Most of Me (26 page)

The other one, Nurse #2, did not find me so amusing. Nurse #2 measured my bone density and administered numerous other tests, including the “Tanita Body Composition Analyzer.” She had me stand, barefoot, on this electronic scale-like machine, with my hands gripping spongy detachable handles. When she instructed me to squeeze hard, it occurred to me that since she is a practical nurse, she might appreciate a practical joke. So while squeezing the handles, I pretended I was being electrocuted, rigidly shaking while making this awful sputtering buzzing noise. She jumped out of her chair. Then, realizing she'd been fooled, she smiled in my direction. But not a friendly smile. It was one of those wide menacing smiles, where teeth look sharp and dangerous and poised to bite.

After a few more tests, my first volunteer session was over. I was surprised how quickly two hours had flown by. As a token of appreciation for participating in this breast cancer study, the nurses presented me with a ten-dollar gift card to a grocery store, which I graciously accepted.

When I got home, I was greeted with an invitation to participate in yet another clinical research study. The covering letter stated: “Thank you in advance for helping us in our continuing effort to understand the causes of breast disease. A tea bag is enclosed in the study package. Please accept this gift as a token of our appreciation.” This made me laugh out loud.

Swayed by the solitary tea bag, I signed up right away for this study and resolved to sign up for any more that come my way. Donating my time, biospecimens and high jinks to science is a token of
my
appreciation—that I'm still here, lucky to be playing a small part in the search for a cure.

And now, my dear old camp friend's reply:

Dear Volunteer,

Very good of you to offer up your body for science. I can remember a time when your body was in hot demand.

It was looked at, squeezed until juices were flying, and, in the end, much by way of clinical research was learned.

I am so proud that you are keeping up with science and lending your parts.

They are lucky to have you.

I am most proud of your antics, keep them on their toes. Good for you.

xox Susie

FIVE MONTHS HAVE PASSED
since my surgical initiation into instant menopause, and surprisingly, nothing terrible has happened. Quite frankly, I was worried my vagina—who I have always considered to have a mind of her own—would be grief stricken over the loss of her ovarian and fallopian friends. So I've been watching over her, in case she did something drastic—like go out on a limb and start binge douching or sport fucking. Anything to fill the void. But so far, despite a few lonely tears and melancholic moments, she's kept a stiff upper lip, stayed upbeat, and maintained her composure. Talk about resilience and inner strength!

Unlike my valiant vagina, I've turned into a whining wimp. A whining wimp with a limp who sweats like a pig. Not all the time, thank goodness. Just during hot flashes—say, twenty, thirty, forty times a day. It's all so unpredictable. No matter what I'm doing, where I am, or who I'm with, at any given moment I'll be suddenly ambushed by a stupendous surge of heat deep within my core. This heat quickly radiates throughout my body, and soon I feel like an egg roll cooking in a deep fryer: boiling hot, greasy with sweat, begging for mercy.

Regrettably, I'm not witty when I whine. I make whimpering noises while mopping up beads of sweat with dinner napkins or facial tissues, even toilet paper, my hand swabbing discreetly under my shirt, aiming for armpits and phantom cleavage. I suppose I could dig out my stash of super-absorbent sanitary napkins and tampons. But after consulting my vagina, who endured thirty-five years of menstruating, we agreed to never use feminine hygiene products again—not even for unconventional purposes.

We would make one tiny exception—if Hollywood came knocking and paid me big bucks to star in my own reality
TV
show. It would be called
Hot Flash Hell.
And it would chronicle my hilarious journey through instant menopause. There'd be close-ups of me sweating buckets while out shopping, fanning myself furiously with a menu at a restaurant, and even time-lapse photography of me sprouting sexy new chin hairs.

As my fantasy unfolds, the director takes me aside, whispers in my ear, then shouts, “Lights—camera—action!”

And right on cue, all flushed and soggy, I rattle off an original one-liner: “I'm melting, I'm melting!”

Then I unwrap a sanitary napkin, unfurl its wings, and mop up my sweat. When I'm done, the director praises my performance and calls a short break. To cool down, I sip an icy mint mojito while lounging in my air-conditioned dressing room and prepare for my next scene—the one where I try to convince viewers that I am not crazy and that millions of other menopausal women are not crazy either. We're just hot and bothered and fixated on finding some relief, even if it means letting our imagination run wild.

