BC/AD (BEFORE CANCER / AFTER DIAGNOSIS)
A POETIC TIMELINE OF ILLNESS
FOR PATIENTS AND HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS
by
Kimberly Darcy Anne Taylor
B.A., Vancouver Island University (2007)

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
IN
ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
MARCH 2018
©Kimberly Taylor, 2018

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Abstract

In December 2005, I was diagnosed with aggressive, invasive breast cancer. A
former competitive athlete, I was shocked but also relieved I was sane. I wasn’t dramatic
or attention-seeking, a hypochondriac, or lonely, as my doctor had admonished for five
years. I really was really sick. And to think it was my dog who had proven me right.
Throughout 2006, I underwent two surgeries, a systemic infection, chemotherapy,
and then radiation. I lost all my hair but missed my eyebrows the most. I ballooned like a
blowfish. My eyeballs became sandpaper. I contracted a staph infection and was the
ugliest Me I could’ve imagined. But I survived.
This thesis is a poetic and verse self-narrative of 2006. Using theories of
performance, art therapy, autoethnography, Arts Based and transdisciplinary research
(among others), I chronicle the hardest days and nights I have ever known.
I am surviving.

Note: to view the performance of my Thesis Defense, please visit YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuhu0Xz8g9c

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract

ii

Table of Contents

iii

Dedication

v

Introduction

1

Preface
Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

for Del

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secret keepers
the test
blunt force call
ocean, earth & limbo
beginning in waves
New Year’s Eve
Frances
January 19
obligations of the nightmare
cycle one
winter bird (the whole fan-damily)
February 9
cutting thunder from tides
April 9
icing

27
28
29
30
34
35
36
37
39
40
43
45
46
47
48
50

Meditation I
smooth
a balance in imbalance
come again
when poison is poison
three for comfort
such small things
June’s encounter
they’re piling up
playing poker
(I think it’s) June 28
rowing in July

51
52
54
55
56
57
59
60
61
63
64
65
68

Meditation II: Learning to Float
the Roman in me

70
71
73
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Chapter Four

Chapter Five

YouTube

rowdies and hoodlums
watching buffalo in August
of love and sleep
vista
resonance
relapse
prairie fire
A-wall

74
75
77
78
79
80
81
82

gentle radiation
September 7
Mother, for Wam
afterwards
deep currents run smooth, for Candace
flat, round stones
October 8
dear Dr. G:

83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
92

After Words
Epilogue

95
96
97

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuhu0Xz8g9c
Performance of Thesis Defense Presentation
“BC/AD (before cancer/after radiation): A Poetic Timeline
of Illness for Patients & Healthcare Professionals”

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Dedication: For every day, I am blessed. This thesis journey includes too many people to
thank individually and my heart is full! I can’t thank ‘my people’ enough!
First and foremost: Thank you Dr. Robert Budde for urging me onward, forward, always.
Respectfully, to my parents: I don’t know words enough to convey my love and thanks.
To Gloria: You really are Glorious, Gloria, and you were elemental to my survival.
Thank you for caring, for whisking me into your own home when needed, or when my
home was full of chemical fumes lifting from the basement workshop. You listened,
made me laugh, and mothered me. You arranged a loving environment for me during my
radiation. You are amazing.
To Crystal: I’ll never be able to make beet borscht as yummy as yours. Thank you, thank
you, thank you for keeping me fed when everything else wouldn’t stay down. What an
angel!
To Sharon and Meredith: from waxed kitchen floors to endless bags of puppy food, you
both gave and gave. I was welcome in your home with all the Weiner dogs; laughter IS
really great medicine. I am indebted for your generosity and kindnesses.
To Steve and Marilyn: You both allowed my words to pull me through, giving me your
time, talent, guidance and professionalism, staying ever present as my teachers and my
mentors. Namaste.
To Margie, Chris, and all the chemo nurses: You are ALL amazing miracles on two feet.
In thanks, I pay-it-forward whenever I can; it’s the only way I can thank you enough.
To my Sistarly Love, Valerie: I couldn’t have made it without the Buffalo Wig, without
your constancy, and your fierce love. God gave me the best sister, and she gave me the
will to conquer this sh*t. I love you with all my heart.
To Liza: Your honesty and candor were so refreshing, and you provided me with
alternative perspectives and possibilities. Your belief in me never waned or wavered. You
shared your soul and your bright Marilyn Monroe laugh… O, my Dear Friend!
To Shizuko: I admire you in a very special way. Your quiet voice, your courage, your
patience… thank you for traveling so far to see that I would survive. Those few hours in
my dining room will be a treasured memory, forever.
To Drs Olivotto and Carr: You moved at the speed of light and saved me despite my
condition. Perhaps you will never know how I admire and truly appreciate you both, but I
hope Karma repays you ten-fold for the goodness you have given to everyone you have
helped over your careers. I salute you.
And to Freeman: Rest in Peace, ManMan, my friend, keeper, and Hero. I miss you daily.
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BC/AD
before cancer/after diagnosis
Introduction
Whenever someone asks my age, I get it wrong by a year. It’s because 2006 was a
nightmare during which I was not really living so, without thinking, I literally subtract
one orbit of the sun from my age in an attempt to dilute my memory or deny somehow
that 2006 ever happened.
On December 22, 2005, I was diagnosed with aggressive, invasive breast cancer.
The diagnosis part had actually begun in October, when my puppy Freeman jumped up
against my chest for perhaps the 100th time since he had become part of the family just
three months earlier. A typical puppy, Freeman was energetic and inquisitive, but no
matter who he was greeting, he was always polite and distinctly paws-off. It was the
complete opposite with me however, and this particular October day, he did his usual:
with his front paws together, Freeman launched himself up onto his hind legs without
warning and hit me in the right breast. Because it had become his habit to jump up on me
like this, or to walk up to me as I was sitting on the couch and raise one paw to strike me,
I believed he was being willful and trying to claim Alpha dominance over me. Freeman
often caused me physical pain, and I had become so frustrated that I had been discussing
finding him a new home.
On that particular day however, my A-cup breast instantly ballooned into a
cantaloupe sized, searing boob. Alarmed and deeply in pain, I phoned my doctor and
pleaded for a mammogram and companion ultrasound. Seven days later, I called my
doctor again, but this time I demanded a mammogram and ultrasound. I had spent a full
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week with brutal, non-stop pain and excessive swelling. I knew something was terribly
wrong, why was I not being taken seriously? I cried and shouted into the phone until I
was promised the appropriate referrals and appointments, and four days later, laying on
the ultra-sound table, I saw four (O my God, four) cloudy masses on the ultra-sound
screen. Four had never been a good number for me, and my blood instantly cooled. I
knew it was Cancer, and instinctively knew it was very, very bad. I had been complaining
to my doctor about that breast for a number of years. I had had one small lump removed
five years earlier, after stepping out of the shower one morning to realize the nipple
expressing a bright streak of blood down my body to pool on the linoleum floor. The
lump had been removed, but the breast had been bothersome ever since; how many times
had my physician told me to relax, that I was simply imagining discomfort? Perhaps I
was depressed (here’s a prescription for Zoloft, here’s a prescription for sleeping pills), or
could it be that my marriage was unhappy and I was just seeking outside male attention
and/or sympathy?
I was not fooled that November afternoon when the ultra-sound technician told
me that he was ‘just going to call another, more experienced technician’ to help him deal
with what he called a technical issue, a problem with his machine. It was so obvious he
was lying—he too saw those four cloudy masses—and that the image on his screen was
not good. I stopped him before he went out the door. “I haven’t had breakfast, you know.
I have an empty stomach. I can go into surgery right now, you know…” My voice was
strangely calm, abnormally lower in tone. I sounded miles away from myself.
It took less than five weeks for me to undergo a swift and permanent change:
what I had previously perceived as healthy, was in fact ignorant. In just weeks, I had two

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serious surgeries and a horrible post-operative infection, and became an acute-care,
chemotherapy patient with a bad prognosis. By January 6, 2006, the date of my second
surgery (a radical mastectomy on my right side), my perceptions and all I associated with
what life could and would and should be, had turned pink. Breast cancer was suddenly
everywhere. In fact, I was only one of 21,000 Canadian women going through the
nightmare that year. I was a fit, vibrant, energetic woman in my late thirties, a former
professional-competitive cyclist who had held a proud ranking in two countries. But I
was completely unaware that there are indicators regarding breast cancer risk, and that I
exhibited a handful of them. I had never had children or been pregnant. I went through
puberty and developed very late. My monthly periods had always been abnormally
painful, and my flow quite light. My hormones had always been out-of-whack when
compared to my peers. Due to my athletic lifestyle, I survived and flourished on a
protein-rich diet. And finally, I am an Ectomorph body type. But wasn’t I super-fit?
Wasn’t I young, and strong? I had not invited or sought ill-health. For years, I had
exercised diligently, eaten as organic as I could afford, cooked healthy, low-fat meals, got
counselling, and lived simply. I was doing everything ‘right’ so shouldn’t I be completely
healthy?
It was confounding in many ways. However, I learned a hard and mind-shattering,
indisputable fact: Cancer is a volatile force, striking whenever and whomever it wants
irrespective of age, religion, gender, demographic, intelligence. Lifestyle can of course be
a factor, but no matter what any self-help author may suggest or try to sell (yes, Louise
Hays, I mean you), no one chooses Cancer. It is as non-discerning, surprising, and violent
as shrapnel. That terrible year, nearly 6,000 Canadian women were killed by breast

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cancer. Six thousand. Although I never asked why me?, I was astounded that such an
important and monstrous battle had been going on in my body without my knowledge,
without my permission. I didn’t fear death nearly as much as I feared missing important
things; what came to mind immediately were my nieces… if I died, I would never see
them in their wedding dresses, never meet their children. From diagnosis forward, I
would wonder daily if I was one of Canada’s 6,000.
The first thing I had to take care of, in order to devote myself to fighting Cancer,
was to withdraw from my Bachelor Degree. I was pursuing a double-major in Creative
Writing and English, in third year of a four-year program, earning high grades and
enjoying the post-secondary learning experience. Although I never cried about my
diagnosis, I cried openly when I had to quit my studies. I had pursued academia late in
life and was facing the possibility that I may never earn a degree; I suddenly wanted my
degree more than I could stand.
Throughout 2006 and during my primary treatments however, I kept my academic
dream alive by continuing to write. Two of my professors were gracious enough to
challenge me to continue enrolment in directed study courses they designed just for me.
One course was Longform Poetry (instructor Stephen Guppy), the other, Creative Fiction
(instructor Marilyn Bowering). Difficult as concentration was for me, these courses were
foundational to my sanity. Stringing words together offered me a tenuous and delicate
life-line, preventing my losing sight of the woman I had been BC (before chemo). But I
was incredibly fragile; 2006 was the beginning of my AD (after diagnosis) life when I
struggled through what I call my “aggressive treatments.” My surgeon had reviewed my

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medical history and discovered that the lump I had removed from my breast in 2000 was
in fact cancerous, and that I should have received “at least radiation” at that time.
To this day, it mystifies me that both my GP and that original specialist could
apparently not read pathology reports correctly. I will forever be shocked that not one but
two professionally recognized doctors somehow made such a mistake. The awful
outcome of their errors was my Oncologist telling me on the phone at eight o’clock that
New Year’s Eve that I only had six months left. My situation was incredibly urgent. Dr.
Olivotto said he hoped I would spend my “last six months trying to get through the eight
rounds of chemotherapy” he was prescribing and that if I did, he foresaw radiation
treatments in order to ultimately survive. He informed me that I had one of the best breast
surgeons in the country on my side, and that together, the two of them would do
everything they could to help me. Before I hung up the phone, I told Dr. Olivotto I
needed full disclosure about my prognosis, because the next time I saw his name on my
call display, I would likely be unable to force myself to pick up the phone. I remember
that call as being entirely scary and mind-blowing, but I also remember hanging up the
phone pleased that Dr. Carr and Dr. Olivotto were my doctors.
More than anything else, I knew that I was living in the best medical-now
possible. Survival would be more possible due to the fantastic medical and technological
advancements that were available to me. My surgeon and my oncologist were already
working together to change my life for the better, and I could not have asked for a more
professional and passionate pair of practitioners.
It was a very, very life-and-death battle I was in, and that whole year (2006) of
treatment was horrible. Whenever I had the strength, irrespective of my cognitive

