Heart of Darkness

Nearly 12 years ago I gave my best friend and teammate the trophy I won in the girls’ county basketball tournament. I scored a bunch of points but it was her acrobatic dribbling through double coverage and dazzling passing which set up easy shots that allowed our team to win in an upset.

We have been best friends for nearly all of our 29 years, toddlers together rattling the bars of the playpen while our moms drank coffee; in each other’s class throughout elementary, middle and high school; the same basketball camps, playground and school teams from a young age on; cheerleaders together for Pop Warner, JV and the varsity football teams; secrets, thrills, our “crushes”, first kisses and concerns shared in whispers over the years. Never jealousy, disagreements or anything near an argument except over boys. 

And while we went our separate ways when we graduated, attended universities in separate states, pursued different career paths and settled down 1,000 miles apart, rarely a week would pass when we didn’t talk or said goodbye on FaceTime with four quick air kisses like always...... “Chimps in love,” we giggle and usually add mad monkey snorts.

It was for me an entire new set of feelings and thoughts when a few months ago she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. I’ve visited her three times since her double mastectomy and between the surgeries and the near-lethal witches brew that doubles as chemotherapy, the toll on her is stunningly apparent. Long gone is the perky comet of a girl  with the quick-fire mouth eight inches shorter than me but always much bigger who just a June before jumped on the table at my wedding, demanded attention and delivered words about being great friends. 

Wisps of hair on a bare scalp have replaced long, thick brunette locks; dull and deep-set eyes without a sparkle stare back; constant nausea, many times intense and overwhelming despite a bevy of anti-nausea drugs; headaches, sores where the flesh is most tender, a dizzy tired and the inability to do nearly everything is her chemo-routine. 

I try to give her mom a bit of time to herself but she and her dad dare not let go for a single second.

I’m capturing this experience for my first blog here not because of the obvious drama but to admit I am a coward. 

I have never stared into death’s face up close.... the only funeral I ever attended was a grandparent when I was seven.... and frankly never experienced real hardship. I have been very lucky to be born into my place. Perhaps without a silver spoon but damn close. I have seen affliction, pain and struggle with my online friends, many times wrongly offered input, every day read about the pain and suffering on a global scale, but never cry. Gaza, Ebola, the Ukraine, starvation, disease? Outrage today but yesterday’s news tomorrow.

But now I cry thinking about my friend, a single person on this planet.

From what I read the statisticians from Sloan-Kettering and Cancer.Org say there’s a 72 percent five-year survival rate. Just great, a worse than one in four chance of living. My husband, who sees and participates in the battle for life every day and is familiar with and understands every molecule in my body and brain, says to believe in and concentrate on the other half of the equation, a three in four chance of survival. Yet, no matter how much input, expert advice and love heaped on me it is for me to understand and it is for me to learn to cope and create meaning from darkness. 

“Life goes on,” he would tell me with his clinician’s thinking if I was anyone else. He’s right of course. I need to get to that point. I just can’t do that.

When I catch my breath, the absurdity of the American health care system wraps its tentacles around my throat. My friend has very good health insurance as a government worker. Her father is a small business owner and her parents live in a town with upscale demographics. But fighting cancer the best way possible is absurdly expensive in the U.S. and the best treatment (yes, my international friends, there are levels of treatment depending on wealth including no treatment at all to a sickeningly growing number) is stupefyingly outrageous. The post-chemo regimen of Genentech drugs, not yet approved by her insurance, is $115,000 (that’s just for the tablespoons of fluid that will be administered bi-weekly by IV); the plastic surgery to reconstruct her breasts is north of $100,000, not covered by insurance. With each trip to the hospital, every nurse and doc who touches her, and each time to the pharmacy there’s a percentage that’s not covered and the devil must get his due.

She and I will play basketball together.... matching shots in O-U-T next summer in my driveway on the rim above the garage. We will laugh, go to the beach, share cloying margaritas at loud restaurants and dance up a sweat late into the night ..... and not a single empty breath will pass that is not filled with too many words. 

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