Rocking the Pink Page 8

  For the next five months, my violent daily heaving made me giddy, confirming that I was really, truly, not-imagining-this pregnant. Brad and I posted a track-each-day-of-your-pregnancy calendar on the refrigerator door so we could follow the minutia of the baby’s development. The baby is the size of a bean! The baby has arm buds! The baby is the size of a plum! Brad, a man who never did any grocery shopping or cooking, ever, came home one evening with a raw ginger root to make a nausea-abating tea he’d read about online. At night, he massaged my aching back and feet. On weekends, we shopped for cribs and diaper-changing tables.

  In the twentieth week of my pregnancy, we learned from a sonogram that our little bean was, in fact, a baby girl. A daddy’s girl! A Baby Sophie.

  I often dreamed about giving birth to our Sophie: Immediately following her birth, the doctor would place Sophie in my arms and I would kiss her little face, crying tears of joy. One night, the birth dream started as usual. But when I looked down to kiss the baby’s little face, I was surprised to find I was not holding a baby; instead, I was holding a German shepherd puppy. I was crestfallen.

  “Oh,” I said in my dream, disappointed. “I was hoping for a human baby.”

  “Well, just keep trying,” the doctor reassured me. “You just might get a human baby next time.”

  Relieved, and, frankly, still pretty happy—I mean, the puppy was adorable—I proceeded to kiss and cuddle my new puppy. Better luck next time!

  When I woke up, I tried to understand the meaning of this strange dream. Did it mean I was ready to love my baby unconditionally? Or maybe I was projecting my love for Crazy Buster onto my unborn child. Or maybe, just maybe, my subconscious was telling me that I was not yet ready to graduate from dogs to babies.

  I hoped to God it wasn’t Door No. 3.

  Sharon was pregnant, too, though it was her second time at the rodeo.

  “I’m so big!” I exclaimed as she and I lay in bed together, comparing our watermelon-size bellies.

  “I’m bigger,” Sharon declared, and it wasn’t clear if she was boasting or bemoaning.

  And she was right. You see, Sharon was a shoo-in to win the whose-belly-is-bigger contest, because, although her due date was two months later than mine, her belly was filled with three times the number of babies.

  Yes, Sharon was pregnant with triplets.

  Yet the day after my due date had come and gone, I sat at Sharon’s hospital bedside—she’d been admitted for regular infusions designed to delay premature labor—and had the nerve to complain, “This baby’s never gonna come!”

  Sharon—who had been hooked up to hospital machines and separated from her husband and two-year-old daughter—had the grace to laugh and roll her eyes along with me.

  “Hang in there,” she said. She looked so tired, but she smiled at me warmly.

  When I arrived home from visiting Sharon in the hospital, I called her immediately, ready to heap another stack of complaints on my already rising pile.

  But, to my surprise, a nurse answered Sharon’s phone.

  “Sharon’s been rushed to the delivery room. She just delivered her babies.”

  I gasped. Sharon’s due date was over two months away!

  Oh, labor must have come on in a flash! I had been there just forty minutes before. A chill went down my spine.

  I waddled frantically back to my car and raced back to the hospital. As I ran through the hospital front doors, breathless and clutching my belly (which had started contracting erratically because of the stress), a crowd of hospital staffers descended upon me, ushering me into a wheelchair.

  “Who’s your doctor?” they wanted to know. “Do you want us to call your husband?”

  “No! No!” I shouted, waving away their helping hands. “I’m not in labor! I need to see my sister!”

  I was on the verge of panic.

  By the time I got to the delivery room, my sister’s triplets—two boys and a girl—were already nestled in Plexiglas incubators, hooked up to monitors and wires. Born eleven weeks premature and weighing almost three pounds each, the newborns looked like animatronic Yoda-babies. Thankfully, the doctors said they’d all be fine.

  Sharon looked pale but beatific.

  Mom had already arrived and was talking nonstop, her standard reaction in times of stress.

