Rocking the Pink (14 page)

After my first dose of Adriamycin had been administered, I visited the bathroom (wheeling my IV stand along with me) and was traumatized to see bright red, Kool Aid–colored pee coming out of me. Alarmed, I told the nurse about it.

“That's good,” she told me. “That means the drug is going through you.” She told me to drink tons of water to flush it through as quickly as possible.

Brad held my hand throughout the whole thing (except when I went into the bathroom). We talked. We stared at each other. We nibbled on bagels. He often touched my face or kissed my forehead.

The infusion itself wasn't too bad, actually. Exhausting, but not painful. But when I got home that night, a debilitating nausea descended upon me. I felt like I was dying. And, for the first time in my life, that didn't feel like a figure of speech.

A couple days later, hunched over and groaning in pain, I shuffled to the computer on my desk and wrote my first postchemo message to My Dearest Jane: “Oooh, Jane, I am having a rough go of this. Tried all the antinausea meds, but spent a grueling night. Slept with a
bucket. Woke up today, and I can't eat, I am so nauseated. Brad is so sweet, he keeps making me protein shakes, but it's hard to get them down. I am going back to bed now, just wanted to ask for a cyber hug, and give you one in return.”

Despite the time difference, Jane's reply came quickly: “Oh Laura, I am sending you massive cyber hugs. You can do this, you are a strong, beautiful, intelligent woman. You have the inner strength to get over this—even if your innards just feel like they wanna be your ‘outtards' at the moment. I am holding your hand; I am sending you so much love. You can do this. We can do this!” Apparently, Jane had not encountered the same degree of nausea I had, though her chemo had, of course, kicked her butt, too.

For five days and nights after my first chemo, I lay in bed. Brad came in and out to check on me. The girls came in and out to kiss and hug me or tell me about their day at school. Even I came in and out of being there, so to speak, though my body was mercilessly there the whole time. But do you know who never left, who stayed by my side, even when I had deserted myself? Buster the Second. That sweet little dog lay in bed right next to me, nuzzling his body right up to mine, for five days and five nights. When I groaned in pain, he laid his head right on my chest, as if to listen for my heartbeat. When the house was quiet and everyone else was asleep, I looked into Buster's brown, buggy eyes, and I felt as if our souls were communicating.

Buzzy,
you're healing me
.

Love,
he relayed back. He put his head on my chest and looked up at me with soulful eyes. He sighed.

A week passed, and, like magic, I emerged from the dark cave. I took Buster on a five-mile walk, gratefully breathing in the fresh air and sunshine. I played board games with Brad and the girls. I did laundry. And, I was thrilled to realize, I actually felt hungry. Just in time, because it was Turkey Day.

Brad and I took the girls up to the mountains for a big Thanksgiving feast with my entire extended family, who welcomed me with tearful hugs and heartfelt words. Dad in particular was beside himself with worry, telling me repeatedly how much he loved me.

I could not actually taste my favorite meal of the year, because chemo had dulled my taste buds (a common side effect). But no matter. This holiday was not about the meal.

After the dishes had been put away, I trudged into the kitchen, pulled out an electric razor, and announced to Brad and the girls and my entire extended clan of parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews, “Let's do this thang, people!” I knew my short hair wasn't long for this world, and I wanted to take control of the situation.

As I dragged a wooden chair from the dining room and seated myself ceremoniously in the middle of the kitchen, my large family assembled around me, tittering and laughing with nervous excitement.

“Okay, let's do it!” they responded back, readily understanding my need for a celebration—whether forced or not—instead of tears.

Through nervous giggles (and a few unavoidable tears), each and every family member took a turn swiping that electric razor across my head. And with each vibrating pass, I felt empowered.
You're firing me, hair? Oh, no—I quit!

In short order, my hair was shorn to military standards, except for one solitary patch at the crown of my skull that looked like a tiny yarmulke.

Everyone in the family had taken a swipe—except for Sophie. She stood in the back of the room, alone, cowering, and unwilling to touch the razor. Slowly, the group's attention shifted to my sad little Sophie.

The room became hushed.

In a flash, the charade of our celebration came to an end. Sophie's anguished face brought us back to reality. This wasn't
fun.
This was ripping all of our hearts into little tiny bits.

“Sophie,” one of her triplet cousins coaxed, “it's kinda fun.”
Thank goodness for eight-year-olds.

“You can do it, honey,” I echoed, choking back tears. “C'mon.” I wanted Sophie to feel more powerful than the cancer that had been stalking her mommy. I wanted Sophie to look back on this moment one day and remember that she had fought back.

The entire family added their words of encouragement.

Sophie timidly stepped forward, and Brad placed the buzzing razor in her slender hand.

Just behind me, I could feel the warmth of Sophie's breath on my cold, bare neck.

She hesitated.

“It's okay, honey,” I reassured again from my chair in the middle of the kitchen. Hair shavings dusted my shoulders and surrounded my chair. The room had become quiet, except for the soft hum of the razor.

Sophie exhaled softly. Finally, I heard the razor rise up behind my head and graze the top of it oh so briefly—followed by a rising cheer from the family. It was hardly a swipe at all, more of a . . . touch. But still . . . Sophie did it.

After a pause, someone else relieved Sophie of the razor and she quickly retreated to the corner of the room again, but this time, she was surrounded by her doting cousins.

Someone else finished the job, leaving me with uniformly quarter-inch-long hair all over my head, just like Demi Moore in
G.I. Jane.
I was, once again, a badass.

