Reconstruct This...

Ocho and I drove to the City this afternoon, hoping to get into the Dale Chihuly exhibit at the De Young. It was sold out. So instead we ambled through Golden Gate Park and into the botanical garden cactus sale, where Ocho bought seven vibrant green succulents. The stress of selecting only seven of those luscious plants must have exhausted the guy, because it’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday night and Ocho’s in bed sleeping like a rugby player. No worries. That means I can stay up late and write about a topic that is difficult to write about—my changing body. I was extraordinarily proud of myself after going through chemo without gaining a pound. In fact, looking back, that was a sweet time. I was flat, and I was bald. But I was loved. And I knew I wasn’t always going to be flat and bald. Those were temporary experiences. Then I went through 28 sessions of radiation. I would arrive at the Dorothy B. Schneider Cancer Center at 8 a.m., have Tony or Wayne radiate me, apply anti-burn gel to my ra...

My new sister-in-law, like my mom, is big on thank you notes. When I was in Florence three years ago, I bought her some hand-made thank you notes at a quaint, little stationery store called Il Papiro. (After receiving them, she immediately wrote me a thank you note for the thank you notes.) My mom is also big on thank you notes. In fact, she’s huge on thank you notes. When I was a teenager, I used to tease her: “If they made you’re welcome cards, I’m sure you’d send those, too. She’s been scouring stationery shops for a box of those ever since. After my mastectomy and during chemo, I kept a detailed journal of the kind and generous things people did for me. I wanted to remember who had cooked us lasagne, who had sent us gerber daisies, who had brought me a bag of Kiehl’s bath products, who had simply called or stopped in front of my driveway to say I’m thinking about you . I also kept the journal to make sure that I knew who had sent what so I could send thank you notes. I know of th...

I am hypersensitive. And I sometimes have a little trouble letting things go. This is not a headliner to those who know me. And it’s old news to Ocho, who weekend before last made the mistake of asking me why I’d chosen grape-colored mums to stick in the ground next to the Japanese maples in my front yard. Back in the day, I spent whole weekends in my yard. I maintained my own hedges and trees. I cleaned my own gutters. I demossed my own deck. I built my own swingsets. And I squeegeed my own windows. But in February 2006, I went back to work full time. Under normal circumstances, working my way back into a corporate environment after freelancing for 15 years would have been a difficult and stressful transition. But the circumstances became a little harder at the end of May 2006, when I was diagnosed with infiltrating lobular carcinoma. New job. New cancer. New loads of adrenaline being pumped into the system. For a while, I was able to maintain a sense of control. I woke up at 6:00 a.m...

Like most couples, Ocho and I recycle arguments. In fact, we've totally flattened the cans on a few topics. So I was delighted when we recently got into it about something brand new. Ocho was at his house in his bed watching a movie on his Macbook. I was at my house making an Excel spreadsheet of my expenses. I called Ocho, looking for a distraction. "Who's in the movie?" I asked. "It's the guy who was in The Mod Squad ," he said. "He also was in The Matrix ." "Dude," I said. "You are so not the man when it comes to '70s pop culture. Lawrence Fishburne was in The Matrix , but it was a totally different guy in The Mod Squad ." "Same guy," Ocho insisted. With that challenge, I opened another browser window and googled a photo of Lawrence Fishburne. Then I googled The Mod Squad . This is one of the photos I found: All of a sudden, it didn't matter whether the actor in Ocho's movie was Lawrence Fishburne or...

In the twelve months since I lost my hair to AC chemo, I've gone through several transitional--and sometimes transforming--looks. When I was bald, I felt alive and powerful. Like Yul Brenner in "The King and I," standing barefoot, legs apart, fists on hips, one eyebrow arched, beautiful oval head catching some rare air. (Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!) I went bald at home. To work, I wore a very pricy wig. My co-worker E. said that when I wore my reading glasses I looked like Nana Mouskouri. He googled a photo of her and emailed it to me. "She's cool looking," I said, realizing at that moment just how gracious and kind E. is. I didn't look like Nana Mouskouri in that wig. I looked like a 46-year-old communications manager with no eyebrows, gray skin and a very shiny brunette pageboy with permanently sideswept bangs. A few months later, when I began to grow a weird, felt-like substance on my head, my son announced that I'd just been promoted from sarge...