Author: Beth Caldwell

A Year of Deprogramming

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

YOU GUYS! It’s my one year blogiversary! And now I will wax philosophical about writing, and sisterhood, and The Cult.

I feel like in the past year, I have noticed a change in the world. I feel like I run into less Judgy McJudgersons, and more…well, I haven’t coined a term for the opposite of Judgy McJudgersons yet, have I? How about we call her Ms. Awesomesauce? Ms. Awesomesauce does stuff like finding support for a friend who she worries has postpartum depression. Ms. Awesomesauce tells everyone that her friend’s house may be a mess, but it’s cool because the friend is focusing on what is important: spending time with her family. Ms. Awesomesauce calls out a Judgy McJudgerson when she meets one, but in a non-assholic way, because she knows we are all stronger if we come together as moms and support each other.

The best part of this last year of writing has been the amazing community of bloggers I have joined. You may not realize this if you’re not a blogger, but when you start a blog, and other bloggers hear about it, they come read your blog and start sharing the things you write that resonate with them. And they tell you how much they loved a particular piece, and WOW, does that feedback feel good! And I do the same for them, because we are all stronger if we come together as writers and support each other.

I am not a big-time blogger. I just write whatever comes in my head, not wondering “will people like this” because I am not making money off of this. If you read much of what I write, you can tell that it’s clearly therapeutic for me to be writing my blog, especially since The Cancer. So, I don’t really worry about trying to reach new readers or page views or whatever. I just spew out some stuff filled with typos and call it a day. Which is why it is all the more amazing to me that there are so many of you who DO read what I write, and say nice things about it. And it makes me feel stronger, because in this space on the Internet, we have come together as people who support each other.

So, thanks for being so Awesomesauce, you guys! And here’s to another year of fighting The Cult!

Losing the Privilege of Choice

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

All my life, I have valued education, and so my law degree, and being a lawyer, mean a lot to me. I am very proud of those things–when people ask me what I do for a living, I’m proud to say “I am a civil rights attorney.” Even though, most of what I do each day isn’t being an attorney, it’s being a bureaucrat. It’s shuffling papers and working in a system, not doing Clarence Darrow, Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg stuff. But that title, attorney, represents the hard work I did to get it. It represents my intellect and my knowledge too. And I am proud of those things.

And now I am losing that title, because I am leaving my job to become a full time cancer warrior. And I am having the predictable identity crisis about that.

I wrote a while ago about stay-at-home parenting not being a real choice for many women, that often it happens not because women hate their jobs and want to stay home with their kids, but because it’s financially better for them to stay home with the kids than to pay for daycare. The idea that it is a choice based in personal preference is really one for wealthy people, whose incomes are high enough that they can choose to work or not to work. It’s a privilege to have choice. I always had that privilege, and was grateful for it.

Until cancer took it away.

I’d been really burnt out at work before The Cancer happened. It hasn’t been the greatest place to work lately. Don’t get me wrong, it CAN be a great place to work, and I love my coworkers, but lately it’s been a really stressful job. I wasn’t happy at work–I came home frustrated a lot, and dreaded going there when I woke up in the morning. So I suppose leaving my job should be one of those “cancer is a gift” moments where I say “Cancer sucks but it gave me the gift of leaving that job I hated.”

Except, no, cancer is not a fucking gift. It’s a monster that eats the things that define you, even things you didn’t think about being defining until the cancer ate them. Like my eyebrows. And my breast. And my job. And this blog. And my privilege of choice.

I’m coping with this identity crisis by keeping up my law license. I will still be an attorney–just not one who is working. It’s a few hundred dollars a year to keep myself licensed, an unnecessary expense in a time when our family will have to be downsizing, but it’s my way of saying FUCK YOU to cancer–by holding onto one little bit of who I am, and not letting the cancer take it away from me.

Beth’s Classic Film Club: Rushmore

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

One of my all-time favorite movies, hands-down, is Rushmore. I can’t even put into words how much I love it. I feel like there is so much wisdom in that film. The secret to happiness is “you’ve just gotta find something you love to do and then do it for the rest of your life.” “Kids don’t like it when their parents get divorced.” “Too many extracurricular activities, Max. Not enough studying.” “Sic transit gloria. Glory fades.”