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function or lack-there-of, I wrote. Poetry was the thread I clung to, even as I returned to
full time studies the very day after I my radiation treatments were completed. But I had
no choice really; I was being hounded, badgered, and bullied by my disability insurance
company, whose representatives called at least twice a week for that full year to inquire
when I was going to go back to work. How was I feeling? Once my aggressive treatments
were completed, their questions changed to a far more direct and demanding tone: How
long exactly did I expect them to pay me a monthly amount, since my treatments were
now over? I couldn’t take the added stress, becoming terrified of the ringing of my home
phone, and begged them to stop bothering me. Miraculously, my monthly insurance
payments stopped. I didn’t have the energy to fight back, so my only income disappeared.
Student loans was virtually no better; for four months prior to the conclusion of
my treatments, they had been withdrawing loan re-payments directly out of my bank
account. This, despite my having faxed them my medical files and loan-forgiveness
paperwork over and over and over, despite having no income outside of the disability
insurance which I used to buy groceries and anti-nausea medication. Though my reliance
on those expensive little pills (approximately $38 per pill) had ceased immediately after
chemo had finished, I had to force myself back into life as quickly as possible before I
had to also claim bankruptcy.
I lost almost the entirety of my energy during the ensuing years of adjunct
therapies. Tamoxifen was a five-year, daily commitment; a small pill (this medication
was covered by medicare) with massive impact. I had initially tried to avoid it, but a
survivor who worked in the English department at my university begged me to take it,
weeping that Tamoxifen was a gift I could not afford to ignore. She had known women

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who had not had the same luxury I was being offered, and those women had died when
their breast cancer recurred. Put your fear aside, and take the Tamoxifen. Take it. Now, I
am thankful that she shared such hard truth with me, and am deeply thankful for her
candor and compassion. Side-effects of Tamoxifen include pronounced chemo-brain and
what my oncologists cautioned would be ‘accumulative fatigue’ (boy, they weren’t
joking!) and the six-plus years of treatments felt like a really long, ugly time.
Ten years along in my AD period of life now, I’ve compiled a series of linked
poems as a chronicle of the experience that cancer and its treatments were to me and
could well be for others. This is my thesis. My intentions for this project are primarily
two-fold. First and closest to my heart, it is my mission to understand my own being
relative to my surviving a near-death illness. In so doing, I wish to provide a manuscript
which bears testimony to everyone dealing with Cancer that no one is alone, that being
confused is not a sign of weakness, that no one deserves the destructive, frightening tidal
wave that Cancer is, and that they CAN survive. In the words of Heewon Chang, “In a
culturally “congruent” society, relating to others may not be such a daunting task. Others
are merely others of similarity; thus, understanding others may easily begin with knowing
and affirming self” (Autoethnography as Method, 28).
Secondly, I consider my manuscript a direct challenge to health care providers,
practitioners and professionals. I would like my collection of Spoken Word and page
poetry to inspire members of the Health Care Industry to assess and re-calibrate their
model of care, to hear the misgivings of patients when they are assessing those patients,
to learn from and be kind to all patients, to be non-judgmental with questions, concerns

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and experiences of both the patients and their care-givers/family, and to be receptive to
and cognizant of each and every patient’s identity and intrinsic, unique value.
This paper is my experience, and therefore derives from and reflects my belief
that very foundational and established hierarchical structures exist within professional
Health Care in our developed world. I found it interesting that the doctors and specialists
I dealt with both immediately before and during my illness1 were male; the only women I
encountered were the Mammography and radiation technicians, and the chemotherapy
nurses (Cathy and Margie and the other nurses in the Nanaimo Hospital Chemo Unit
were vital to my care and were all Angels with capital As). I received excellence of care
and attention during chemo, and to this day I weep with gratitude when recalling the
amazing, invaluable nurses without whom I wouldn’t have made it. Very early on though,
I noted a lack of female specialists, Oncologists, surgeons; women did not occupy what I
had been enculturated to consider the ‘power’ positions in healthcare.
My illness experience incorporated what I perceived as dismissal as an underling,
unknowing patient, but also as a female in an industry which appeared male-dominated.
In my case, the placations of my physician were somewhat believable because the
alternative to you’re over-reacting, you’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with you was
terrifying. However, Patient-Centered Care is a model I now advocate for many reasons,
primarily the ability to save lives while simultaneously eroding fear, and therefore the
potential of entrenched perceptions, needless hierarchy, and sexism.
It is intensely unfortunate that my physician discounted my intuition that
something was wrong with my body. His presumption nearly cost me my life—so it is
1

2 GPs, 1 specialist, 3 Anesthesiologists, 2 Oncologists, 1 Breast Surgeon ,1 ‘wire-location’ specialist, 1
Radiologist, 1 MRI technician, 2 Ultrasound technicians.

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logical that I am now intensely adamant that no medical professional has the right to
dismiss a patient’s instinct. After all, sometimes instinct is all a patient has. I admit I feel
like the poster-girl for self-protection and self-advocacy when it comes to medical care,
but it is a position I’m willing to accept. I am upright. I have hair. I also have the ability
to string sentences, although I no longer have the patience or mindset to back away from
what could be a verbal confrontation or a challenge. Only I can champion my Self and
my body, and such self-empowerment demands that I ask hard questions, learn, engage,
and be as fully involved in the care I am receiving as I possibly can be. I believe that this
attitude is one of the most important reasons I have survived.
My interpretation of health care, though based on my own singular experience,
finds support and theoretical substance in the work of Norman K. Denzin. In The
Qualitative Manifesto (2010), Denzin names my style of enquiry and ‘research’ as an
evolving and legitimate qualitative method, with me acting as a specialized “bricoleur”
(13) and someone who “work(s) at the center and the margins of intersecting disciplines,
from communications, to race, ethnic, religious and women’s studies, from sociology,
history, anthropology, literary criticism, political science, and economics, to social work,
healthcare and education” (15). Heewon Chang quantifies the vital sharing of knowledge:
“understanding of others begins with genuine encounters with them through which
insider perspectives are gained” (Autoethnography as Method, 27), and therefore my selfnarrative can be a positive catalyst within healthcare practice. Just as Chang summarizes,
“the study of other self-narratives helps [readers] compare and contrast their lives with
those of self-narrators. This cognitive activity of compare and contrast engenders selfexamination and self-learning” (Chang, 41).

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Analysis and change within medical care has already begun, with several
Canadian Health Authorities and institutions dissecting their long-held principles of
delivery of care and undergoing an innovative shift from a stringent delivery style
towards holistic, full-spectrum care.
The Canadian Foundation for Health Care Improvement (Ontario) 2 is leading
initiatives to combat wait-times, deliver safe care, and increase patient satisfaction, while
both Alberta and Saskatchewan health agencies are researching patient-centered care
strategies as measures by which to create positive, recovery-focused care models.
Personnel in direct contact with patients are being empowered to create solutions which
reduce costs and streamline institutional processes for both patients and care providers3.
Within these pursuits, we see a commitment to transfer knowledge into appropriate and
meaningful practice, from new technologies through to non-discriminatory care, resulting
in increased productivity and reward within the professional workplace.
These three provinces are categorically redefining “patient” to include the patient
family and non-medical care-givers, and then implementing mission statements which
capitalize the importance of Patient-Family Centered Care (PFCC). This is a bold and
dynamic move, signally a new consciousness towards individual patients. Expanding the
definition of ‘patient’ is also what I consider the first step towards a process of severing
reliance upon the entrenched traditional power structures within our medical industry.
Furthermore, such changes in ideals and processes advocates more fluid communication
between professionals of various branches and disciplines of healthcare, a process called

2
3

Data paraphrased from www.cfhi-fcass.ca/home.aspx;
Data paraphrased from both albertahealthservices.ca and www.health.gov.sk.ca

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Patient/Patient Family Engagement. Such changes, steps and ideals essentially introduce
an ideal of collaborative practice(s) between health care professions.
Chang addresses this very timely situation, speaking to the large-scale benefits
such changes can produce and enhance:
autoethnography is becoming a particularly useful and powerful tool for
researchers and practitioners who deal with human relations in multicultural
settings, such as educators, social workers, medical professionals, clergy and
counselors. The benefits of autoethnography lie in three areas: (1) it offers a
research method friendly to researchers and readers; (2) it enhances cultural
understanding of self and others; and (3) it has a potential to transform self and
others to motivate them to work toward cross-cultural coalition building. (52)

Spoken Word Poetry
In a movement that harkens back to cultures from every continent, Spoken Word
Poetry is an emergent thread to oral customs and storytelling, not to be undervalued or
dismissed. Spoken Word Poetry (SWP) or Performance Poetry is understood as the
stories of common people for the masses, but its ability to promote empathy literally
promotes listeners and practitioners to cultivate a new consciousness with sensitivity
towards an issue, and/or societal change. It is a consolidated communication tool capable
of inspiring critical thought and structural social changes with the use of poetic devices
(story-telling, rhyme and slant rhyme, imagery, metaphor, musicality, presentation,
language and sound, etc, etc.) to support effective listening and thorough hearing.
Canadian SW Poet Sheri-D Wilson (aka: The Mama of Dada) submits that SWP “is the
oldest form of poetry” (The Spoken Word Work Book, 1). Wilson states that resurgence
of Poetry transports us “back to its root, or its oral origin and thus this new form has
returned the voice of the people to the people.” Wilson also clarifies SWP realm as:

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jazz, dub, hiphop, sound, slam, folk, mystic poets, and storytellers. It emulates the beat of the street…includes the body, as memory vessel, and
resonator. Gesture is an important aspect for punctuation and jubilation.
Spoken word poetry is oration with rhythm, metre, and repetition, and often
involves humour and social commentary. (1)
Recognized as a growing art-form, the thrust of SWP is its community-minded
focus: stand-alone performance pieces combine various vernaculars with elevated,
stylized lexicons to invest in dialogues of social conscience and change, highlighting
devalued discourses and previously taboo subjects with bold inquiry. Essentially a
completely heuristic process, this poetic genre becomes immediately more than just
poetry. As James Haywood Rollings, Jr. asserts “arts-based research (ABR), like all
research, is theory-building… [and] involves the ‘contemplation’ or ‘speculation’ of
natural laws and phenomena of life” which are furthermore “a representation of
experience so that others may also acknowledge and understand” (Arts-Based Research,
1). Accordingly, Rollings, Jr. defines the importance of such: “when a theory is built and
deployed as heuristic device, an abstract and internal sense of a person, place, event or
thing may then be further ideated… stocking our shared warehouse of assorted ideas
about the human experience… further shaping our personal ontologies” (2). Intertwined
with and augmented by the power of live performance, Spoken Word becomes a tangible,
recognizable art, but also a theoretical tool, camouflaging social science, hypothesis,
consciousness, and solution-generation within entertainment.
Competitive literary venues showcase a form of Spoken Word Poetry called
“Slam” poetry which has evolved into a linguistic Olympics, the world over. National
Slam teams train for events for months in advance, and team membership is an absolute
plume in any poet’s cap. The World Cup of Poetry occurs annually in Paris, while the

12

Nimbin Poetry World Cup is the Australian equivalent. Countless events occur
worldwide and poetry organizations range from private, small scale features to immense,
officially governed festivals and competitions, oftentimes boasting 500 competitors in
one category, with even larger audiences. No longer attributed to the intimate and smoky,
American café-culture of the 60s, Spoken Word Poetry currently boasts mainstream
audiences through websites like You Tube, Button Poetry, Def Poetry Jam (filmed in a
‘black’ New York poetry bar, this HBO show aired from 2002-2007) and numerous other
agencies of access on which performers like Shane Koyczan have garnered literally
millions of views from around the world. Poetry has been redefined as a modern (and
‘cool’) vehicle of not only art and critical thought, but of prestige and virtual stardom.
That both the art and the attitude of Poetry has changed in recent decades,
transforming from a dreaded unit in high school into a highly marketable, fast moving
and exciting world, is inarguable. It needs noting however, that two sub-cultures or subgenres interweave modern SWP, and that these two genres have become recognized art
forms in their own right.
Due to its prominence world-wide, I will assume Rap (music) needs no
explanation, no background theory: I invite no discussion on this genre as this thesis is
about poetry without background music. Slam Poetry however, may require further
context. Poetry as a viable, appealing and applicable communication and education tool
within society, is a transformation many poets attribute to Slam. Invented in 1984 in
Chicago by construction worker Marc Smith, Slam Poetry’s philosophical intent was to
remove the elitist stigma attached to poetry, and deliver entertaining, concentrated stories
to common-man audiences without stuffiness, remorse or apology. Subject matter ranged

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from guttural, heart-wrenching, inspiring, chilling, and controversial—impact and
profoundness were encouraged and laudable. Slam Poetry is competitive, a sport per se,
of literary, grammatical, poetic, and imagistic sparring. Competitors are evaluated by a
panel of judges usually comprised of members of the audience, through a series of heats
or rounds, like boxing. Competition rules are universal:
1. memorized works earn/receive better ranking; each poet comes prepared
to multiple 1, 2, 3 and 4 minute-long poems
2. time limits are serious: points are deducted for every extra 10 seconds
3. props, costumes, and/or accompanying music are prohibited
4. audience reaction factors into a poet’s ranking
5. highest ranking poets move up in rounds, competing for an overall
Champion
Slam Poetry and its events took the sub-cultures of North America by storm, and spread
onto other continents with firm conviction, creating a borderless landscape in which
modern poetry and modern poets have become recognizable icons within pop culture and
mainstream society. A former Slam champion, Canadian poet Shane Koyczan has
collaborated with national opera houses, and performed with symphonies. His verses
have been used in television and radio commercials and campaigns. Like SW poet Taylor
Mali, Koyczan is privileged to receive invitations to perform and speak around the globe;
he delivers TED talks, he signs autographs and is becoming a familiar name in many
households, Canadian and international. Poets like Mali and Koyczan began as closet
poets and story-tellers, moved into and through Slam Poetry venues and championships,
and matured into respected mega-performers and purveyors of societal change.

