Chemotherapy not only does a number on your body, it also jumbles your perception of the world around you. As you start to assess the cumulative side-effects of the chemo drugs and the radiation therapy, trust becomes a significant factor.
While I was healing from breast cancer treatment at a friend’s house in Palm Desert California I hooked up with a former classmate of mine. I didn’t really know him in high school because he was a year ahead of me and we hung out in different circles. He found me through classmates.com a couple of years ago and since then we’ve kept in touch via email every few months or so.
When we found that we shared a love for travel we thought it might be fun to meet up on one of our trips, should we happen to be in the same country at the same time. Since it looked like that was never going to happen, he asked me to call him if and when I decided to visit San Diego.
I called him a month after I arrived in Palm Desert and we made plans to meet at a wonderful French restaurant in Indian Wells that a friend of his suggested. I was a little nervous because it would be our first meeting and he didn’t (and doesn’t) know what I had been going through the past year. Luckily he emailed a current photo of himself because I certainly wouldn’t have recognized him from his yearbook photo. Yes, I sent him a current photo of me too.
Well, we hit it off and ended up closing down the restaurant after a wonderful meal and two hours of nonstop talking (actually he did most of the talking). I didn’t want to tell him that I pretty much stopped drinking alcohol when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so we shared a bottle of wine with dinner and sipped cognac with dessert.
For the next four months, he continued to make the 2 ½ hour drive from San Diego to see me every two-three weeks or so. He usually stayed for 3-5 days at a nearby hotel. We had a great time sight-seeing, watching the latest independent films at the Palm d-Ore and catching up with our lives.
The most difficult thing for me during that time was dealing with my wig in the scorching desert summer heat. About the only time I wore the wig was when he visited. The rest of the time I wore my new short artsy Palm Desert hairstyle that blended in with all of the other desert boomers.
One 115-degree August Saturday we walked through the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens and I thought I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion. My wig was uncomfortably hot and my new fashionable straw hat didn’t help much. Sweat was dripping down my forehead and running down the back of my neck, but I wasn’t about to take the wig off--- not yet. It got to be a game of sorts--- to see how long I could continue the charade before he figured it out.
Another time he asked me to join him for a swim in his hotel pool, but I told him that I couldn’t get my head wet because I had suffered a painful earache a couple of days before (true). To escape the unbearable heat I did a lot of sitting and standing in the shallow end and dog-paddled across the deep end. Luckily, my wig stayed completely dry.
While I was healing from breast cancer treatment at a friend’s house in Palm Desert California I hooked up with a former classmate of mine. I didn’t really know him in high school because he was a year ahead of me and we hung out in different circles. He found me through classmates.com a couple of years ago and since then we’ve kept in touch via email every few months or so.
When we found that we shared a love for travel we thought it might be fun to meet up on one of our trips, should we happen to be in the same country at the same time. Since it looked like that was never going to happen, he asked me to call him if and when I decided to visit San Diego.
I called him a month after I arrived in Palm Desert and we made plans to meet at a wonderful French restaurant in Indian Wells that a friend of his suggested. I was a little nervous because it would be our first meeting and he didn’t (and doesn’t) know what I had been going through the past year. Luckily he emailed a current photo of himself because I certainly wouldn’t have recognized him from his yearbook photo. Yes, I sent him a current photo of me too.
Well, we hit it off and ended up closing down the restaurant after a wonderful meal and two hours of nonstop talking (actually he did most of the talking). I didn’t want to tell him that I pretty much stopped drinking alcohol when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so we shared a bottle of wine with dinner and sipped cognac with dessert.
For the next four months, he continued to make the 2 ½ hour drive from San Diego to see me every two-three weeks or so. He usually stayed for 3-5 days at a nearby hotel. We had a great time sight-seeing, watching the latest independent films at the Palm d-Ore and catching up with our lives.
The most difficult thing for me during that time was dealing with my wig in the scorching desert summer heat. About the only time I wore the wig was when he visited. The rest of the time I wore my new short artsy Palm Desert hairstyle that blended in with all of the other desert boomers.
One 115-degree August Saturday we walked through the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens and I thought I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion. My wig was uncomfortably hot and my new fashionable straw hat didn’t help much. Sweat was dripping down my forehead and running down the back of my neck, but I wasn’t about to take the wig off--- not yet. It got to be a game of sorts--- to see how long I could continue the charade before he figured it out.
Another time he asked me to join him for a swim in his hotel pool, but I told him that I couldn’t get my head wet because I had suffered a painful earache a couple of days before (true). To escape the unbearable heat I did a lot of sitting and standing in the shallow end and dog-paddled across the deep end. Luckily, my wig stayed completely dry.
Even though we spent several days and evenings together I always managed to avoid telling him that I was healing from breast cancer and that the hair that he thought was so beautiful was not growing out of my head.
Toward the end of my stay I almost confided in him because it was getting harder to wear the wig without constantly tucking in little stray hairs that kept creeping out and I was beginning to feel a little dishonest. I was also terrified that he might want to run his fingers through my hair or brush my bangs away from my face, so I kept my icy distance.
I remembered the advice a cancer survivor gave me. “You don’t have to tell the world, your date or anyone for that matter, that you have had breast cancer. It’s nobody’s business. When the time is right you’ll know it.”
Maybe it’s because I don’t trust him enough to keep it to himself. He does like to talk so there’s a good chance my secret might accidentally slip out to other former classmates. Or maybe I’m afraid of rejection—that he wouldn’t want to hang around me so much if he knew I was damaged—that a little piece of what makes me a woman is missing and that the brunette with the long straight bob that he was enamored with actually has extremely short (1/2") wavy hair—that the times he thought I was being indifferent or melancholy were neither—that I was just tired and still feeling the effects of the chemo and radiation.
I decided when we first met that I would tell him about the breast cancer, should our relationship progress to the point that we became more than friends. In the meantime, I’m making sure that it doesn’t. So far he seems satisfied with the status-quo. Perhaps there is something he’s not telling me.
What would you do?
Posts