I’ve said in the past, before The Cancer, that I’m raising Max Fischer. The Boy hasn’t shown the leadership skills that Max has, but he’s shown all the distraction from studying. He’s also just as persistent when he sets his mind to something. I feel like, given the opportunity, he would attempt to procure some piranhas from a guy in South America. And the Boy feels deeply, and believes deeply in the importance of whatever his latest opus is, just like Max.

And then The Cancer happened, and of course, Max’s mom died of cancer.

The scene where we learn this is one where Max is talking to Rosemary, a teacher he is in love with, about her dead husband. He asks how the husband died, and she says he drowned. She asks how his mother died, and he says “Cancer.” Before I had The Cancer, this struck me as so romanticist, I mean, is there any way more perfectly tragic for someone to die than drowning or cancer? AIDS maybe. Rent has taken on new meaning for me lately too, especially because people with AIDS can get a very rare form of cancer.

The thing is, as fucked up as Max is, he’s actually a pretty great kid. Despite losing his mom. It gives me hope that if The Cancer takes me sooner instead of the later we all hope for, my kids are going to turn out just fine. Like Max, they have an awesome dad, and I’ve found them a good school. It won’t be easy for them, but they’ll get there.

If you haven’t seen Rushmore, seriously, go watch it. And then think about what your Rushmore is, and do it for the rest of your life.

An Ode to Lefty

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

I’m sorry, Lefty, but I am going to have to kill you, before you kill me.

When I was a teenager, I kept waiting and waiting for you and Righty to grow bigger. But there you sat, just being a sad little A cup, not impressing anyone. I mean, you were reasonably pert, but it took one hell of a bra to simulate anything remotely like cleavage. You did have that cool-looking mole, but since there was no cleavage there, it was hard to show that mole off. In short, you were kind of a disappointment.

And then came motherhood. And HOLY SHIT did you grow! I mean, overnight, from an A to a D, and it hurt like a motherfucker. It turned out you were so small because you were just waiting to get filled up with milk. A lot of milk. A shitload of milk. Insane amounts of milk. Enough milk to feed not just my kids, but other people’s kids too. During the two years of milk production, you usually produced about 25 ounces a day. That’s like 140 gallons of milk you made. Which is pretty fucking impressive.

And then when it was time to stop making milk, you deflated like a sad balloon, and just hung there, looking, well, sad. Who knew that A cups could be saggy? And I know I should have been like “I don’t mind, it just shows what a good job you did feeding my children” but instead I was like “seriously, you are just sad-looking.” And I put you in a push-up padded bra and then you looked OK.

And then you got cancer. A lot of cancer. A shitload of cancer. Insane amounts of cancer. Did you swell up and look good, at least? No, you just lay there looking the same as ever until I noticed you had a big ass lump. And now that the chemo has been eating the cancer, you are drooping even more. You look even more like a deflated balloon. And you STILL have cancer.

I am so fucking pissed off at you for getting sick, and I know you have to go and I have no qualms about this from a medical standpoint…and yet, I am still going to miss you. Because, you are a part of me. A deeply flawed part, but a part nonetheless.

So, I’m sorry, Lefty. We’ve had a good run, but now it’s time to go. Godspeed, and say hello to the pathology lab techs for me.

Hot Flashes

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

Holy fuck you guys, I hate hot flashes so much. I can’t remember the last time I slept more than 4 hours straight because I keep getting woken up by hot flashes. One of the many pleasant side effects of chemo, along with nausea and exhaustion, is that for young women who haven’t yet hit menopause, it fucks up your hormones and puts you into what we call chemopause. It’s just like menopause except it can sometimes go away after chemo is done.

And now I would like to apologize to any woman who has mentioned hot flashes to me and I didn’t express my deep and abiding sympathy to her.

For those of you who haven’t had a hot flash, it’s like this. You’re lying there in bed, or sitting on your couch, or doing whatever you’re doing, and suddenly you feel craaaaaaaaazy hot. Like, in-a-sauna hot, like, it’s-110-degrees-and-I-have-no-air-conditioning hot, like, what-the-fuck-kind-of-pepper-did-I-just-eat hot. And then after a couple of minutes, when you are all sweaty, it’s gone again. And you’re like, “THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!?!” And then if it’s the middle of the night, you try to go back to sleep…which doesn’t happen easily, at least not for me.