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Origins of Spoken Word and Oral Poetry
How can the precise beginnings of spoken histories and oral teachings be claimed?
Critic Maisha Fisher isolates the origins of Spoken Word Poetry towards Black diaspora
within America and certainly venues like Def Poetry Jam support that claim. Fisher asserts
however that SWP is the evolutionary product of communications developed and utilized
by slaves, with slaves. I step back from the racialization this suggests to me, confounded as
I am that SWP’s origin can be claimed by any one culture. Def Poetry pioneered an
unstoppable resurgence of poetry in our current era, launching hip hop artists and unknown
writers alike into a fresh scene of activism and entertainment. It was a pivotal awakening
of both poetry and social thought. Well ahead of Def however, one of the greatest orators
of all time enacted monumental social changes with his words. Martin Luther King Jr. was
one of the most pivotal men of the Twentieth century. An excessively passionate and
talented speaker, his “I Have a Dream” changed North America, proving the intense power
of words, reaching into the political milieu to disrupt inequality and rock education and
public perceptions by awakening the world to socio-economic barriers that were unjust and
fallible. King was a brilliant activist, an icon who moved the world with poetic discourse.
Humbly, I consider King a Spoken Word Poet of immense proportions.
However and with no disrespect, I believe the true root of this art goes back to the
origins of human speech itself. In 2014, I attended the prestigious Banff School of the Arts
for their SWP Residency program. My cohort boasted 15 participant poets from literally
around the world, with faculty from three continents; we were a diverse, global group. Of
the four faculty (Tanya Evanson, George Elliott Clarke, Emilie Zoey Baker, and Jean

15

Pierre Makosso), three were of African descent, although all had testaments of modern
poetry which mirrored or included the beliefs of Fisher. Clarke spoke to the SWP craft
having expanded during American Prohibition within the speak easy culture, eventually
expanding beyond ‘colour’ to be art and entertainment. Our textbook for this residency
program was “The Spoken Word Workbook”, edited by Sheri-D Wilson, who stated SWP
is poetry and knowledge “presented in the lingo of the people for the people” (1).
Conceptually, this art logically originates in underground movements necessitated by
oppression, violence, racism and inequality, as evidence in how it is performed, written,
and created now.
As entertainment, SWP is owned by no singular demographic, no one culture, no
sexist identity, and whether this is due to a diverse and ancient root system in many
different continents and/or cultures continues to be a vibrant topic of discussion amongst
poets. The lineage of SWP is as a purveyor of social change and interpersonal learning.
Fisher cites what she terms PLCs (participatory literacy communities), very like the
underground venues of the past where intergenerational poets “exchange ideas and lived
experiences” (139) to inspire broader and more robust conversation or social criticism.
Prior to the written word and the printing press, memory played a huge part in the
keeping, passing and preservation of histories, stories, knowledge, folklore, and culture
itself. Irrespective of the language, poetic tricks have helped memorization and retention.
The ancient Anglo Saxon epic sound poem “Beowulf” (the oldest copy is dated approx.
1000AD), is quite venerated in our modern world, boasting inclusion in such popular
modern realms as video games, feature films, and comic books. This sound poem would

16

have been memorized by ancient performers and is heralded as both a literary and
historical work, which attests to the staying power of poetry.
Wilson’s view of SWP’s history is infinitely broad, and is a view I completely
share. “Some claim the oral tradition originated with Homer, continued through
Shakespeare, Dadaism, Surrealism, and into the Beats. This is true for those of academic
persuasion, but the roots of the oral tradition originated in a diverse variety of cultures:
African culture, Caribbean culture, North American Aboriginal culture, Islamic culture,
Celtic culture, and every culture known to humankind—spoken word is the oldest form
of poetry” (The Spoken Word Workbook, 1).
The contemporary resurgence in the appeal of recitation poetry and Bricoleurs
(what Tanya Evanson called “Griots”) is evidenced in possibly unlikely circles of society.
For example, Paul Harvey’s “Farmer” (the narrative used in Dodge’s 2014 Superbowl ad)
to Taylor Mali’s 2003 release and subsequent publication/book “What Teachers Make”
(credited with inspiring thousands of people around the world to become teaching
professionals), and Shane Koyczan’s “We Are More,” performed live during the opening
ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic games. Koyczan must be the first poet in the
history of mankind to have such an astounding sized audience: a live/in-person crowd of
tens of thousands, and a television crowd of over 32 million4! The Spoken Word genre of
poetry has literally become enormous.

Performance and Audience
This thesis will employ original works of poetry in a specific “social audit” (Hill
et al, 1998) context regarding the potentially oppressive power doctrines prominent in
4

Statistics sourced from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com

17

health care fields. Poems are meant to also address the resultant voicelessness, whether
perceived or actual, of the ‘other’ (aka ‘the patient’) to effectively culminate into a
testimonial and handbook for other peoples in health care. In this thesis, I define ‘other
peoples’ as acute-care patients and their primary care-givers. “The term “others”
generally refers to existentially different human beings—those who are other than self,”
writes Chang (Autoethnography as Method, 26).
In the theoretical framework of this thesis, I accept Chang’s expanded categories
of ‘otherness’ as well: Others within one community, comrades with comparable values,
ethics and standards are “others of similarity” while enemies with irreconcilable
differences of any kind are “others of opposition.” The middle ground is “others of
difference,” where the difference itself can become, through empathetic understanding,
an interconnectedness between strangers or ‘others’ of any type” (26). In this thesis,
cancer patients are my others of similarity, while hierarchically-based doctors are others
of opposition, and health care practitioners willing to listen are others of difference.
Within this context, I hope my poems (what Chang would call my self-narrative) will
become vehicles of empathetic understanding which bind together as many ‘others’
within health care and health experience(s) as is humanly possible.
The validity and value of Performance as a proponent of knowledge, experience
and validity is captured succinctly by Peggy Phelan as a form of “consumption” with “no
left-overs, the gazing spectator must try to take everything in. Without a copy, live
performance plunges into visibility – in a maniacally charged present – and disappears
into memory, into the realm of invisibility and the unconscious where it eludes regulation
and control” (Unmarked – the Politics of Performance, 148). Knowledge-sharing of this

18

type is the Bricoleur’s and Griot’s gift and reality. However, Phelan also cites the downside of physical performance, speculating it is inherently less static and therefore less
tangible and contemplative compared to arts like photography or film: “Performance is
vulnerable to charges of valuelessness and emptiness” despite its power of revaluation
and its “distinctive oppositional edge” (148).

Autoethnography
According to Denzin, autoethnography and performance offer a balance to
previously stringent one-sided methodologies of both investigation and scientific
research. “We need a performance studies paradigm that understands performance
simultaneously as a form of inquiry and as a form of activism, as critique, as critical
citizenship.” He states further that the “academy” of quantitative research needs to be
shaken from its stronghold. “Today there is no solidified ethnographic identity… critics
and advocates alike share a commitment to social justice… Qualitative research can be
used to advance human rights agendas by bringing about healing and social
reconciliation” (The Qualitative Manifesto, 17).
This manuscript, although decidedly qualitative in thrust, hopefully transcends
mere personal expression, fulfilling my ideal to facilitate the following:
1. a method of expression patients/family, care givers and professionals can
utilize
2. a vehicle through which to promote and stimulate transparent
communication between key stake holders, services, and health authority
institutions and branches

19

3. education and communication devices in the context of social-audit, and
4. the distillation of the voice of the ‘Other’ (patient and patient-family) to
health care professionals and practitioners
Theorist James Haywood Rolling Jr. defends alternative methods or nonquantitative methods of enquiry, stating succinctly, “Not everything that is knowable or
worthy of knowing in human social worlds can be captured adequately within
mathematical or statistical frameworks and scientific theoretical orthodoxies,” adding
“there are so many kinds of knowledge, it is no surprise that some of it is best conveyed
artistically” (Arts Based Research, 57). Rolling Jr’s stunning revelation that the very
process of theorizing is creative situates performance poetry and other arts as verifiable
research methodologies and measurements. “By the time the researcher or artist arrives at
an emergent theory, their work has already established its own rigorously resolved
internal validity” (49) and wonderfully, Artists like myself become robust purveyors of
knowledge, who expand knowledge when we deliver our art “into the common cultural
store to prod further social inquiry” (49).
Malchiodi delves into the possible benefits of patient-driven art projects like my
thesis, asserting [they] can “inevitably symbolized hope and possibility for recovery of all
cancer survivors” (Art Therapy and Health Care, 331). Spoken Word Poems function as
personal declarations and in my case provide a forum to share my health experience in an
empowering way “outside the hospital or clinic” so I may “provide education on the
relevance of a particular disease, its psychological impact on the individual and family,
and challenges encountered during treatment” (331). My idea that my own patient artbased research is necessary to change medical care is validated by Piko and Kopp’s

20

statement: “medicine should become an integrated scientific field, at the crossroads of the
natural and social sciences, needing a transdisciplinary approach” (Essentials of
Transdisciplinary Research, 84).
I submit that there exists an enculturated, historical and relatively unchallenged
posturing of doctors and other professional health care providers as elite, all-knowing
individuals. This positioning has resulted in a Health Care delivery system which
propagates a dynamic of expected voicelessness for patients, patients’ family members,
and their personal care-givers. Over time, this hierarchy has effectively discounted those
not defined as esteemed practitioners and/or Doctors, and therefore dismissed a very real
and potent specialist regarding the quality of care being delivered—the patient’s
experience as a specialized, educated consumer of professional Health Care. To
summarize Leavy, who has quantified and categorized my method of enquiry as
Community-Based Research (CBR), combining scientific and patient knowledge can
effectively increase the usefulness of the knowledge conveyed to learners, and “generate
higher levels of commitment from all [research] partners” (Essentials of
Transdisciplinary Research, 95).
Spoken Word poetry can be offered to the full spectrum of persons in health care
environments through various formats from performance to seminar to communication
workshop (for example), to promulgate a new era of inclusive communication, treatment
practices, and wellness. Distilling the many stories of health care experience to Health
Care practitioners and professionals encourages expansion(s) within Health Care and its
practice, essentially highlighting and addressing unique needs of patients. Furthermore,
the patient voice can promote involvement of both patient and patient family as active

21

and respected partners of ratified personalized, effective and efficient care. Infusing the
previously galvanized lexicon of medical science and elevated status’ with ‘lay’ language
may well serve as a more accessible forum of listening as well. Removing the propriety
language of the health-care environment, even removing the listener (practitioner and/or
professional) from that environment into a more public and expansive sphere may
fertilize the listening/hearing process by displacing medical practitioners from perceived
‘higher’ standing and posturing away from patient-family voices.
Spoken Word Poetry is classically outlined as a supportive, non-judgmental
community of both listeners and performers. As Maisha Fisher (2007) defines, the art is
built upon an elemental concept of sharing; older members and performers of the craft
(‘Soldiers’) involve and mentor new and emerging voices and artists, encouraging those
new poets in an out-of-the-classroom literacy and learning model. In summary, Fisher
identifies three ‘types’ or identifying features of soldiering within the Spoken Word
community. Spoken Word Soldiers are:
1. Activists and advocates of all things literary
2. Historians of the art/act of Spoken Word, and performed poetry
3. Practicing poets or crafts-persons
Fishers’ work is rooted in the elemental notion of community within the Spoken Word
microcosm, with that community flourishing around a central construct of such domestic
environments as classrooms; “home and school literacies as a continuum rather than a set
of binaries… [of] growing language and ethnic diversity in our classrooms as well as the
pervasive disparities in academic achievement in American public schools” (142).