  My sister is a mother of four, I marveled, gazing at the babies’ sixty combined fingers and toes, Mom’s yakkity-yakking fading into white noise in the background.

  Sixteen hours later, our Sophie made her grand entrance, looking as if she could squash all three of her preemie cousins with one chubby fist, or, alternatively, gobble them up as a midmorning snack.

  Chapter 16

  Now that my diagnosis and treatment plan had been confirmed by an actual oncologist, as opposed to “Dr. Brad,” I decided to do some research online to find out what I was up against. I clicked on an article describing chemotherapy in detail: It is not a “targeted” cancer treatment, the article said. Chemo drugs seek out and destroy fast-growing cells of any type, including cancer cells—but also cells of the bone marrow, oral mucus membrane, linings of the stomach and intestine, and hair follicles. Due to the shotgun nature of chemo, the website explained, a chemo patient may experience lots of side effects, including fatigue, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, mouth sores, hair loss, premature menopause, bone loss, low red-blood-cell counts, low white-blood-cell counts, diarrhea, and constipation. And leukemia.

  What? I could get leukemia from chemotherapy?

  I threw my hands up into the air. And then I put my head on the desk. It was all so doomsday, I just didn’t want to know. I didn’t want any more information, I decided; what I wanted was support.

  I navigated to the only triple-negative website I could find—for an organization called the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation—and was momentarily paralyzed by the shocking array of pink ribbons that littered the site.

  I saw a heading for “message boards” and clicked on the link. Wow, there were a gazillion postings. So many women dealing with this crap. Women had posted messages to each other covering every aspect of the disease and its treatment—surgery, hair loss, metallic tastes caused by the chemo drugs, nerve damage in extremities, depression. It was overwhelming. My predicament seemed insurmountable.

  After reading other ladies’ posts for quite some time, alternately biting my lip and wiping away tears from my cheeks, I did something I’d never done before on any website in my life: I posted a message—not to anyone in particular, but more to the universe at large. Was there anybody out there? I felt an undeniable urge to connect with someone else going through exactly what I was experiencing.

  “I was recently diagnosed with TNBC,” I wrote, tears welling up in my eyes. “I will start chemo soon.” I paused. What did I really want to say? “I’m scared,” I continued. And it was the truth. “Is there anyone out there? I need a friend.”

  With a heavy sigh, I wiped the tears for one last time, turned off the computer, and flopped into the warm bed next to Brad, who was already fast asleep.

  The next morning, I awoke to find a reply message in my inbox. It was from Jane, a recently diagnosed, forty-year-old woman from Sheffield, England.

  “I’m scared, too,” Jane wrote. “I’ll be your friend, if you’ll be mine.”

  Eureka!

  I immediately sent Jane an email telling her how excited I was to have found her. She happened to be online at that very moment, and replied right back. A lengthy, giddy email exchange between us ensued, during which we discovered that Jane and I were both scheduled to undergo our first chemotherapy infusions on the exact same day, a few weeks later. We agreed to be each other’s TNBC buddies.

  “I feel like I have had a bit of a weight lifted from my shoulders, just knowing you are there,” Jane wrote. “I am really thrilled that you want to take this journey with me and I look forward to us ‘holding hands’ across the pond as we both take our first trepidatious steps into chemo and b
eyond.”

  “You have made a big difference for me, too,” I replied. “Thank you for holding my hand. I am squeezing it right now.”

  Over the next few weeks, Jane and I prepared ourselves for chemo. Even though we were embarking on our respective battles on separate continents, it felt like we were arm in arm. In a flurry of emails, we compared the different chemo drugs our oncologists had recommended, traded practical tips we’d read about how to combat chemo side effects, and sent each other links to websites that donated head scarves and hats. We divulged personal-ad-type details about ourselves: “I love reading, listening to music, socialising, and being with my family—however much they drive me nuts,” Jane wrote. In response to my descriptions of Brad and the girls, Jane wrote to me about her husband, Adam, and two-year-old daughter, Natasha.