You know, women gotta go through a lot of shit in these bodies of ours. A lot of seriously fucked up shit. I have a hemorrhoid from birthing The Girl that comes back anytime I get constipated. (Did you know that Zofran, a key antinausea med for chemo patients, makes you constipated? Good times.) Don’t even get me started on periods themselves, especially after kids. And then we get menopause. So shitty.

Male readers: do you have shit like this you have to put up with? The Hubs never complains about his junk, unless someone accidentally knees it (The Girl usually, she loves to climb on people), but maybe you’re all just suffering in silence?

I dunno, I guess I shouldn’t complain because at least I’m going through this after kids. Did you know there are women who get breast cancer in their 20’s? Like, before they’ve had a chance to get married and make babies and all that? And sometimes, chemopause is permanent. At least I don’t have to worry about my fertility while I am sweating profusely at 1 AM. In fact, I sincerely hope that this will be permanent for me, because I really don’t want to go through menopause twice. Once is plenty.

In Defense of Pink

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

I feel like this post is a follow-up to my post about the color purple. Remember that one? I wrote about how the real problem with boys rejecting “girl” stuff is that it is a symptom of how we devalue the feminine. And that devaluation is a part of the larger problem of misogyny in our society.

But hating on girl toys isn’t just for boys. It’s for grown-ups too. Ever talk to an adult who sneered at buying a princess dress or a doll for their daughter? And insisted on only gender neutral or more masculine toys? I have, lots of times. They want their daughters to embrace Legos so they learn engineering, and Star Wars, so the embrace a love of space and adventure.

The Girl loves her some girl toys. She loves to play with her baby dolls and serve me some tea from her alarmingly pink tea set, and then twirl around in a princess dress singing Let it Go. That’s where she finds her joy. So, it makes me go a little mama bear on people when they start shitting on the stuff my daughter likes, and suggesting that the pretend play she is engaging in is the wrong kind of play.

I understand that it gets tricky with kids and marketing and did the kids choose the toys or did the marketers brainwash the kids. And I know that choice and tastes in little kids are more easily influenced than adults. That isn’t really the point, though. The point is that we value the traits of traditionally male things over the traits of traditionally female things. We value engineering over nursing. We pay carpenters more than child care workers.

When The Girl plays with her girl toys, like her baby dolls and her very pink tea set, she is the most kind and thoughtful and loving person. She shares her tea with me. She sings to her baby and feeds it bottles. She invites me to dance with her in her princess gown and tells me I look beautiful. These are behaviors I want her to learn and to practice and to internalize. Hell, I want The Boy to learn and practice and internalize them too, and that’s why I make him play with his sister sometimes–because HER toys teach important skills, just as much as his Legos are teaching him important skills involving engineering and construction.

What worries me is not that The Girl is having too much feminine stuff. Because there is a lot about The Feminine that is awesome. Like nurturing and compassion and empathy and thoughtfulness. What worries me is that The Boy isn’t getting enough of it from his weaponized Legos.

Pink is not the enemy. Having ONLY pink is the enemy. Lack of choice is the enemy. And devaluation of pink is the enemy.

I had an awesome dream

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

This post is a total non-sequeter, but I had the coolest dream the other night when I was all chemo’d out. I was at the Oscars, except, they were honoring TV shows, not movies, but it was definitely Oscars people were getting. I wonder if that’s my brain’s commentary on how TV is becoming way more interesting and with better story-telling than movies?

Anyway, at the start of the event, there were tables like at the Golden Globes, like with people eating dinner and getting drunk, but halfway through it turned into theater style seating. And my seat was next to Meryl Streep, who I ADORE. She was looking gorgeous in a red corset gown and she was eating a bag of potato chips. The producers of the show could hear her bag rustling and were like “WHO THE FUCK IS EATING POTATO CHIPS DIDN’T WE JUST FEED YOU DINNER THAT BAG IS TOO LOUD” so she surreptitiously dumped the chips into a bowl under her seat and kept sneakily eating them. And I turned to her and quietly sang “Did you ever know that your potato chips are my hero?”

And without missing a beat she said “They are the wind beneath your wings. You want some?” And then we were best friends and we drank wine and laughed at the reality TV stars that were getting awards while she anxiously waited to hear if her project was going to win…but I woke up before we found out.