22

I submit that relevant story telling is an access point through which to undermine
perception that patients are passive and dumbed in the presence of the physician and/or
practitioner. Furthermore, works of Spoken Word Poetry can instigate dynamic changes
within the oppressed and/or voiceless, simultaneously allowing more heightened
understanding of their broad experiences and improving the medical treatment landscape
for future consumers and their families. This thesis will interrogate plausible benefits that
Spoken Word, as a condensed modality of education, can initiate into the medical field,
for instance, diluting the stronghold enculturated power dynamics have within its
structure.
It requires immediate acknowledgment that this thesis is neither determined nor
designed as a singularly personal/personalized catharsis or therapeutic platform, despite
my own acute care/health experience. Though the idea for this project is inarguably
informed and inspired by my own illness reality, the project itself is not an elaborate
exorcism of personal agendas or scope. As discussed by Brian Lobel in his thesis
“Playing the Cancer Card: Illness, Performance and Spectatorship” (2012), there are two
categories of illness-experience writing or performance:
1. Inspirational stories with a “bereavement trajectory,” meant to move the
listener with sentimentality as an artistic ambition
2. Celebration stories which relate the successful completion of treatment, like
Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About the Bike which recounted Armstrong’s
“triumph over mortality” (194) and aimed to educate the audience regarding
an illness “with language about breaking taboos and silence” (195)

23

However, my thesis project is not a survivor narrative, having instead a trajectory which
intends to blend both the above categories by utilizing Experience, Entertainment and
Education (or what I have come to call “TEPP”, the Three Es of Potent Performance). In
true ‘writerly’ tradition, I haven written of things I know and have empathy towards, but
not solely for my own cathartic release. My poems are of my Otherness as a Cancer
patient, intended as a vehicle for those who are unable to present, defend, or tell their
own tale(s). My gift is my ability to string words in a captivating and artistic fashion and
having an unusual ease in front of an audience gives me increased reason to pursue
Spoken Word Poetry as both an art form and a declaration. Although my personal,
‘small’ story, would to-date or thus far be labeled a “survivorship story” (194) by Lobel,
this thesis is meant to validate other Cancer patients and their care-givers. Overall, this
work will truly be what I consider a success if it can help Others to share their own
healthcare experience with even more Others.
Change is possible and change is good—there are no reasons to believe or feel
that our medical practice(s) cannot improve in the years to come. By pooling together
multiple research styles and perspectives, our current model(s) of health care can evolve
into an ever more positive and effective industry than at present. Lastly, as I have
emphatically stated, this is not a therapeutic exercise for me, though logically and in all
honesty and likelihood, it will facilitate an element of personal release and long-term
healing.

24

BC/AD
before cancer/after diagnosis

by
Kimberly Darcy Anne Taylor

25

for Del

on
long nights
spiders drag me
toward Mara Lake’s rails
where shadow-rich
shacks stand wilted
and aching for
some careless, savage match
into that canyon ghost town
haunted by chanting children whose kites dance like flies
over daisied fields and rivers
while the haggard sun sets
impossible to forget days
when train tracks smelled of dust
cranky grass whisped
young ankles and seed-filled
breezes smeared our footprints
webs of Rockwell
images ravel around my heart
I glimpse your
twilight skin
sweat tempted
dark bangs
eyes spooned
with moonbeams
we walk like this
near midnight
together again
like dragonflies
darting thru a
sallow stretch
of sky, two
shimmers of
crystal blue
heedless of
cancered
breasts
and
chemo’d
hair
.

26

Chapter One

27

secret keepers
but we were only confused
and turned our backs
and now we are trapped
inside our songlessness
“Story Keeper,” Wendy Rose
but we were only confused:
arrested by an altar draped in
pink flags from foremothers, souls
divided by logic and half-masted
rage; strangely apart we
hushed inside, outside
and turned our backs,
hid behind the blush in our purses
took other women at face value
rather than challenge the eye
in the mirror which hunted
sacrificial sisters among us
and now we are trapped
by a shared disease, a bladed
ugly sheath, and our young
daughters bear the curse of their
future with naive minds, breasts
perked; stand transfixed together
inside our songlessness
where, like spoiled Goddesses we
cower, knowing that for every
one of us a twin less fortunate
will crumple in battle, an innocent
statue dissolving in rain

28

the test
goes beyond insomnia
far into anxiety, seaweed
in a flash storm
waves swamp Self’s shore
frantic, forlorn
mocks like deep regret
crashes headstrong with rage
thick as ice-floes
loud as midnight fog horns
disastrous, damned
offends the future
draws family in like tidal foam
faces white and windless
shaken clean as weathered shells
hollow, homely
erodes logical intention
sinks harmony in protected bays
cold and crystalline
simple syllables (ma-lig-nan-cy)
steal sight, cut breath

29

blunt force call
Three days before Christmas, 8:10 in the morning, and suddenly
my entire world dangles as precariously as one of the
little azure balls, sugar-thin, which tempt our ginger cat
from branches of the Christmas tree in the corner,
its attractive frosting no protection against a
short fall onto hardwood.
The tree winks like captured stars, tinsel aglow with ice-blue
lights and coloured baubles collected over decades
of friendships, loves, family celebrations and amalgamated
into a curious hoard which I uncrate each winter,
dust off to decorate the traditionally
Holiest of holidays.
The phone seems innocent enough, now cradled again
in its holster, while moments ago it rested warm
against my ear as cold words hunted down the line
from a clinic in a neighbouring city, arrested me
with a series of syllables that boiled down to one label:
Cancer.
I’m transfixed by a solitary leaf clinging unseasonably
to the ornamental plum tree outside our
living room window—suddenly all I can do is
focus on it through frosty glass, uniquely
haunting in its loneliness, obliquely fragile while
simultaneously Herculean.
Breast Cancer. I don’t move from the phone I’ve just
put down as gently as a fevered child, for I know I
can’t. I must pick it back up in a moment and
share my news with my parents, ransack their
quiet morning, their peaceful retirement with the
horrible news of my Invasion, aggressive and deadly.
* *

*

*

30

Nothing I have ever done is harder than phoning my parents
although I have no real knowledge what the next
year will bring to my ignorant self and household
-- I’ve never said the word ‘mastectomy’ before now
have no idea of the process, the pain, the scar, I
don’t foresee the infection, hot as steam and so
painful I won’t sleep for two nights and three days until
I visit my surgeon whom I’m convinced thinks me
weak when I insist on an appointment because
I’m brittle from sleeplessness and pulsing with
over-sensitivity, I
have no inkling of the shock I’ll experience after
stepping out of a too-hot shower to see tubes dangling
from me like plastic tentacles, my amputation so
angry and vibrant it’ll trap me to drip dry against
the mirror as I whisper calls for help into our empty,
foreign home, I
don’t know I’ll lose every single hair in my first round of chemo
experience the full scope of side effects: mouth sores, sandy
eyes, blistered skin, yeast infections, unrelenting
fatigue, nor can I possibly perceive the anger which
will splinter my soul, distance me from myself to
the point of despair, I
cannot imagine how strangely I’ll be viewed by
my husband, how ashamed I’ll be of my behaviour
after each AC treatment because my body is too
sensitive and the dosage too high though
after it’s dropped and dropped again
I still suffer, I
can’t know yet that I’ll visit counselors and doctors
weekly, swallow hundreds of anti-anxiety pills
and spend a hundred and fifty every treatment for
the anti-nausea’s; gems I’ll call them as their
value escalates exponentially with my need and
their effectiveness, I
am ignorant of what tired really is until half way
through when I won’t be able to settle longer
than two hours because my bladder’s bursting
with urine so toxic I’ve got to plug my nose
every time I flush, and I
31

don’t fathom how my husband will be stifled
by his inability to fix, something he easily does
every day as a carpenter with hammer, saws,
concrete and nails, but against this disease can’t
build a fortress, can only watch from afar as I
splinter in battle.
*

*

*

*

In fact, my husband left for work an hour ago, snuck out of our
warm bed, made himself a thermos of coffee, and turned on
Christmas tree lights to greet me. I’ve awakened to this
rancid phone call, stare now at the coved ceiling on which
holiday colours are suddenly carnival and drunken,
sickly brilliant.
The naked plum tree outside stands immediately appropriate,
contrasted by its spectre-cousin kaleidoscoping in my
nearest corner, its remaining single leaf, once rich and red
now shudders like a grey skeleton under a coat
of sparkling coastal-frost which makes
me feel so very small.
A new doorway opens somewhere in my frontal lobe, an
iced phantom creeps across my scalp, slithers down
my spine, births a fine tremor that I know will linger
there for a long, long time. It’s the terror of a disease
I don’t want, would do anything
to mutate away.
Panic freezes my core and I start to shake uncontrollably,
there seems no silence as my body screams with a fear
I’m a stranger to. The room pales to white, fractures
at a nightmarish angle as I grasp for something, anything
solid and familiar; only then do I finally
make a small, strangled sound.
But I don’t sag in my chair under the weight of diagnosis, instead I
become as stiff as the plum tree outside, as posed as the festive
tree inside though lacking in its volumes of colour. Yes, I thirst
as if suddenly deserted, my reservoir too empty for tears,
my mind too shocked to calculate the enormity
of changes I face.

32

But a bitter confusion assaults me with blunt intensity: I don’t feel
seriously ill, nor has my body ever made restrictions
about what I can and can’t do (that’s my mind)
I’m young, healthy, fit; how could I possibly
be so dangerously mortal, as fragile as this
phone call has just declared?
My breath is rasped, as shallow and harsh in lungs as
when I rode my bike to work through lower, wetter
weather belts on Interurban Lane, past flooded fields where
swans collected and swam like white dreams through
morning’s frigid light, mist falling from low clouds and
rising from still water to meet.
I rode hard just recently, pushed my body to its maximum threshold
and, with speed my delight, aimed for a higher personal
fitness with singular strength and youthful focus that now
feel as far away as Heaven, as unreal as the angels
I imagined in the bodies of those white birds floating
on that silent, winter slough.
* * * *
The phone is cold against my palm as I dial my parents three
days before Christmas from a hollow household four hundred
miles away, where for the next several, stretched-out months, my
perception of God will be tried in fits of silence, pain, shock.
I put the receiver to my stunned ear and whisper
to my father when he answers,
“Sit down, Daddy. Sit down.”

33

ocean, earth, and limbo
twenty-three foot
missile cloaking
a thousand teeth, skin
glistens, dorsal cuts
like a scimitar, crescents
curling tight to carve
hollow caves in
waves, stir an eddy
to sucking-speed, dig
a grave out of water
swifter than serpents
fast as thought
under a blind
silver moon
mystical pine and cedar
shield Ursus from
sight: it snuffles, shrugs
its musky way
across clearings
through trees
coming closer, circles
(felt as heat on neck
hair rising on arms
a malicious wind) circles
in shrinking radii, closer
closer, camouflage of
leaves in fall, grizzly
hunkers hungry
on my trail
and me, caught
with a foot
in each sphere

34

beginning in waves
vast beach seaweed tossed
sand spread in rough blanket
: no warning :
tsunami plows forward
sand becomes water becomes
concrete, demolitions a swath
of nothingness through landscape
of huts, streets, schools
flattens me clean
scraps dance and churn
amidst carcasses of other
talents I dreamt of nurturing:
sad bits of bright rags bob
and collide in water rancid
with early death
recession is calamatously quiet
I hear the Earth weeping
somewhere behind me

35

New Year’s Eve
Well, let's see if I can do this in 300 words or less:
I'm in a bad space, exhausted and unable to sleep. I can't stand listening to [my husband]
snore fitfully beside me, so came down to the couch where I'll listen to the dog snore
instead. Dr. Olivotto called me tonight, telling me he wanted me to have surgery last
week, but that I'm healthy enough for chemo; telling me it’s far too late for me to hope
alternative medicines could make a difference. He’s says I only have 6 months left.
Apparently the possibility of "early stages" was dashed long ago. Guess I missed the
memo.
I know thousands of women survive this, but I'm having a hard time adjusting, focusing.
I could really use some physical support, but [my husband]’s totally unavailable, unreachable, unbearable. I don't know which is harder to stomach: my diagnosis, or this
sudden, intense loneliness. I told Dr. Olivotto he had to tell me everything now, because
the next time I see his name on my phone, I won’t be able to pick it up. I can’t take any
more of his news.
So, I'll know my surgery date first thing Tuesday, and then things will really start going
fast. According to Dr. Olivotto, the speed with which he and Dr. Carr are dealing with
me should indicate the severity of my case. Oh Shit.
I'm sick of all this already, and would love to just run. It’s weird. It’s an instinctive
reaction that I literally can’t control or even touch. But it’s not that I want to jump into a
really fast car and race away. It’s not that I want to hop on my favourite bike and shoot
out of my here. It’s this bizarre body-thing, and it’s everything I can do to NOT just turn
and RUN the other way. And as a cyclist, I freaking hate running.
Talk about not feeling like myself!
But no matter where I go, my body will accompany me. I’m out of luck—there’s no
getting out of this one. I’ll have to figure out a strategy and ready myself for the biggest
war of my life.
D

