture. And with everything else going on, isn't a polka-dot dress a frivolous thing to cry about?

But the tears weren't really about the dress. Just like when I had my hair lopped off, the sobbing was about moving from the theoretical to the concrete world of cancer. That pretty dress mocked me as I twirled.

"Hey, how pretty do you think you're going to look when the catheter is poking out for all the world to see?"

"Those cap sleeves are covering up your hideous upper arms NOW, but at the rate your slack skin disease is spreading, don't you think you need LONG sleeves?"

For the most part, I look healthy. Most of the time, I feel healthy, both mentally and physically. But every once in a while I experience something, like a pretty polka-dot dress, that reminds me in a very concrete way that cancer sucks.