 

 

On our way home from our Thanksgiving feast in the mountains, I ran in to the local grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk while Brad waited in the car with the kids. As I walked down the milk aisle, I passed a surly-looking dude—we're talking shaved head and neck tattoos—who winked at me and mumbled, “Hey” as we passed each other in the aisle.

Oh my god,
I thought.
He thinks I'm edgy.
Little did he know, I had looked like a soccer mom in my not-too-long-ago past life.

Back in the car, I told Brad about my new boyfriend.

“You're hardcore,” Brad teased.

“I'm a badass, honey. Didn't you know?” After all these years, how could he not know that about me?

But the interaction inspired serious thought a moment later. “You know what? I think I actually look better like this.” I struggled to find the right words. “When I looked like everyone else and played
by society's standards of beauty, I could never quite measure up. Now that I don't look conventional and I don't have the option to, I don't feel the pressure of conventional standards of beauty, either.”

An entire lifetime of beauty magazines, hair highlights, and envying the perfect, preppy girls, and I'd wound up feeling best about myself when I was forced to abandon all the beauty aids. Go figure.

It was the first time I had glimpsed a new world on the other side of cancer. In the shower that night, I drew a smiley face in the steam that had accumulated on the Plexiglas shower door. Just for the heck of it.

When Chloe was a preschooler, Brad and I joined a neighborhood coed softball team, perhaps in an effort to reinforce the spousal connecting line on our family triangle. At one of our games, a teammate complained that his legs were sore from having run a full marathon—just over twenty-six miles—a couple days earlier. That caught my attention for two reasons. First, this guy was not a paragon of athleticism. And second, I'd always wanted to run a marathon. It was on my checklist of things to do in my lifetime.

I turned to another softball teammate, a good friend named Mike, and whispered, “Well, if
he
can run a full marathon, then I most certainly can.”

Mike replied, “If you do it, I'll do it with you.”

That night, in true Mike fashion, he sent me a spreadsheet detailing our training schedule—exactly what mileage to run on exactly which days to ensure maximum preparedness on race day.
For the next twelve weeks, he and I trained together, per the exact specifications of his well-researched spreadsheet, running hither and yon around our neighborhood and talking nonstop about life, work, family, kids, religion, and music.

On weekdays, I would come home after a long morning run and shower and dress for work just as Brad and the girls were waking up. On weekends, Brad graciously took a rain check on golf to watch the girls while I did my longest run of the week.

I noticed that my waistline was slimming down and a spring had returned to my step. At work, my boss, Janice, wondered aloud why I was committed to this crazy goal.

“It seems so time-consuming,” she observed. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I promised.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Myself.”

By this time, Janice had fulfilled her dream of opening her own law firm, and I'd been working for her for the past few years. When she had first left our swanky firm several years before, I had just gotten pregnant with Sophie. “I can only do one major life change at a time,” I had said, and had opted to stay behind at my original firm.

Right after Chloe was born, however, Janice had called me and asked, “Are you
ever
gonna come work for me?”

“I work part-time now,” I'd warned.

“That's fine,” Janice had responded. “You can work as much or as little as you want. I just want you.”

And so I'd made the switch. My swanky law firm had grown tired of my part-time work schedule anyway, so it was perfect timing.

Several years into working at Janice's new firm, however, I had realized that I did not, in fact, share her dreams (though I'd duped her, and myself, into believing so all those years earlier).

“I guess I just lack ambition,” I'd said to Janice recently, in an unguarded moment of self-reflection.

“Ha!” she had retorted. “I don't believe that for a minute.”

And she was right. What I should have said was, “I guess I just lack ambition in the law.”

But, I didn't say that. Either I hadn't admitted that truth to myself, or I was too spineless to say so to Janice. Regardless, it was clear to me that Janice and I were not cut from the same cloth when it came to the legal profession: Just watching how energized and excited she was, on a daily basis, about her law firm, about being a lawyer, and about acquiring new cases and clients made it painfully obvious to me how little those same things inspired me.

As time went by, Janice started pressuring me to work more and more hours; as it turned out, my part-time schedule wasn't working out so well for her, either. But I wasn't willing to forgo chaperoning field trips and after-school pickups—certainly not to spend even more time fighting over other people's money.

But rather than recognize, or act upon, the truth that lay in my heart, I opted instead to escape my doldrums and chase after my true self by running 26.2 miles. Logical, right?

Crossing the finish line of that marathon was a watershed moment. I had never felt so empowered in all my life. I had set out to
do something “impossible,” but with hard work and persistence (and certainly not innate athleticism), I had done it. I wondered what other “impossible” things I could accomplish by applying that same formula. I realized I'd been making excuses for years about why I couldn't pursue my most passionate self:
I can't because I have young kids . . . I can't because my job is too demanding . . .
I realized I'd stopped dreaming years ago, not because of any outside factors, but because I'd created imaginary electric fences all around myself. All at once, I looked around and those electric fences had ceased to exist.

The very afternoon after running the marathon, I sat down with my rubbery legs and a yellow legal pad, and I listed all the things I wanted to do before I died. Just one day earlier, that list would have included “run a marathon,” but now I'd checked that item off the list. I scribbled down anything that filled my heart, without regard to
how
I could possibly achieve it or how silly it sounded.

I don't remember everything I wrote on my list that day. I know it included traveling to Australia (not yet done), and also writing a book (check!). But the entry at the tippy-top of the list, underlined and circled, was one word:
sing.
I wanted to sing. I didn't know how. Onstage? In a band? In a choir? On a street corner? I wasn't sure. But I knew, in my bones, I had to do it.