WHEN GERMAN PHILOSOPHER
Friedrich Nietzsche coined the phrase “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,” he obviously didn't have Parkinson's disease and breast cancer—at the same time. Because if he had, he would have written this instead: “What doesn't kill you makes you stranger.” I should know; I'm getting stranger every day. One disease makes me move weirdly. The other disease makes me look lopsided. And they both make me feel self-consciously conspicuous, like walking around with a ready-to-pop pimple on your nose on prom night. And that's on good days, when I'm well rested and I've remembered to take my Parkinson's medication.

I'm supposed to take this medication three times a day, with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But sometimes I get distracted and forget to take a dose. That's when I get even stranger. The first time this happened, I was standing by the stove, cooking pasta. The pot needed stirring, and as I went to pick up the spoon, my hand could barely move. After a few more unsuccessful attempts, I discovered my hand wasn't the only immobile part of me. My entire body seemed stuck. There I was, standing rigidly erect, head cocked, arms stiff, muscles tight, heart pounding against flushed skin. And even though I don't actually own one, I've seen enough of them to realize what I resembled: a giant penis with a robust erection. And if I didn't take my medicine soon, I feared I might wind up like those unlucky men with long-lasting Viagra-induced erections, in need of medical attention. Not a pretty sight. But one that leaves a lasting impression.

No doubt I left a lasting impression with Dr. Mazgani, the surgeon who performed my oopherectomy six months ago. Because she recognizes me out of context—here at the grocery store, standing beside the green beans, wearing street clothes—not in an operating room, lying down on a gurney, wearing a hospital gown. She smiles and asks how I am doing. While we chat, a wave of embarrassment sweeps over me, as I imagine how strange I must have looked at the hospital: I wasn't on Parkinson's meds yet, so my body was constantly rigid and stiff.

There's a lull in our conversation, and she wishes me well and says good-bye. Then, right on cue, a hot flash flares up, and I'm sweating like a pig, watching my surgeon disappear down the street. She seems like a nice woman, that Dr. Mazgani, even if she does have a strange job—yanking out ovaries and fallopian tubes, launching ladies into instant menopausal hell.

SOME DAYS SLIP
by without a focus, but these days a definite theme is emerging. Since I bumped into Dr. Mazgani yesterday and am scheduled for a follow-up with Dr. Chung this afternoon, I am officially declaring this week to be Surgeon Appreciation Week. The timing is perfect. My macaroon-baking phase has fizzled out. Now I'm cranking out banana breads. No one is complaining about this switch, though Bergen stills asks, “Is this for our family, or are you giving it away?”

Today I tell him, “I'm baking this cake for Dr. Chung.”

“Didn't you bring her some banana bread last time?” he asks.

“Yep. But just a piece.”

“Are you sure she liked it?”

“She mailed me a thank-you letter! For a
piece
of cake,” I beam.

“Makes you wonder how she'll respond when you give her a whole cake.”

I soon find out.

When I arrive for my appointment, the waiting room is packed. I carry the cake to the reception, to ask where it should go, but no one is at the desk. So I set it down on a table in the hall. It looks festive, covered in chocolate frosting and sprinkles. A few minutes later, the assistant returns, I give her my name, and she says, “Please have a seat, there are two people ahead of you.”

A while later, I hear a door open, and a solemn couple leaves the office. Dr. Chung's voice rings out, “Where did this come from?”

“Where did what come from?” her assistant asks.

“This. A cake.”

I twist in my chair and watch Dr. Chung suspiciously inspecting my offering, as if it might contain a bomb.

“I don't know where it came from,” her assistant confesses.

“Cakes don't just appear out of nowhere,” Dr. Chung huffs, lifting one side of the serving platter up, causing the cake to tip.

Afraid it might slide right off, I wave at her and say, “Hi, Dr. Chung. I brought the cake.”

She looks over at me, and her face relaxes. “You did? Thank you.”

Then she takes her next patient.

When it's my turn, Dr. Chung greets me with a great big smile.