36

Frances
eight and clumsy, brave well
beyond my means
deep-end beckoned, challenge
of epic size, a dare
too great
must have thrashed all the way
to the rich, blue bottom
pale sky surface
glittered above rippley
rows of 1-inch azure tiles
heavy with quiet (like
being buried I think)
eyes burned by chlorine, lungs
chugged full of water
and sleepy
no recollection of the
in-between-ness or surrendering
to the bright blue tones
under my wallowing wrists
limp without air, and
Frances was there, her usually
silver-blonde hair plastered
flat against her small
skull, mascara thick as mink
staining her face
spattering little wet ribs she
had hauled from the deep
end, one of her tan
sling-backs trading places with
me on the bottom
her eyes were California blue
intense with frightened fury
her long fingernails mooned scars
into my arms before she
finally released me on deck

37

thirty-two years later, my friend’s
mother has come again. She sits
on my hospital bedside, quietly
strokes my hand with
her thumb
strange yellow sun light
charges the room—fireflies
at noon—silver hair hangs long
over movie-star smile, brings back
a familiar loving fury
this time, she is not angry
at having to jump in
after me—she smiles, happy
to halt my drowning and
pound air into me again
we sit silently, Frances stroking
my hand, and I breathe deep
as my eight-year old self when
answering the power in her hands, her
urgently gasping my name
still groggy from anesthetic
I am soothed by her presence
but have forgotten that Frances
has long been gone, taken by
her own terrible cancer
a half-decade ago

38

January 19
Hi everyone: Just wanted to thank you all for the prayers in the last few weeks. I've
definitely felt them, and even can attest that they, when being performed, appear yellow. I
woke from my surgery to a room with yellow, sparkling light, filled with love and
peaceful feelings. It may be a bad analogy, but the room sparkled like the inside of a
glass of gingerale--kind of gold and bubbly.
I am so thankful for all of your energies and thoughts at a time when I so need and want
them. I did not feel alone or afraid after my surgery; just loved. Thank you all.
So far, things are looking pretty good. I have another appointment with the surgeon, and
another with the chemo team, and will embark on the next leg of this race very soon. To
me, this is another bike-race, though the course is different than any I came across during
my competitive days. It is similar however, in that it is mapped out—a course on which
I'll 'pedal' my hardest in order to finish. It will be hard, and some moments I know I’ll
certainly wish to quit because it'll hurt enough to want to, but I've competed in enough
races (even won some) in which the middle of the event was the hardest thing I had ever
gotten through in my life.
I can do this.
It's all those Taylor and Schultz genes—you know, the staunch, proud English ones, and
the stubborn, hard-headed Dutch ones. Thanks to my parents, I'm 100% covered in the
attitude department.
Blessings to you all, and hugs of thanks.
~me~

39

obligations of the nightmare
And the world begins again.
Hurry up please it’s time.
It’s time and a half
and there’s the rub.
“Junkman’s Obbligato,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I: it starts here
landscape awash with the ghosts of
two women I wanted to become, two
pioneer-sirens whose ill luck tore them
from sisterhood, their fame and talents
capsized by pirates and blackening spots
barbed with fear. They are suddenly close
enough to touch. I dream them both
hear their lament usher me from my own
garland of ruby notes hung cowardly in
their footsteps. Too close now, seraphic
voices crescendo to declare my elegy
a froth-white room filled with
sisterly, turbulent disease.
II: Gilda’s Wigs
And the world begins again
with another laugh, a different skit
and change of wardrobe, brighter
lipstick, maybe a wig
Hurry up please it’s time
for more humour, laughter heals:
all the world comes together
over the best joke Gilda tells
It’s time; and a half
her soul becomes improv while
her ovaries grow grey under
pancake rouge and studio lights
and there’s the rub
she masks bellying darkness
with props, seeks a memorable role
in her audiences’ guffaws
40

III: Judy in Red
And the world begins again
for her in a clear bottle filled
with courage, Oz, and a Broadway
ticket away from here
Hurry up please it’s time
she feels flaking away in her
hidden heart where laughter curdles
and music can’t hold its tune
It’s time and a half
to rehearse lines and lament where
no-one can see her twisted fingers
or hear her voice crack
and there’s the rub
again; and again she swallows her
problems ounce by ounce while
her smile breaks through bitter lips
IV: A Joint Appearance
Monday, 4am:
And the world begins, again
Judy links arms with Gilda and
advances on me, smoky floral prints
sway as they grasp me like
exploded cattails in a freakish
breeze, seeds jigging away
from my shadowed stalk; their
frantic whispers slice my ear
Hurry up! Please! It’s time!
Monday, 6am:
It’s time, and a halflived life stalks me round my
yellow kitchen, dredges the nightmare
which hunts my fearless, green life
with night blue eclipse, threatens to
freeze me like the star of Miss
Monroe, kept at a constantly
bright but regrettable age
and there’s the rub
41

V: Friday, near noon
And my world begins again
with memories of lost virginity to
a solemn fortieth birthday when
no-one dared bring cut flowers
Hurry up! Please! It’s time
which passes so quickly--I know
no precious moment can be gently
withheld, slowed, or fully understood
It’s time, and a half
measure of days fizzles, my hazy mind
darkens as these ghosts swing Hell’s axe
in league with this worst Hell
and there’s the rub:
I wanted to experience everything
at least once, but that includes
Death and fear of Death, and the shame
of quelling one’s inner flame
V: Saturday
And my world begins again
after an age of sapphire mist
and moonstone blue, a wave
of neutrophils sings work-ready
as plow horses in spring:
“hurry up please it’s time!”
They chop the icicles stretching
down from eaves on my stale
mountain cabin. In this landscape
too scared for sound, it’s time
and a half since winter: trees stand rusty
and scarred by pine beetles, their
near-death trunks like charred
sign posts in spring rains. And
there’s the rub; though clearly marked
this pathway doesn’t expose the
caustic darkness of any secrets
my body may still be keeping

42

cycle one
I was a competitive cyclist, coached into a lifestyle
of being the strongest woman I could be by chasing
the clock and every cyclist ahead of me
I was a downhill daredevil, courageous, crazy and
brave. But right now adrenaline’s crashing through me
and I’m shaking uncontrollably, and it kind of feels like racing
like when I’d carved a corner out of a Canada Cup
downhill race, caught my “minute-marker” on a capricious angle
passed her conspicuously close and was careening into the
finish, teeth clenched, confidence flaring, in complete control
only there’s no corner, no confidence, no control
My consciousness feels cracked in two and I’m cartwheeling
so hard I can’t concentrate clearly—it’s confusing considering
I feel like I’m going that fast, so I’ve got to clear my head
and accept this is not a Canada Cup Downhill Race—this
is a chemotherapy unit, and
Here I Am.
Cancer’s a concept big as a continent: microscopic cells
have crept together and clustered into clumps called tumors
I’m convinced I had no clue it was occurring
but can’t be crippled by corrupt cells I can’t see!
So Here I Am. They tell me chemo will collapse my life
by killing every cell inside me, but that chemo’s my only
course of action. I cower against this caustic experience but
I’ve got no choice if I want a cure. These chemicals can kill me
as easily as cure me, so all I can do is hope the Creator
has cut a new course for me once this course
this chemo, is complete
Here I am: confined to shaking in this crinkly chair
in a chemotherapy unit, trying to calm, to cope, by
concentrating on my old life, my bike, my conquered challenges
but I cringe as Cycle One of my chemo collects inside me. It’s creepy how
cold I feel, how cautiously I crept into this cavernous white room
with clean walls, career nurses and chrome. My teeth chatter and
I’m accosted by questions about my mortality
Here I am

43

Quite frankly I’d give anything not to be here, not HERE
even though I don’t feel alone: the air here is thick
with shadows of countless cancer patients come before me
male, female, young, old. They’re all crammed in here
like mist, and if I crank my ears and listen closely
I can hear a quiet whisper of support, like the crowd
at a Canada Cup race, and they’re saying if I could
do that kind of cycling, then I can do this
kind of cycling too
I cave into myself before I can possibly conceive they
may be correct. I may be cowering now, but I’m
going to convince myself that I CAN DO THIS.
I’m a competitive cyclist: I can come through eight
cycles of chemo and confront this cancer with
courage. I know I can and must, so start
imagining confining and crushing every cancerous
cell my body may ever contain: cancer will be
my next race, my new minute marker
Here I am
cycling my way to a cure with a host of
chemicals inside my veins. It’s crazy but I can suddenly
conceive of a new course curling out around me
and I find an odd comfort in a childhood cliché as Cycle One
of my chemo concludes:
after a fall, a cyclist needs to climb right back on their bike
So now, here I am, courage re-charged, and changed
to my core. I am here but Cancer isn’t just my race—
it’s everyone’s—and together we can challenge our chances
and come through each corner and finish line re-charged
and confident. We can stand together, we can chase, crush, and
conquer Cancer.
We can.
Here I am, and
I believe

44

winter bird

- the whole fan-damily

husband
disarmed in shock
stands helpless, knighthood and
shield lost, his white horses lamed by
disease
brothers
cry openly, hide
their own mortal fears like
lizards sunning on hot asphalt
down south
sisters
turn to laughter
make me buffalo wigs
to offer me warmth on days when
I’m alone
parents
understand their
daughter can die before
them, unprotected despite love
and want
uncles
fear the worst, talk
of death like He’s right there
in the room already, standing,
waiting
aunties
send cards and call
monthly, discuss treatment
like it’s a new recipe for
dinner
grandmas
quickly recall
a name, a face, my eyes
as memories roll freely once
again
and me
caught between cold
and crazy, a songbird
almost silenced, unable to
migrate

45

February 9
I lost all my hair, pubic hair first, in the shower. It started to come out, and it clogged the
drain so I had to keep scooping it out with my hand.
There shouldn’t have been that much really, because [my husband] tried to help me cut
all my ‘long’ hair off on January 22—getting ready for my first chemo later that day. He
used the #4, and it was his reality-maker to have my hair falling onto the floor in clumps.
He couldn’t do it, got 1/3 my head done before he left me alone in front of the mirror, to
finish it myself. We both started to look at me differently that day.
That was two weeks ago, so tonight in the shower, I razed my scalp with a Bic. Now I’m
as smooth as a Tibetan Monk, but a long way from Sinead O’Connor because my
eyebrows fell out too. There’s no camouflaging I’m sick now: I’m bald everywhere.
Can’t express how my scalp feels—it’s a constant, seriously-cold chill running across
it—and I know this is the temperature of death, of dying cells, of my treatment and my
future treatments. One of the chemo drugs feels like this when they inject it.
They set up my IV needle and port, and then the nurse goes to the fridge and brings out
this horse syringe filled with red, clear liquid. After she checks the label several times,
she inserts the needle into my port and starts pushing the liquid into me, slowly, slowly.
She gets really intense (“look right at me, please”), and watches me very closely. When
someone looks at you that intently, it can’t be good.
It’s eerie. Even though they wrap me in heated blankets and cover my arm with a heating
pad first, I can feel the chemical move into me. The first place I notice it is my lungs,
which get all icy. I’ve never had cold lungs like that—they are on the inside so are always
warm, no matter the temperature of the air I breathe.
But this red stuff makes them immediately cold. Bizarre.
Then it’s my blood I feel—the chemical progressing through my system like a cool
shadow. It scares me to have that coldness seeping through me from the inside. It makes
me scared in a way I’ve never been scared before. It feels like my blood and all my cells
are scared. Good thing they wrap me in heated blankets or I’d bolt, despite the Ativan
they give me first.
And I have three more treatments of that chemical to go. I wonder if I will be cold the
whole four months of it. Judging from how I feel today without my hair, I think the
answer might be “yes.”
I have to sleep—exhaustion will be my acute enemy by Wednesday. And I have my next
chemo sooner than I think I’m ready for.
46

cutting thunder out of tides
Is the total black, being spoken
from the earth’s inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
“Coal,” Audre Lorde
Is the total-black being spoken
her universe of blood and bones, looking
on her moon-round face mirrored each
moment as her ominous thunder sighs
softer, softer, tremors too shallow to
register, and her rained body hopelessly
reduces to mercury dribbling
hanging
from the earth’s inside,
off cave walls propped inside hours
rough as gooseflesh, beside energy dry
as coarse salt, barren as whispers. She
replays her formerly rosy life, skirt short
enough to call bees to her petunia
mouth, eyes flushed
open.
There are many kinds of open:
part, wide, a crack—but none prepared her
for such brutality or raging nature where
she’s currently captured, a startled bat in
a horned owl’s claw shocked by a predator
of phantasmal presence whose bleak strength
spreads like coal powder on wind
masking
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
the sun to its rise, smooth as the turning
Earth and Her surging galaxy; she wanes without
eyebrows to tweeze, blemishes to pick, hair
to cut: stripped of diurnal orbits, her arc darkens
for without stars to graft her, she spins
unbalanced
tideless.