Meryl, if you like wine and potato chips, as a scene in Postcards from the Edge suggested you might, and cheesy references to Bette Middler songs, look me up because I think we could be kindred spirits. Also, I really hope you win your TV Oscar someday.

Disability Benefits and Bureaucrazy

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

So, like a lunatic, I have been working, or, more like, trying to work, through my cancer treatment. Which basically means that when I am not at a doctor’s office or recovering from chemo, I go to my office and do what I call The Hug’N’Chat. The Hug’N’Chat means that lots of my coworkers come by and hug me and ask how I’m doing and want to know how treatment is going. Then they chat about work or their kids or whatever, and then they leave and the next Hug’N’Chatter comes in. I’ve been given a lot less work to do because, (a) I am so rarely at the office, and (b) when I am there, I don’t get that much done because I am so busy doing the Hug’N’Chat. I am handling a little work, but it’s fair to say I am not pulling my weight at the office these days.

At first, I thought this was going to be temporary–I’d have my chemo, they’d put me on hormone therapy, and I’d hopefully live a while longer, but there wasn’t much to do in the way of treatment because I was Stage IV, so I’d likely be back at work a lot more. But now that the docs are throwing around words like “cure” and “aggressive treatment” and “off the reservation,” it’s become clear that I don’t have time to go to work. Juggling 3 jobs–attorney, parent, and cancer patient–is just not feasible in the long term, no matter how kind and sympathetic my office has been. (And boy howdy have they been sympathetic! Honestly, people’s kindness floors me, again and again.)

So, luckily for me, I am eligible for disability retirement from my job, and for SocIal Security Disability Insurance. Most employers these days don’t offer disability retirement–I happen to work someplace that has a pension, and disability retirement is part of that. SSDI is something everyone who pays into Social Security is eligible for. Now, I am lucky–I have a spouse with a good job, and my disability retirement will make this whole thing not so painful of a transition. I get to keep my health and life insurance, too. But if i didn’t…

Let me paint a picture for you. You’re a single mom of two kids, ages 8 and 4. One day, you have a stroke. You’re gonna live, but work is not going to be part of your future anymore. So, you apply for SSDI. Somehow you navigate the online system, or maybe a friend helps wheel you down to the Social Security office in your neighborhood, and you fill out the paperwork. 5 MONTHS LATER, you finally become eligible for benefits. That’s not because of a backlog, folks, that’s written INTO THE LAW. You literally do not become eligible for benefits until you have been disabled for 5 months. So, how are you and your kids supposed to eat in the meantime? How are you supposed to pay your rent or your mortgage? What in the actual fuck?

Better still, now that you can’t work, you’re going to have to kiss your health insurance goodbye, huh? And guess what? You can qualify for Medicare once you qualify for SSDI…but only after two years. TWO YEARS ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?! So right when you are disabled the most, in need of the most medical care, you lose access to a system to pay for it? WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?!

Folks, these are stupid rules. And like all rules, they were made up by people and they can be un-made-up by people. All it takes is someone to care enough to write a letter to their member of Congress. Every day. For the next 3 years. Until it changes. Who’s with me?

Grown Up Movies for Kids: Little Women

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

It’s rare for The Girl, who is, after all, only 2, to really get into these grown-up movies for kids. So it’s even more rare for both her and The Boy to both love the same grown up movie. So, this one is a real gem: Little Women. In this review, I’m talking about the version with Wynona Ryder, because it’s on cable all the time, but the version with June Allyson is delightful too.

Let’s go through our list of things that frighten people off from showing grown up movies to their kids: Sex, nope. Swearing: nope. Violence: nope. It doesn’t get any more sweet and pure than Little Women.

I’m not sure what it was about this movie that made The Girl like it so much. It pains me to say this, but perhaps it was the dresses, which are hoop-ish and probably remind her of Sophia the First (shudder). Except, here are girls who clearly aren’t princesses, and that’s what I love about this movie. They struggle for money, and yet they do incredibly kind things like give away their Christmas breakfast to the poor German family that has even less than they do. They rely on the kindness of neighbors, they sell their hair so they don’t have to ask their mean aunt for money, and they work odd jobs to make ends meet. And they’re happy–not that they’re perfect and not that they don’t sometimes wish for more, but they know that they have each other, and that’s way more important than having a palace. It’s like the lesson Sophia pretends to be teaching (“remember how happy we were when we were broke, Mom? Let’s try to recreate our life of poverty, except in a palace!”).

