I Think It May Be Safe to Tell You this Story, with a Side Order of "Hurry Quick, Knock on Wood!"

This year, 2010, is my five year anniversary for being cancer free. That's a huge milestone in the world of cancer. I've never really wanted to talk about it before because I was afraid of the "voo-doo-whammie-curse", and didn't want to draw the universe's attention to myself.

Almost exactly two decades ago, Trisha was giving me a head massage, which wasn't nearly as erotic as it sounds. She had just opened her first salon/spa , called the "Grand Jete" which is French for the "Grand Leap", and I was always more than happy to take that leap with her. 

It was an Aveda salon and there was so many lotions and potions to try.  I always liked that Aveda stuff, even the lipstick was great..  Anyfrufru, it was out west, in a land called Rancho Cucamonga, which is a suburb of Los Angeles, which is the land of fruits and nuts. 

While she was massaging the delicious mint with lavendar scented oil into my scalp, she found two marble sized lumps on the back of my head, on the right side near the top. 

Soon after, I went to see Dr. Moirera, who was a very tiny woman with very short, very dark hair.  Mostly I remember the big square cute diamond earrings she always wore.  She told me not to do anything with the tumors unless it absolutely had to be done. 

She said the tumors were in a difficult spot because you only have so much scalp to work with because it doesn't stretch.  That meant that every surgery would use precious skin, and before long, skin graphs would be involved.  Skin graphs are a whole nother bowl of tamales.

Taking her advice, which allowed me to continue in a state of complete denial, was the best thing I could have ever done.  Quite frankly, it probably saved my life.  I can cook with some denial.  Thus began the cold war, and I was armed with a thick coat of denial.  Dayum, that denial is some great shit.  I should have named this post "In Praise of Aveda and Denial".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not stupid.  If you have a tumor that keeps growing back, only bigger and faster everytime?  Yeah, that's cancer.  The thing was, of all the many doctors I've seen, none ever suggested chemo therapy or radiation because no doctor ever fessed up to me that it was cancer. 

It was like they instinctively knew that I didn't want to know.  So every six months or so, I would have another surgery to relieve the pressure the tumors, which by now had grown into one big purple tumor, was creating and just carry on as if nothing happened.  This went on for ten or so years.  At this point, I couldn't even tell you how many surgeries I had, I lost count at some point.

See, I was busy with other stuff.  There were relationships that needed to be had, and babies that needed to be born. During the same time, the technological revolution happened and swept me along with it, and for the first time in my life I knew what I wanted to be. 

It was those baby boys that propelled me forward. The growth hormone made the tumors grown even faster.  After having J1, I was discouraged from getting pregnant again.  I shrugged that off and got pregnant again anyway, because my baby had to have a sibling.  It was all just so meant to be, like it was a master plan.

It's not the cancer that kills you in the end, it's all the crap they do to your body to get rid of it, and by then, I was on my last leg.  I couldn't imagine surviving another surgery. To make a long story shorter, in 2005, through sheer denial and stubbourness, I lived to see my cure. 

Right at that darkest moment, a friend of mine talked me into going to her doctor.  It turned out that this doctor knew another doctor, the brilliant Dr. Weltman, who was one of three doctors in the state of Ohio using a new procedure called the "MOHS" procedure.  He saved my life and didn't nobody expect that to happen, except for me. 

The MOHS procedure allowed Dr. Weltman to operate on the tumor in one room and run across the hall to the lab for an instant biopsy.  He never closed me up until he finally got a clean biopsy.  I was on the table for eight hours where he removed three tumors, one of which was new, meaning that the cancer had started to spread.

The next day, I spent eight hours in surgery at University Hospital (I really am living proof) having reconstructive surgery.  At this point, 50 percent of my scalp was skin graphs taken from my legs.  If this didn't work, it was the end of the fight because I was just so deeply down in my soul exhausted.

For the first year after the surgery, I had to have catscans every four months.  After the first year of clear scans, they started a series of reconstructive surgury on my head.  They wanted to put a water balloon in my head to stretch the skin, and have me come to the office once a week to have more water put in it.  I said I didn't think so. 

I opted for a slice of skin graph being removed at at time every four months.  Just ask me anytime, I'll show you my scars.  The silver lining is the face lift it gave me.  So there you have it.