  We gave each other pep talks. Jane cheered me on: “You must not let this bloody disease ruin your dreams! It may feel like it is in control of you but you can be in control of it!”

  And I replied, “I am one hundred percent here for you, squeezing your hand, sending you positive vibes. You can do this. The cancer won’t know what hit it!”

  We vented and complained about things we couldn’t reveal to anyone else, lest we cause worry or offense. Jane wrote, “I had a bit of a wobble the other day. I couldn’t stop crying and crying.”

  For my part, I bristled against “staying positive” all the time, the universally accepted mantra for defeating cancer: “I am told 10,000 times a day to ‘stay positive.’ Yes, of course. But I was not ‘positive’ 24/7 before cancer, and I’m not going to be positive 24/7 after cancer. I believe completely in a positive attitude, no doubt. But I was already a positive person. And I got cancer.”

  Jane agreed and suggested we get matching T-shirts bearing the slogan STAY POSITIVE, with two thumbs up. We just understood each other.

  I lamented Brad’s suffering: “How is your husband? I have seen mine cry more in the past week than in the twenty-three years I’ve known him. It’s devastating. He keeps saying he wishes he could do it for me. . . . ” To which Jane replied that, strangely enough, her husband hadn’t cried at all. I chalked it up to Adam’s (very) British stiff upper lip.

  And then, in one of our email exchanges, I fortuitously addressed Jane as “My Dearest Jane,” and noted that this was how Miss Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice had always addressed her elder sister, Jane, in letters. Well, that certainly touched a chord with Jane: “Do you like Pride and Prejudice?!” she wrote, and I could hear her exuberance through cyberspace. “I love P&P! Did you get the BBC’s version of it with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth over there? Being a bit of a romantic at heart, my most favourite part is when, although he gets rebuffed, Mr. Darcy says to Elizabeth: ‘In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’ Oh, be still my beating heart!”

  I’d found my soul mate! I didn’t know anyone, other than Mom and Sharon, who’d even seen the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, let alone adored it like I did.

  Thanks to my mom, I’d been a period-drama junkie my whole life.

  “Come on in,” Mom had said to Sharon and me during those first uncertain months after her divorce from Dad, holding up the corner of her bedspread.

  And Sharon and I had crammed into her warm bed, transfixed by Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind—a life-altering movie that inspired me to randomly shoehorn “fiddle dee dee” into countless conversations for the better part of a year.

  Years later, when Sharon and I were in our twenties, the three of us had crammed into Mom’s bed yet again, this time swooning over all six hours of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, starring the scorching Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Since that first viewing, I had become addicted, regularly watching all six hours in one sitting. I knew it was unhealthy, but I just couldn’t stop.

  And now here was another woman afflicted with both triple negative breast cancer and Pride and Prejudice fever, just like me! What were the odds?

  “My Dearest Jane,” I replied, “yes, I am obsessed with Pride and Prejudice. I have seen the BBC version probably twenty full times and I am not exaggerating. People in the U.S. are not obsessed with this; most do not know it exists, so there is no accounting for it. My favorite part is also his first proposal. I would have said ‘Yes!’ I wouldn’t care if he had insulted my family or said his feelings violated his judgment and social situation. I would have said ‘yes’ and then tackled him and had my way with him right then and there.”

  And thus, through a shared belief that Mr. Darcy’s proposal to Miss Bennet was, without a doubt, the single most romantic moment in cinematic history, a friendship born from cancer transcended into an unbreakable sisterhood.

  Chapter 17

  Before I had my baby, I envisioned my life as a world map. My marriage was North America; my career was Europe; my family, Asia; and my friends, Australia. When I became pregnant, I assumed my future baby would fit right into my world map, like a thumbtack marking a city. My baby would be . . . Rome, perhaps. Right there—a very precise and contained place. After the baby’s arrival, I was sure, I would continue to be exactly the same person as ever—the same wife, daughter, friend, and, yes, lawyer. My map would simply have one additional thumbtack: baby.