I will also point out that this is a movie about sisters learning to be different instead of competing with each other. They all have different skills–Meg is a nurturer, Jo is a writer, Beth is a musician, and Amy can paint–and somehow, they all admire each other without being all that envious. I mean, they’re not saints and of course they have their moments, but everyone is proud of Jo’s book, and Amy’s painting, and they all celebrate when Beth gets that piano for Christmas. This is a life lesson we all want our kids to learn–find your passion and do it, without worrying about what your sibling is doing. It’s especially important in my family, where it have one child who has a disability and is going to face challenges in school, and one who appears not to.

Is this movie a bit overly sweet? Of course it is, but you know what? I am so sick of movies where people are fighting and shooting at each other, not to mention movies with exactly one female character in the whole film. Here is a movie about women and girls, and it’s charming, and my kids found it charming too. So, set aside your snarkiness for an afternoon and smile at people loving each other for a change. Think of it this way: how many movies are there where sisters, or other women, are mean and just shit on each other all the time? How about we counteract that with a little kindness?

A Cancer Update: Goodbye Booby!

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

One of the things that BLOWS about cancer care in this country is how shitty we do at treating people with metastatic disease, like me. The standard protocol for breast cancer that isn’t metastatic is surgery, then chemo, then radiation, then years of drugs to hopefully keep your cancer from ever coming back. It’s pretty effective–5-year survival rates for non-mets breast cancer are pretty high.

When you have metastatic disease, though, things are different. Doctors don’t talk about curing your cancer, they talk about extending your life. And that’s probably because there isn’t that much money spent on research on metastatic cancers. Shitloads of money get spent on early detection so people don’t end up Stage IV like me, which is good, prevention and early treatment kick ass…except, none of that research led to the detection of my cancer. I had to find that tumor myself. And now it would be pretty awesome if some of those research dollars that did me no good could be spent on saving my life instead. Hey Congress, you listening?

But I digress, and I didn’t mean for this post to be angry or ranting, because actually, I bring up the “we don’t talk about cure” stuff because a couple weeks back, I met with a surgeon who DID use the word “cure” to describe how she hopes my case will turn out. I nearly fell over when she said it. Hope, as Tim Robbins says in the Shawshank Redemption, is a good thing, maybe the best of things. The surgeon will be doing her part to make it happen by slicing off my asshole boob that’s been trying to kill me.

Here’s the plan: in a few weeks, the surgeon, who I now love almost as much as my medical oncologist, is going to do a mastectomy of my left super-tumorific breast, and also take out my lymph glands on that side, all of them. I’m not having reconstruction yet–it slows healing time. We’re still waiting on my genetic testing to come back, to find out if there is a genetic component to my cancer, because if there is, they’ll take the other breast too, since it’ll be likely to try to kill me later on down the line. And I’d do reconstruction at that point. If I don’t have a gene that’s causing this shit, they’ll let righty be.

After the surgery, they’ll probably do radiation on where-the-boob-was, which is another reason not to do reconstruction at the same time as the lopping-off. Now, the upside to more radiation is this: if they’ve done radiation on your chest, it makes everything more taught, so they can’t use implants. So instead, they give you A TUMMY TUCK and use that fat to fill up your boob. All my tiny boobed ladies: ever looked at your belly and thought “If only the fat would accumulate in my boobs and not on my belly.” I AM GOING TO LIVE THAT DREAM YOU GUYS!!! It won’t be for a while, but still, I am totally stoked.

And of course, they’re scheduling all this around our family trip to Disneyland in August. (Where my LA readers at? You should come stalk me, I’ll be there during Half Marathon Weekend.) The surgeon said I can absolutely go on roller coasters post-op. She said no swimming pools if I still have the drains in, but the white water raft ride is fine. And she specifically said to go on Tower of Terror.

The nurse who did my intake paperwork for the surgery team asked how I am feeling about surgery. I said “excited” and she was like “Oh! OK…” And I said “I bet you don’t get that reaction much, huh?” And she said, “Not frequently, no, but once in a while. Usually from people in your situation.” Yes, mets patients are really happy when the doctors haven’t given up on us. I want my cancer gone, and I am really glad my doctors want that too, and are willing to try to help me reach that goal.