47

April 9
T---:
Thanks for the genuine email. Very sweet of you to inquire after me. Your questions are
no problem; I'll answer as best I can. I have found that most people, myself included, are
completely ignorant about the full spectrum of chemotherapy. They don't know the side
effects, the process, the duration.
The bottom line is that chemo kills ALL your cells, so during treatment, a patient has no
immune system whatsoever.
Chemo works like this, there’s usually a three week turn-around: get chemo Wednesday,
have it again in three weeks, and repeat as prescribed. Your blood gets checked at the
hospital the day before your scheduled treatment. Only after testing all your levels (from
Ferritin to Nutrafils) and ensuring you are healthy enough, can they administer your
treatment the next day. If your blood levels are too low, you have to wait a week. That’s
called a “delay.” If you get a delay, you have to get your blood retested again in 7 days. If
you still haven’t recovered, they’ll reduce your dosage, or maybe you could afford this
drug called Neupogen which boosts your blood counts (but I’ve heard it costs the patient
$500/shot, and you need 5-7 shots per treatment).
It’s better not to have your dosage reduced because they can only quote you curestatistics based on a full course of treatment, with at least 75% dosages each time. They
can’t guarantee chemo will work at all below 75%.
Unfortunately, I have found chemo quite rough. I’m one of the rare ones to get all the
side effects. Lucky me. I started chemo in late January, but had two delays, so have only
just gotten my third round. I’m a few weeks behind schedule. My friends and family are
being supportive and inspiring, but it must be tough for them to watch me go through
this, certainly when they can’t do anything to make me better. I think it’s not only the
patient who suffers.
Just last week, however, my specialist reduced my dosage to 80%. Seems my body can’t
take a full dose, and the oncologist told me I was “alarmingly toxic.” Yikes! I had chemo
last Wednesday and this week I show signs of 'recovery', as opposed to zero % recovery
for three weeks after a 100% dose.
The 80% dose is WAY better. I’m able to go out (not often), but have to wear gloves and
disinfect every part of myself when I get home. I can’t touch things that others have
touched (shopping carts, interact machines, door knobs, money). I’m awfully fragile right
now—so I’d rather stay in, boring as it may get.
I ordered a huge box of essential oils last month, so am using a lot of oils to combat
things like moods (I make Medusa look like a sweetheart), appetite dilemmas, nausea,
48

and insomnia. I can’t put them on my skin, so am using them airborne in a ‘sonic
nebulizer.’ Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
You’re brave to ask about dying. I don’t think I’ll die, but I realize it’s more that I don’t
want to. Whatever—it boils down to the same stubbornness, but I can’t let myself think
about it too much. I’m too weak to pull myself out of any holes, let alone the abyss of
wondering about my mortality.
You are also right that I feel very lonely, despite people calling and writing. I miss the
interaction I had in my former life--from feeling like a wife, from school to playing
squash, from going for coffee to biking with friends. I’ve had to become reclusive, since
I’m an infection risk. I didn't have the option to wait the regular six to seven weeks
between surgery and chemo. I had two surgeries, then just two weeks before my first
chemo. I started my chemo the same day I finished meds for a massive, post-operative
infection. Chemo was started when my body was super weak; not optimal, but there was
no option.
Not everyone is as understanding or open as you, T---. One couple we’ve been friends
with dropped our friendship. Sad, but I can't blame them; I'd like to turn away and ignore
this cancer too. I'd be happy to run away, but can't. Another couple asked my husband if
they could have my new bike and my racing gear, since I “was dying anyway.” I wonder
if I’ll lose other friends, but I guess I won’t know until I haven’t seen them in a very long
time.
And so I thank you for asking me these questions, and for contacting me. Talking/writing
about it keeps me grounded and prevents me from getting freaked right-the-hell out.
Writing is my saving grace right now. I wonder what patients do when they have no
hobbies? It’s easy to get swamped by the drama of it all, and what keeps me real is
reminding myself over and over that this is temporary, that others have survived, and
frankly, that I have too many things to do yet with my life.
By keeping myself realistic, and by reviewing the logical process that is my treatment, I
find a calmness and a clear path to follow. Wouldn’t you know, the path is only one step
long, though.
But really, all anyone can take is one step at a time.
D

49

icing
apparently there’s never been
another student with cancer, another
loan recipient forced to fight for life
they’re having none of it, and
need proof of income, proof of
illness, proof of medical expenses
so forms, endless papers I must
provide; do the frightening, dangerous
trek to a germ-covered store for a
public fax so they can have it all
fast, as my wallet thins terminally and
my cupboards gape bare
I bloat with nausea and eat anger
borne of more than chemicals meant
to kill errant cells, call after call
fax after fax and still they don’t have
enough proof, bank statements or
doctors’ reports: it’s their bottom line
into the phone I sob, face stuck
to a receiver caked in snot and the
tears of my thousandth plea can’t
you understand, I’m SICK; have
you any idea the cost I pay to
leap through your fucking hoops?
chemo isn’t a valid enough reason
to defer my loan a measly few
months, so at two-point-five above
prime, they invade my security
though I’m freezing in June (but
that’s not their problem, after all
I signed their contract, took
money for schooling to solidify
my watery potential) I’ve learned
much in these years, but know most
there is no good will, no port in
this typhoon of principles

50

Chapter Two

51

Meditation I
Cool smell: root vegetables left cellared
squandered to worms. Close your
eyes against city-thought, open
your body to scents of rich highland

shaggy mountains

Audience, critic, artist, model-be awed by the miracle of daybreak
allow breath to snare in your throat, listen
as peaks whisper of rocks and rivers

alpine air

breathe clearly, in
let brightness fill your corners
breathe strong, out
let dust and cobwebs leave you
Reverence is a red splash behind peaks as
sun breaks behind their shield
breathe in their
fire, warm your feet

exhale dust

Meng-mein is orange, glowing atop
granite slopes cheerful as embers
breathe in energy
like Crocosmia to your belly

exhale fog

Rising sun floods yellow, fills dark gullies
chases night from sleeping flowers
breathe in, tuck
a rock-rose in your naval

exhale sand

Meadows glow vibrant green, young grasses
bud, spring to attention all around
breathe in, clasp
this fern to your heart
exhale cobwebs
Above mountains, sky shines blue; breezes
smell of over-night, alpine frost
breathe in, place
Gentiana jewels at your throat
exhale rust

52

Higher yet, air is purple--a soft haze
calms a wakening earth below
breathe in, drape
Lobelia vines on your forehead

exhale shadow

Clouds form in white, skate on currents unseen
sweep into shapes unimaginable
breathe in, picture
snowdrops arcing over your hair
exhale dust
hear Nature’s spectrum hum in your ears
as cleansing powers of this rainbow
travel through you like stones’ pulse
endless grasslands
allow stillness to spread over you
like a warmed blanket. Be calmed.
Be a wilding garden.
ferned mountain base
breathe clearly, in
feel brightness fill your corners
breathe strong, out
feel dust and cobwebs leave your thoughts
breathe deeply, naturally
feel balanced with Harmony
Pause. Rest your lungs and
know the gift of Peace

breathe strong

deep

and know.

53

smooth
never could have
imagined
my head
resembling
billiard balls
new leaves
rose petals
porcelain
new paper
marble sculptures
baby’s toes
gull’s bodies
patent leather shoes
rocks from China Beach
i wonder
when
(maybe curly
what colour
how soft?)
it’ll grow back

54

a balance in imbalance
quick as toast we’re friends brought
together to witness science, detail our
pains and loss of dignities like kids
trading bagged lunches
minds stutter with effort as
memory falls under siege, replaced
by orange urine, loose stools
veins playing more hide than seek
absurd how like porcelain we’ve
become, so shiny and pubescent
our hairless legs, our underarms
smooth as eyelids!
downplaying brevity, living to change
regrets, we weep and discuss
Death & Life with callous honesty
because our fantasies failed us
newly magic, we empathize without speech
feel without eye contact, know without hearing
the whole time trying to calm our instincts
which ricochet between Run and Stand

55

come again
words are foreign particles
thieved from a past life
fictions have fallen
hamstrung mid-dance
muses have succumbed
bludgeoned deep blue
angelic faces grimace
tongues hacked out
dresses shredded
sandals caked with blood
there are no footprints
left to follow

56

when poison is poison
no choice: nurses assigned my seat today
and I’m next to the double-wide doors that
lead to the private room which houses the
crash cart
guess that’s just how they deal with how
my veins nearly exploded during my last
treatment, guess it really was as bad as
it felt
I have a view of every one from here
but no one’s looking at me on account
of our general fear of those two doors
opening fast
a new lady comes in and they seat her
near the entrance (ooh, a first-timer) so she and
I are like gargoyles perched on opposite corners
of Hell
she’s talkative, looking vivacious and kind
of relaxed but that veneer’s too damned thin for
the likes of us we know how much she’s shitting
bricks inside
out of respect we kind of ignore her to let her
keep pretending, but our radar picks up that needles
go in to her no problem, that her veins are plump and
still naïve
and I feel it before even the nurses notice, my
skin gets terrified, feels like razor blades so I
look around to see her suddenly super red, eyes
rolling back
and then it’s the same scene as my last treatment, only
from my gargoyle-spot not the patient-spot: four nurses
efficient as herding dogs, float really fast to her side
pulling tubes
reclining chair
grabbing heated flannels
silencing alarms
doing all they can to not rush-open those double doors
57

as two Oncologists with soft-soled shoes run in
join the huddle for however long it takes
until she’s the right colour again
I’m the only ghoul watching as all the rest of us feign
sleep, or turn away or completely off, or become too
thin to respond so only I see the doctors’ lips mouthing
“it’s over”
and then she’s sitting upright terrified, digesting news
that she’s allergic or toxic or something that means
she can’t even have her chemotherapy, that even poison
won’t work
I see her mouth moving over and over and around
bewildered words “what now?” as she struggles
to accept that all her chances just died, and
I wilt
for her, with her, about her, sitting in my recliner cold
as death from poisons trickling safely, willingly into
me, mouth dry, eyes wet with some bizarre, unnameable
wave of guilt

58

three for comfort
it’s just temporary
toxicity is a constant mood: thick as smog
over a spreading city, deadly as smoke from
wood frame buildings going up like thin
torches, flames rich with hunger, red
as blood under a hospital microscope every
third week
it’s just temporary
there’s nothing inside but ash: the lunatic
I’ve become threatens more than cancer and
I forget positive, loving, loved while
medicine poisons beyond the cells it’s
injected to destroy and “I” dies rapidly in
that reign
it’s just temporary
the brackish woman I’ve become: eyes
dart like a savage’s, furrows like cement levies
between them, rot spews from a mouth
I can’t control (don’t even know), sharpened
hatred hangs me out of sight from
my Self
it’s just temporary
this risks permanent bitterness: but I don’t
want to become an old lady, white hair pulled
back, smile stretched onto basset-hound face
rouge slathered clown-like on catatonic
cheeks, grotesque lipstick smeared outside
the lines
it’s just temporary
three words: though hollow and minute
in my temple, bare of gold, candles, and altar
my church shrinks without congregation
of spirit, grows silent as stone under
my shrieking heart, soul flailing in a
stained faith

59

such small things
somehow it’s reasonable to define
beauty differently
evaluate
my Self by stranger things
my vocabulary and
talents, the quantity
and quality of laughter, the
goodness of others, the breeze
on my skin, the flowers I
for hours
can stare at
despite modification by amputation
and a few dozen steroid-pounds
I feel
feminine and more able to love myself
I also crave the future
this ugly treatment is my best and only shot
so everything’s
bearable down to the last damned
humiliating side-effect, bearable
enough that I still dream, declare
my feelings, smile from
my belly
out
I’m weaned off success
my thought
it’d render me happy and healthy
fades as I realize I lived like I’d been
branded, had forgotten how to look
down at the path
at my feet
my world has shrunk with blazed
precision: I live in days, not weeks
months, or anything so grand
as a year. I’ve narrowed it down
to time spent doing better things
in near-deathness I’ve found permission
to spend time on sleep
to uncover clarity
to focus on immediacy
and live day-to-day, to accept and
celebrate the value of small things
now that’s

a much healthier time-line

60

June’s encounter
a magnet made me
reach out
hold her
cry along
in the hospital corridor
in front of the blood lab
her right arm red
swollen like bee stings
by the pick-line they’d
installed to irrigate her
with a raft of
chemotherapy drugs
for the next
several months
in an attempt to kill the
Stage III colon cancer
she was diagnosed with
five weeks earlier
her husband wept behind her
his face poppy-orange
under fluorescents, his eyes
pleading for this all
to be a hideous dream
from which he would awake
find her safe, warmly
nestled to his chest in sleep
under the flower-print comforter
on their bed
I made her breathe deep
told her it’d be over
sooner than you think
tried to present some Hope
knowing the whole time
my breath would remain
stalled
in my own throat, that
I’d worry for her outcome
(she’s a year younger
and I’m too young
to go through this)
knowing too that
61

for many months I’d often
take time to pray for her
a stranger
in all ways
but disease

