Time at the sea
Those old timey folk sure knew what was up when their doctors prescribed time at the sea
Do you ever read Jane Austen and think, damn I wish I could be prescribed several months in Bath?*1
When I got my official breast cancer diagnosis and treatment plan in May 2022, my medical team strongly advised that I continue working. They said that maintaining a sense of normalcy and staying busy would be good for me. They weren’t wrong, exactly, but there’s an implicit lie built into this guidance.
What’s true:
Staying active is, in fact, crucial. The data is clear—exercise during treatment and after treatment is associated with more successful outcomes and stunning reductions in recurrence.
Staying busy can help. Have you ever been unwillingly unemployed for more than a few weeks? It becomes torturous. Eventually you don’t want to change out of pajamas or wash your face. You have ravenous bouts of self-loathing. And the BOREDOM! My god, the boredom. What’s worse is that now we have a billion apps that fill the bored time but are unable to fill our spirits. Going through that kind of stasis while you’re battling fatigue, horrible side effects, and, you know, a justified fear of death, probably isn’t great for the ol’ mental health.
Distracting yourself with the mundane annoyances of the workplace can be a good diversion from The Magnitude Of Your Experience lurking in your peripheral vision at all times. The absurdity of workplace stressors can be kind of funny sometimes, if I’m being honest. It’s why I especially appreciated hearing my loved ones’ petty office grievances and relationship dramas during treatment. Like please tell me more about that asshole in your department because I’m so tired of obsessively monitoring my fiber intake.
The implicit lie is, of course, that I ever had the god damn choice to stop working. Baby, this is America! You can’t afford cancer, even if you have a well-paying job!
Before I finally buckled and made a GoFundMe, people sent me gifts from a medical wish list I pulled together, as well as meals, gift cards, money, and more. The “official” costs of treatment are high, but the random things you need throughout can really rack up quite a hefty bill. Using those things today still remind me that I am loved. I went out gardening for a few minutes recently in an SPF shirt that a friend sent me because I had to be extra careful in the sun when I was undergoing chemo. (Having received radiation means that I’ll always have to be careful now.) I still use my silk pillowcases that kept my itchy, patchy scalp soothed during much worse times. The Igloo cooler I received for my ice gloves and socks was lovingly used for my writing weekend.
But look, here’s the point: without my job, I don’t have health insurance, an income, a roof over my head—you get the idea. The social safety net won’t catch your average gal and I don’t have to tell you that having health insurance tied to our employers is so very intentional. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
Some days, the despair was truly unbearable. The incongruousness of desperately hoping to survive while writing redundant status updates like they are the most important thing in the world. How can anyone expect me to care about deliverables or KPIs or Jira story points? Man, I can’t fucking poop!! I am mainlining Metamucil and I have hot sweats waking me up in the middle of the night!!! Like, biiiiiitch…2
Instead of resting or doing things that soothed my aching heart, I was stuck in my center city apartment with horrible temperature control and shitty building management on Microsoft Teams calls. I desperately wanted a patio so that I could sit outside with my tea in the morning and journal. I dreamt of jogging, something I hadn’t bothered to do in years. I wanted to go to Glacier and Joshua Tree and roller blade and dance and lay my head in the grass. God, I even wanted a puppy for a bit there. (I’m not a dog person and I’m allergic anyway, so you know I was Goin’ Thru It to want a puppy.)
But what I wanted most was water. I cried with joy once during a sound bath when it sounded like the ocean, feeling viscerally like I was standing in the cold Pacific, waves crashing around me. I suppose now that I think about it, it makes sense that I ended up joining the breast cancer dragon boat team. (More on that another time!) The Willamette doesn’t compare to the ocean, of course, but it ain’t nothin.
Working through treatment wasn’t all bad, but what if I didn’t have to? What if I could have been whisked away to the sea for a few months with a room overlooking the craggy Oregon coast? What if my meals were taken care of, and I had activities to keep me busy but not overextended? What if I could spend days writing or painting or weaving? What if I had psychiatric support and other sick bitches around to commiserate with? What if we walked the garden paths and planted flowers and tended shrubs and composted weeds? What if we pointed out and delighted in micro-seasonal changes? What if we identified trilling birds? What if we read books and talked about why so-and-so’s prose sucks? What if we learned about surviving in slow, loving quietude? What if we grew accustomed to tasting salty air in the morning? What if we stopped emailing and Zooming and Slacking for a time and learned to stop fearing death?
But shareholder value, Lena, what about shareholder value you might say! And lol so true, bestie. Gotta always strive for that sweet sweet shareholder value. That’s certainly what you’ll be thinking of fondly when you watch your sisters signing the witness lines on your Last Will & Testament before your surgery, just in case.
Anyway, when are we going to the sea?
xox,
Lena
QQ: Is that where “baths” came from? Or the other way around? Not gonna google that, just going to go ahead and be ignorant for the rest of my life.
This is where I talk about how supportive everyone was at work blah blah but we’re not talking about that right now. That’s for another day.