Don't tell you date you had breast cancer (until you're ready)

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.

We hiked along the trails at the top of the Palm Springs tram, walked around the rock formations in Joshua Tree National Park, meandered through a botanical garden and browsed through the quaint shops in Idyllwild.

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?

When you start chemotherapy start a new job

When I first mentioned the idea to my oncologist, Dr. Leimert, he was not very pleased and had some difficulty understanding why I would want to do something that could possibly cause me more stress than I was currently going through. He said that most people quit their jobs or take a leave of absence when they start chemotherapy because it’s so stressful and uncomfortable. I told him that not having an income would be more stressful.

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer I spent every waking moment on my computer doing Google searches on everything from breast cancer treatments to breast reconstruction to areola tattooing. There was no way I could concentrate on running two businesses, but I knew that I had to do something to take my mind off the breast cancer and my obsessive Googling, so I thought, why not work for someone else?

After stocking up on healthy food from Trader Joes I stopped next door at Norwalk Furniture and asked the manager if he was doing any hiring and he said, “As a matter of fact, I am.” So I filled out an application and told him that I had no experience in retail, had never designed a home (except my own), but that I did have an art background and had worked as a draftsman for two years, and that I had very good taste (at least I like to think so) and a strong sense of design and that my friends even asked me for advice on how to decorate their homes.

He gave me a pencil and paper, a room template, some furniture cutouts, pointed me toward the fabric displays and said, “Okay, design a living room and then pitch your ideas to me.” He hired me on the spot.

And so against the advice of Dr. Leimert, I started my new job the day after my first chemotherapy treatment.

During the four months that I worked for Norwalk I managed to look and act halfway normal. In fact nobody knew that I was undergoing chemotherapy treatments until the last two weeks. Whenever I felt nausea coming on I popped some anti-nausea pills. My co-workers thought I was dieting. And the wigs I wore fit in perfectly with my new designer role. I looked fashionable --- artsy and trendy --- and my customers were always complimenting me on my hairstyle.

It wasn’t always easy. Sometime in snowy January I came down with pneumonia and was confined to my apartment for ten days so that I wouldn’t be exposed to any other disease, and also to prevent spreading the pneumonia to others. It was a long ten days. I watched OPB and Oprah and read novels and did crossword puzzles and started Google searches on breast cancer again. The only contact I had with the outside world was when my brother, Mark, left bags of groceries on my front porch. He rang the doorbell, but managed to get halfway down the sidewalk by the time I opened the door.

During the second two months of chemo I was given infusions of Taxol, which didn’t produce nausea, but did make my body ache during 5-8 days after the treatment. On the fifth day following my first Taxol treatment I could barely get out of bed. My whole body ached, like I had the flu. I took a pain pill and stayed on the sofa all day watching old Clint Eastwood movies.

I managed to hang on to the job until my last day of chemo when the manager let me go because “it wasn’t a good match.”

The main point is that the new job helped get me through chemotherapy with relatively little discomfort. Even though I didn’t feel great some days, I always had to act like I felt fine so that others wouldn’t know what I was going through. Learning a new job forced me to focus on something besides the breast cancer and I really enjoyed the work --- at least the design element.

My advice to others who are about to begin chemotherapy is, instead of moping around and feeling sorry for yourself during chemotherapy treatments, start a new job or take up a new hobby. You’ll be much better off focusing on something positive. Chemotherapy does not make you an invalid, so you don’t have to act like one. I know it’s tempting to let your friends and family baby you, but don’t let them. Instead, be an inspiration for others by taking charge of your life and by being strong. Do something you enjoy.