62

they’re piling up
in the mailbox, those used
ribbons from my parents’ friend
I’ve met a half-dozen times: Rick
runs, runs marathons wherever they
turn up, like an addict he registers
then trains like a phantom on frigid
Interior mornings, muscles thinning to
striated springs which launch him off
start lines like a middle-aged comet
twisted pink ribbon pinned to his
number plate over his heart, ink
barely visible
for Darcy, because we can!
Rick’s running to share with me
breezes across skin, hooting crowds
pavement passing like river beneath his
sweating legs. Rick’s running because it’s
all he can give my parents for their youngest
child—throughout his marathons he pictures
me healthy, pounds that perfect vision into
solid earth at his feet where it can smell
soil and drunkenly take root while he
sends me psychic images of
the wild, winding course
stretching out ahead

63

playing poker
Can’t ask you to gently rub my back
if it lasts longer than mere moments
I gamble it being your standard six
point five minutes of dry intimacy
when my docs all say don’t! and
my thin skin agrees by tearing
instantly
with no bluffs or red hearts to win
I tense to fend off this risky bet
my silent face blank, two pillows propped
between knees and under my arm
waiting for solo snores while I pray
my cards will look better in daylight

64

(I think it’s) June 28
I’m beginning to feel better today. My anti-nauseas are gone for this round, and I only
lost seven pounds this time. I know by next week the steroids they have to give me will
have me bloating like a carton of sour milk, but I’m not bloated today, so it’s a good day.
My eyes feel like 40 grit sandpaper in the desert sun. And I now have the wonderful
distinction of having a staph infection all over me. It’s worst on my scalp, and I’ve never
been or felt uglier in my life. Besides the fact that I can’t see all that well these days, I
don’t want to see myself in the mirror. The room turns at a nauseating angle when I can
see it reflected behind me anyway. Circuses and fun-houses all the way.
At least this round I didn’t barf. Christ, Lord, and God above, last chemo was nuts
because I ralphed up this toxic goo that made my eyes literally burn as I leaned into the
toilet bowl. What I yakked up was so foul and so hot that the toilet was a uranium mine.
The worst thing this time around is that my skin hurts like mad; every time I move too
fast or there’s a big noise outside, my skin suddenly feels scalded. Everywhere: my
shoulders, my ass, the soles of my feet, the back of my neck. My poor scalp. Oh God, my
scalp. They didn’t mention any side effects like this in the literature. I wonder if I’m the
only one.
It hurts to have blankets on me, but I’m too cold without. It’s bloody June and I’ve got
the fireplace raging while I shiver under a down duvet on the couch right beside the dang
fireplace. I wish someone would come and stoke the thing for me—two feet feels too far
to go today… Even the sensation of daylight hurts my flesh like a burn. I’ve stuffed my
ear plugs in as far as they’ll go because I can’t stand how much my skin hurts from the
noise of the traffic out front, or of the logs crackling only feet away. Noise hurts. Just
another swell day on Fourth Street…
Silence. Silence. Please.
If I died today I’d feel totally ripped off. There are too many things still to do. I haven’t
donned a white suit and dealt with bees; stuck my hand into the throbbing, buzzing mass
of them and partook of their honey. I haven’t seen one stitch of the Nahanni River. I’ve
never seen a wild fox, mountain sheep, rattle snake, or grizzly. I’ve never been to Ayers
Rock or listened to the sounds of fruit bats as they swarm over the jungle river beds. I
haven’t seen a professional baseball game. I don’t know what Nasturtiums taste like in a
salad, or how to make Yorkshire pudding. Who knows what my friends will look like
when they’re old, how my nieces will look at their weddings?
I’m not clean enough to die. There are things still to sweep up, deal with. There are
people out there who don’t know how I feel about my relationship with them. There are
things left undone. So many things I haven’t conflicted Constructed constituted Shit.
What is that word? It’s when you are combative and you bring something up with
65

someone you have an issue with contracted compressed convinced Damn brain. What
is that word? It’s when you do something you have been thinking of doing for a long
time. To fix some situation that hasn’t gone the way that makes you feel good, right,
settled about it. Undone. Unfinished. Unsatisfied. Constituted I haven’t combatted—
that’s not it—combusted give me a fricken break and think of the damned right word!!!
And some specialists think that “chemo-brain” doesn’t exist, that it’s something patients
make up. Sure, like I’d have energy to make ANYthing up right now. It’s one of the
worst side effects, to not be able to think, not be able to read a damn thing because I can’t
follow a simple sentence—can’t remember what the subject is by the time I get to the
verb. Thank goodness I can type so fast, and can get the thoughts down almost as quickly
as they come.
I do wonder though, if this will make any sense later on. I worry that all my “salvationtime” spent at the keyboard will turn into useless paper, crumpled in the bottom of the
waste basket. The big fear is that my sentences are actually incomplete, make no sense,
they’ll never roll together in a cohesive paragraph… And I can’t trust myself to know.
Watching TV is really no better than trying to read because I can’t recall what happened
before the commercial break. Being frustrated doesn’t help, but Fuck! I feel like hell,
look even worse, and can’t think myself from the living room to the bathroom without
wondering what the hell I’m up for.
CONFRONTED. I finally remembered the word! I haven’t confronted some of the
people who have wronged me. I just sat there and let them run me over like I was
worthless, but I am not worthless: I am as valuable as gold or diamonds or oxygen.
Damned if I’m going to die today and let myself feel this unfinished, this cheated out of
my Self and my Being by other people who put themselves higher than me for the simple
fact that I have been non-combative because I am so god-damned polite and soft spoken.
It was drilled into me that you can’t be rude to others or hurt their feelings. God knows
that would be wrong, bad.
My upbringing chaffs me raw some days. Polite. Damned waste of MY time in most
circumstances, to tell the truth. I’m combative with ME, because I can control that fight. I
can win (or lose) that fight. Why have I not honoured my Self and stood up against those
situations where I’ve been harpooned, maligned, under- and de-valued, pissed on for
crying out loud?
I haven’t cleaned my slate. I need to address some of the personal injustices I have both
been victim and orchestrator of. I need to be cleaner. If I can get through this chemo, this
cancer, this lousy fucking test, then I should be able to extend the time and energy to
clean the hell up. Deal with all those things that, right this moment, press against my
mind in the form of REGRETS. Life is too short to be stuck on this damned couch and
thinking of all the things I should have done. Piss on that. So what if I feel like hell. So

66

what if I naturally figure that death is too close for comfort. Today is not my day to go,
no matter how big a pile of shit I feel I am, or feel I am in.
The real issue here is that I’m not fucking done yet. My 40th birthday is just around the
corner, and I still have fears and people and situations and all sorts of crap yet to
confront.

67

rowing in July
it’s the first row boat I’ve sat in
and it belonged to her father, long dead
long missed. She honours him now by
escaping onto a familiar sea with
someone who can’t row herself
this skiff she once passengered
carves out a silent wake while I marvel
at yellow ribbons of light taking leave
of twilight and settling onto
subtle waves around us
Margaret stretches long as she rows us
out to Newcastle Island, around the left
where magic stumps of sandstone
lurch out of midnight seas like
ghouls, wonderful and strong
she removes her clothing, slips
into crisp salt water, declaring it warm
and delightful, then tows the boat round
the bay to stir phosphorescence
with her small feet
at first, my eyes think it bubbles
pale as her skin, created by movements
of her body—until night matures and
the sea becomes a flat, dark slate upon
which glitter marks our route
we are suddenly faeries in an ancient
ancestral land, restrictions forgone and diluted
by a million moonrises on a familiar shore
where nighthawks and dew-catchers
flit after wave upon wave of night
I drape my fingers in to tickle up
my own glowing cloud just as
a green outlined fish swims under our vessel
very close to Margaret’s sparkling legs
delighted, I shiver almost violently

68

I want to stay in this boat on this water
with her, floating safely away from reality
Margaret says she understands, but that
she’ll take me out again sometime
when I am feeling better

69

Chapter Three

70

Meditation II: learning to float
The worst worry can be a prayer boat.
—Connie O’Brien
Damp with fog, heavy blanket wraps her
shoulders, shields from an imagined wind.
Closed eyes study whole-grey expanse
as sunless horizon looses chill onto
wise rocks under foot.
She concentrates, waits. First light shimmies
emblazons bright pinpoint onto psychic
grey waves. Inhaling crimson of
yawning daybreak, her body unfurls
as Hope flushes cheek and sky.
Exhalation weakens her newest shadows
chases curling light across wave tips
bright as warning fire. Orange orb rises
colour leaps fish to her mouth and
breath spreads to her gunwales.
Darkness flees day’s first yellow blast:
rush of bold light shocks her as beach rocks
waken. She arcs, casts her needs to
imagined sun’s domain, inhales daylight
like pleasing aromas.
Seas remind her of sedge, newly
launched boats romance the fisher in her-emerald hook on her line, she reels green
light to her bosom, gulps it down, nets
the prize of its song.
Dust tumbles out as she breathes low, arms
raise unconsciously to blue sky as wind
billows into her void, cleaning corners
into velvet on her soul. Charged, her blanket
heaps like seaweed on shore.

71

She smiles as gulls drift higher, higher
to test purple sky, their shrieks settling
to earth like spray. Her body overflows
with heady salt-scent, prickle of dawn
raising gooseflesh and nipple.
Neck erect, she’s a painted masthead
charging through chop, proud under white
clouds and dancing seafoam. Plain
breath swells inside, her body ripples
like sails taking wind.
Beyond the rainbow in her mind, colours
tumble like tide through her. Her hold
filled as with catch, she pulls anchored
feet free, opens her eyes to greet
the place where she is.

72

the Roman in me
My right defense is drooping
battles find me at every
turn though my shield
is cracked, my horse
lame from her endless gallop
pulling a chemotherapy chariot
against the scar on my
breast and my shriveled
lymph glands which now swell.
My sword arm grows soft with
yellow fluid, heavy muscles tire
from ACT and I grow fat
from withheld liquid: my worst
terror in all this
for besides my dulling sword
I had only my arms and hands.
there is no grace
in war: from my slowing
chariot I smell their sweat
see the gleam in narrowed eyes.
I am a shining gladiator, hungry to quash
little enemies in my veins
I am not finished—at least one more flaming lap
before my race can be declared over

73

rowdies and hoodlums
while I struggle
to sleep after
hours of agonized
restless limbs
bones and joints
screaming with
every movement
(must look like a
junkie, twitching
like that, my fattened
face contorted and
white as a card)
disjointed words all
lanky and akimbo
each one eager
to translate and
record my thoughts
onto crisp paper
clamour on my
bedroom threshold
noisy and belligerent
as drunken thugs

74

watching buffalo in August
surviving this far, can I claim
victory—should I dare—however
temporary over that unending landscape
so like wild plains of English ancestors
fields once open, untouched, sweet-smelling
save for thousands of buffalo carcasses
which loomed like foreboding
headstones in the serious dusk?
BC looks nothing but wet (snow
lake, glacier, stream) during late-night
flight with a movie of sunset: enormous
horizon of soothing peach, smoky mauve
from end to end over stretches of
blackening black below
flying East, it hangs many hours
against square charcoal clouds that
resist whatever wind occurs. Into that
hurtful red blaze I recline, romancing
terrain underwing and flashing back to
youth when my favourite novel was
running away to wilderness and
surviving alone
where would I stop if I
disappeared into plain or forest?
below this plane moored in
still skies of vodka and orange hues,
I imagine rooms of logs: smell
unfolding like river currents grey as
wet pewter, settling into my quilts
dank air lifting forest spirits
while coyote calls sashay through
cloudless nights
if I lived the wilds
would I be safer?
I watch day closing out the plane’s
tiny window, an affront of red and
violet crackling like thick frost
75

against my clouding eyes. I could
run to build and settle there,
by turgid lake, there by
simple stream, there beside
sturdy slope – no – massive river
snaking for miles, offers a shore to follow
like bison roaming, outrunning
arrows and long-guns
why settle at all?