  And then Sophie arrived. She was no longer a hypothetical baby—she was real. Quickly, I realized I’d been a complete idiot. Sophie wasn’t a thumbtack on the world map; Sophie was the map! And everything else—and I do mean everything else—became the thumbtacks. Marriage? San Luis Obispo. Sex? Ha! Des Moines, if I was lucky. Friends? Barstow. Career? Detroit. Exercise? Ah, luxury: Paris. Sleep? Sorry, we’ve run out of thumbtacks.

  But in those first glorious months of Sophie’s life, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Sophie was my world. Even after years of loving Brad so deeply, I had never experienced a love like this before. Right after Sophie was born, Brad and I mutually agreed that, in the event of a fire, there was no question whom we’d both rescue: Sophie. No offense, we both said. None taken, we both answered.

  When I took Sophie to my mom’s house, I sat in a chair, holding Sophie and staring into her sleeping face.

  “Oh, Mom,” I said, “I love every inch of her, every cell, every molecule. I love her hair, her nose, her soft lips. The way she smells. Oh, I just want to eat her up. I’ve never been so in love in all my life!” After a moment, I realized the silliness of verbalizing these obvious statements to my own mother, a woman with whom I now shared the Universal Truths of Motherhood. “Of course,” I continued, a knowing smile on my face, “I’m sure you felt exactly the same way about me.”

  My own mother, without a moment’s hesitation, answered, “No, honey. You’re pretty over the top.”

  I took an extended maternity leave from work to spend every moment with my beautiful baby. I would come back, I assured the firm, when Sophie was six months old. I was certain that six months would feel like an eternity. And then, after my brief respite as a full-time mommy, I’d be back to my old self.

  Of course, six months passed in the blink of an eye. And I wasn’t back to my old self. I wasn’t even in the same universe as my old self.

  “I can’t leave her,” I blurted to Brad on the eve of my scheduled return to work.

  But we were tens of thousands of dollars in debt from law school, and Brad’s salary alone wasn’t enough to cover student loans and living expenses.

  “We’ll get a great nanny,” Brad suggested. “She’ll be fine.”

  I was frustrated that he didn’t understand. “She might be fine. But I want to be the one to care for her.”

  “What about working part-time?”

  Oh, please. “No attorney has ever worked part-time at my firm. Ever. That’s not an option.”

  “Well, then, it’s a no-lose situation,” Brad said. “Just write up a proposal with everything you’d want in a p
erfect world, and submit it. If they say no, you need to find another job. If they say yes, you’ve got exactly what you want. It never hurts to ask.”

  I couldn’t argue with Brad’s logic.

  Just as Brad had suggested, I wrote up a ridiculous proposal, incorporating all the elements of my dream work situation—part-time hours, working from home, and full benefits—and then I sent the proposal to the managing partner of my firm. The very next day, I received word that my proposal had been summarily accepted. It was the first arrangement of its kind at my firm. I didn’t know whether to jump for joy or dissolve into tears. Yay?

  For the next six months, I worked from home and relieved the nanny multiple times per day to breastfeed and cuddle Sophie.

  I’m not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg, but Sophie wasn’t attached to stuffed animals or blankies; she was attached to me, literally and figuratively. When I tried to put her in a crib, stroller, or high chair, Sophie wailed to the point of hyperventilation, until I picked her up and snuggled her close.

  When I finally decided to wean Sophie, after her first birthday, I gave her a sippy cup full of warm chocolate milk in lieu of my breast, just as the leading baby book had instructed, and she threw it angrily against the wall, seething. I was her woobie. There would be no substitutes.

  Every night, Brad bounced Baby Sophie in his arms for an eternity to put her to sleep. When Sophie cried hysterically in her crib, not wanting to be left alone, Brad scooped her up and brought her into our bed. When I protested, telling Brad she needed to learn to soothe herself, he wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Whatever she’s crying about, it’s real to her” was his mantra. “Bears don’t leave their cubs alone in a cave, crying hysterically, or else they’d get eaten. It’s basic wilderness survival, honey. We don’t leave our baby to cry.”