“Thank you so much for the cake; it's very nice of you.”

“You're welcome.”

She conducts her usual exam and assures me everything feels and looks normal.

Then I ask her, “Do you bake?”

Dr. Chung smiles sheepishly and says, “Not very often.”

This doesn't surprise me—she works such long hours, even on weekends. She once called me on a Sunday morning to tell me the results of my mammogram. I figure, for every cake she doesn't bake, she probably saves one woman's life.

Next up is a visit with Zoë. The forecast calls for devastating deterioration and the brutal reality of breast cancer. Expect shortness of breath, shattered hopes, and gusts of grief. There is a 100 percent chance of palliative care.

We are two one-breasted friends, sitting at her kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon. Zoë is wearing long pants and a sweater, a colorful knitted hat, matching gloves and socks, and her trademark smile. She is trying to stay warm, even in this hot weather. I wish I could harness the heat from my hot flashes and offer it to her. I also wish I had cooked her something useful—like oxygen soup or lung-inflating flan or miracle remission cookies—instead of banana bread and black bean stew. She's having trouble breathing. Her cancer—or as she calls it, her “mets”—has spread to various parts of her body, including her lungs. One has partially collapsed. But she doesn't dwell on this for long. She is still Zoë, after all, and nothing can quash her curiosity. So, while speaking is hard for her, not speaking is even harder.

She wants to know the latest news about me, Bergen, Naomi, and Nellie. I fill her in about my superhero drug, Dopamine Agonist, good old Dolores, instant menopause, volunteering in breast cancer research studies, and my rekindled passion for writing. I tell her that my family is doing well and we are enjoying our summer. When I ask about her son and daughter, her face intermittently lights up and clouds over—every story and thought and feeling she shares about them is imbued with fierce love and the torment of leaving.

Zoë's pain medication is wearing off, and her thin, frail body needs to rest. As tired as she is, she walks me to the door. We hug good-bye, and our vacant lots momentarily fuse.

“You are such a wonderful mother,” I hear myself say.

These unplanned words pierce her heart, then ricochet into mine. We are stunned into silence. And then swept away by the past tense:

You were . . . she was . . . they had . . . they will miss . . . Our good-bye drowns in grief.

I'M DREAMING OF WINTER
. All the typical things: snowstorms . . . icicles . . . sub-zero temperatures . . . extramarital affairs with snowmen. Anything to turn down the heat of these hot flashes. They're brutal in the summer. And to think I used to love this season. Not anymore. Now I shun the sun and hate the heat. Menopause has changed me—right down to the molecular level.

Feeling sexy is not easy to do with just one breast, especially in cleavage-flaunting weather, but wearing my plastic prosthesis in sweltering heat is not exactly titillating—and it might not even be safe. With all that trapped hot air, it becomes a fiery furnace raging within my sizzling bra. And I imagine all it would take is one menopausal hot flash to set off a chain reaction, and
BOOM
—another case of spontaneous human combustion.

Of course, I'm doing what I can to prevent this calamity. Besides dreaming of winter, I'm also avoiding the sun, guzzling ice water, and taking cold showers.

Every little bit helps. Which is why Dolores doesn't mind staying tucked away in a shady drawer until autumn arrives. If only I could do the same. Together we'd escape this hellish summer and re-emerge when cooler temperatures, glorious gusts of wind, and tight-fitting sweaters prevail. Perfect conditions for us to make our sexy comeback.

WHEN I WAS A KID
, my favorite thing to do at the park was play on the swing set. I would fly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth—pumping my legs vigorously, feeling the rhythmic rise and fall of invisible arcs etched in midair. It was never boredom that made me dismount. Only a full bladder could do that. Or someone else's meddling mother determined to let her whining child have a turn.

Eventually, I outgrew this childhood pastime. But since the Parkinson's diagnosis, my preoccupation with swinging has swung back into my life—with a vengeance. And in the most peculiar way. No, I'm not the crazy lady hogging the best swing at the local playground. Not yet. For the time being, I'm the limping lady who doesn't swing her left arm while out walking her dog. It's not that I don't try. Because I do. I've tried everything to get my stubborn appendage to budge.