76

of love and sleep
when I sleep I hear gardens
in my dreams, honey-makers hum
in hot noon hours, gauzy sound
lifts off rainbows of roses
in lazy waves against a chorus
of wrens, concealed in low branches
nests hidden by moss-green
bark-green, sea-green leaves
restless constancy of breath, so like
the dullness of day and night
winter and spring, my uneven chest
(a beacon of my sea) rises, retires,
chases coral-coloured potential
in daylight, blue-violet fantasy in dark
fortune allows me to wallow
in this crisp now-ness
stilled in this sanctity, I cradle
the modest shell of my body’s
togetherness, smooth ivory case around
my very yolk, my soul a precious
hatchling I fail to keep warm
under down duvets and
hedging sighs

77

vista
beneath curled light
white quiet like
canoes under water

78

resonance

for Mo and the others

the refrigerator runs
almost silently, its
soft peal stalks
her from her kitchen
the sandy-grey sound of infirmity
hums against her timpani like
jangling Jamaican drums
dancers jerking, spicy ghosts
possessed
intimates attend to weep at
the foot of her bed, watch her
change as fruits on her counter
bowl of cannibalized
mossy ghouls
henchmen spreading, creeping
under her blankets
her chalked tongue thickens
plump as Cornish game hen
a delicate dish no longer, she
drifts in dry dilaudid air
morphine skies
clouds blistering with each
minuscule noise
her universe contorts swift
as melody despite the ethereal
echo of that insistent preserver of
food she does not want

79

relapse
rare nights I wake from my depth
to find him sleeping behind me like
a new lover, passionate and
tentative, body cupping mine as if
beloved, and I must remind myself
this spooner is my Reaper.
the heat of my body soaks into sheets
folds into blanket creases while his cool
weight waits, calm and confident around
my hips, dark abyss of his hunger still
beating and breathing, seriously
seeking, seeking my response.

80

prairie fire
The love of a woman
is the possibility which
surrounds her as hair
her head, as the love of her
“The Love of a Woman,” Robert Creeley
the love of a woman
taken to wife, to bed, to task as
tenderly as brambles and wild roses
beside a long road: flat, straight
as an argument, weathers winters that
bolster seasonal crops, for prairie sun
is the possibility which
her husband considers given, as present
as the sky or grain elevators blotting
sections like blemishes while wind
marks them, shifts grain like
river-flow, invades their home and
surrounds her as hair
which defies plaits, though her
fingers weave through it; the farmer
envies its easy beauty, fears
the threat his machinery yields
to the stunning red crown of
her head, as the love of her
hungers deep, chokes tender blades
of grain, weeds not yet bloomed -she watches fallow fields on solitary
mornings, stacks her dreams
like logs in their hearth

81

A-wall
thin soldier
in green
stiff wool
reliving all
the battles
we’ve raged
and fought
over and
over again

against ourselves.
Fights that
made our
hope fracture
our goodness
dig trenches
our marriage
dispatch troops
to march

ahead and
behind, great
legions of
broken trust
poor sight
poorer health
and clothing
too light
against such brittle war.
So alone
I lay
and watch
you strategize
your lone
bleak reconnaissance,
stubbornly ignoring
the incoming
and invasive
wave which
forces me
into another
full surrender
to the
constant reloading
of your
opposing guns.
82

Chapter Four

83

gentle radiation
science looms above me looking
like a giant phone handset
from which I call God daily, hiss
the name at the receiver hanging over
me large as a sting-ray, cradling me flat
pancaked in discomfort for two
minutes while I lie rigid and
goose-fleshed, warned that any
movement will cause damage
and burn healthy flesh to death
I’ve too little courage left to deal with
this over-bright room so I begin to
confuse God with nothing while
rays char my lung, stroke my chest
through the bolus, mono-note squealing
like nails on a chalkboard as my skin
blisters a wordless response

84

September 7

(email to my husband)

Hi D---:
I'm having a little bit of a meltdown this morning after my radiation treatment because I
met with the stand-in radiologist for Dr. Olivotto, Dr. Kadr, and he told me it was a great
idea to take the Tamoxifen. Seems that if any breast cancer does spread through the blood
it is completely incurable. What a horrible word THAT is! I really had no idea of this fact
either. I thought that you just treated it again--like they just did to me. Shit.
I hate this. I hate the fact that I will forever be someone "living with breast cancer" like
Dr. Kadr says. The medical practitioners consider breast cancer a life-long thing, even
after you've done your treatment, even if they got it all. Apparently recurrence is rare, but
it spreading to other parts of the body isn't as rare. And that spread can't be cured. The
word "incurable" is hanging in the air around me right now, like a cloud of mosquitos.
I hate it. It means, once you break down my appointment today, that I will be taking the
Tamoxifen for the next five years, after all. In the sixth year, Dr. Kadr says I’ll change to
taking something called Aromatase Inhibitors for another five years. I had hoped all the
chemical stuff was over. I'll also do all the natural things I want to, but eleven years is a
long sentence. Cancer is a nasty, fucking thing, but at least they can fight it. I can fight it.
I wonder if you understand? Somehow I feel I'm lonelier than I've ever been, sitting here
at this public computer, just outside the radiation treatment room, weeping and writing. I
mean, death takes many forms: out-of-control buses and things that bite.... But having
some teeny cells in your body that may never be 'safe' cells, that's more shitty than I can
tell you.
I really need a hug. Without questions, or strings, or sound, Just a deep and sincere hug.
Maybe you can give me that when I get home tomorrow. I am so, so sorry that this is
happening. I wish I were stronger, I wish I were healthier. I'm so sorry.
D

85

Mother

--for Wam

on this sallow-lit day when your body
has been wrung out for its fresh water
pearl, your shell too trusting to repel
that singular, miniscule grain of cancerous
sand which eventually overtook you:
walk towards the warming sun.
on the eve of this first night of breathlessness
when you stand alone from family and
friends and enemies are mere shadows
which fall across the threshold you have
so recently and noticeably traversed:
walk towards the warming sun.
into the silent embrace of an unknown realm
where other souls dance like veiled butterflies
over forever flowers, you are the newest
voice, the freshest member to step from
the yawning bay onto the clear beach:
walk towards the warming sun.
your leaving brings wisps of fog which
steal warmth and bring forth skeins
of separateness that pale your brows and
chill your hands--though your body is
free, we picture your quiet feet:
walk towards the warming sun.
in this new-dark day, I wither without your
touch and grapple with a gnawing ache
for your passage, but the courage you showed us
Mother, fills our souls with sparkling light
where over time it will pearl and spread:
under the blaze of a warming sun.

86

afterwards
Another flood is coming
though not the kind you think.
There is still time to sink
and think.
“Junkman’s Obbligato,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Another flood is coming.
current a tornado of white-blue
foam and trumpet song, driven by
an undulating wave to challenge
the aloneness of acute illness—
though not the kind you think.
the dammed-up river, thick
as ancient cedars, surges past and through
to unfenced fields, onto countless
square acres of harvest.
There is still time to sink
past your memories of muddied sloughs
dense with cattails and goose
dung, beyond where the moon calls
with her voice of moths
and think:
you are the churning, angry storm at
the gate, life and breath are awake for
your current overflows, swells with
stubborn strength—and
you are well again.

87

deep currents run smooth
for Candace

carry me overseas
carry me like a prayer boat on a hot river where women
with Turmeric skin and fuschia robes bathe, and
wash their families’ clothing
carry me over vast blue-green expanses to view jagged ice
in pallid blue, covered in speckled seals
and yellowed bears
carry me on waters running—
hard as the Nahanni, over rocks and through
chutes churning with foam and mortal danger
light as the Seine, through a city at night whose
lights burn lines onto the surface of the black
snake’s subtle current
carry me without the boat, without the paddle
carry me to the lake of the monster where mist rises off
churning grey-winter water like stalagmites and
drips like stalactites from low-lying clouds
carry me over the waterfall next to lilies large as pitchers
white as lathered pearls
carry me out of the hands of the land, into the arms of an
ocean thick with purple starfish and shiny porpoises
carry me through controlled chambers of the canal
beyond grassy shores at the loch
into the other world
and in turn, I will carry your smile in my heart, safe
as a flower, treasured as a tongue of rain

88

flat, round stones
Throw stones
Say anything
Blink at the sun and scratch
and stumble into silence
“Junkman’s Obbligato,” -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
throw stones
into my cleaned waters, don’t
say anything
to break the ripples’ path
blink at the sun and scratch
my name into this rock beach
and stumble into silence
where bones and basalt meld

89

October 8, 2006
To all my family and dear friends:
It’s time that I wrote a lengthy and informative letter to encapsulate the last year.
Hopefully, I can send it off and away, where I can imagine it so far removed that its
content can no longer bruise me. That’s my aim: to be over this year. Mind, I’m not
unscathed, or internally/emotionally unchanged. I cannot fall into the same life I had
before. I’m determined to keep my alterations constant: I have to take positive things out
of this whole experience, and my alterations have been very hard won.
So, chemo was over in late July, and I started the radiation a month later. You may recall
that my husband had planned to start his grad degree in August in Prince George, a city
far from here, but he ultimately decided to put it off for a year. So I was able to complete
my radiation treatments without having to watch him move away, mid-game. Now my
treatments are done, and I am hoping we can learn to be a couple again (disease can
certainly polarize people).
Life hasn’t returned to ‘normal’ quite yet, but I’m back at university myself, trying
unsuccessfully to will my mind to get over the chemical onslaught it has suffered in the
last ten months. I’m not as smart as I used to be. My brain is cloudy on good days, but I
no longer feel I have to be so darned serious all the time. I’m not sure my profs agree, or
if my grades will be as high as they were pre-cancer, but I’ve lightened up. Sure wish I
could have gone through this change in attitude without having the experience, but we all
know that’s highly improbable. Only with trauma do humans tend to really learn.
I learned a great deal about myself this past year, seeing as I had all that time to just sit
still and do nothing (not something I was very good at before). But I also had a lot of time
to really watch and appreciate friends, and the manifestations of the word friendship. I
feel I’m changed by it. I’m more emotional than I ever was before (Oh no!!), but it’s
moderated by a keener, more palpable understanding of the human process and the arc
Life takes.
Even though I’m still going through the emotional hang-over of this cancer experience, I
laugh more than I ever have before. I see more beauty and have more awe than I ever
perceived I would or could. I appreciate like I can’t tell you! Just so you know, losing
your hair (and I mean all your hair) is easy: it’s accepting and celebrating the loss that is
the harder part. Just remember as we age that Friends define you, not small things like
hairstyles and job descriptions.
On that note, I thank everyone for keeping me in their thoughts and prayers, for making
me soups and stews, phoning me when I was too ill to phone you, coming over to wax
our floors, taking the dogs for walks, laughing at my stories even though they may not
90

have been funny, and not laughing at me when I made no sense at all. Thank you for
visiting when I was healthy enough, and for not being offended when I turned you away
because I wasn’t healthy enough. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for initiating and
pursuing me. And thank you for contributing to my healing in every way that you could.
To everyone, I can’t thank you enough, nor can I explain how blessed I feel now to be
here. Everyday IS a new day, filled with promise and excitement. I wish you all the best
of these things, the ability to appreciate them, and the most love you could ever either
give or receive.
Blessings and love,
D

91

dear Dr. G:
You are a Doctor—a man in starched white
tall and respected, leading a valuable life.
You are a Doctor—our first step against all
the sickness that sticks to unsuspecting cell walls.
Our bodies are bones, blood and bare, and you
are our access to medical care.
You are a Doctor with a strong sense of Self;
A costly education prevents your being wrong, and
lawyers protect liabilities with arms this long. Yes,
You are a Doctor and know you know best,
you know more than I’ll ever see, because
you went to Med school and have that degree
that famed, framed paper hanging on your wall
that gives you the gall to treat others small.
Yes, you are my Doctor; the one who pokes and frowns,
presumes, projects, and postures me down
because I’m just a girl, a student, a “thing”
or whatever it is I do for a living.
Me? I’m your patient for five years
a mere number on your list, a faceless, forceless
receptionist despairing a condition you say
doesn’t exist. A woman who’s fearing a silent
disease: feels it conquering her way
down, down deep--but you are the Doctor
who looks with disdain when I come to
your office again and again.
So when I finally fluke and see someone else,
the sirens go off and it’s all about my health.
It’s a freaky fucking roller coaster ride
as a team of doctors widen their eyes
saying I’ve only got six months, I’m so far gone
maybe they can help but I’ve got to be strong
it’s a gamble at best and pray tell them why
I didn’t see a Doc sooner—do I want to die?
Their diagnosis is dire, I’m down to the wire
so I end up afire for a full frightening year
92

with poisonous chemicals pumping in my veins
being kept so close to death, it’s
absolutely insane, but I’m stubborn enough
to take it and remain—I’ve got visions of Future
visions of more
visions that make me
soulful and sore.
Like the one of you Doctor, with me
in your space, making you look me right in the face
as I form frozen words so true you can’t deal
so much truth it’s painfully real: I am your patient
look at me!
I am every female
you will ever see. Pay attention, you must not deny
and despite your ego, you must recognize
young women can get cancer (oh dread!), and
not all female patients are soft in their heads.
Receptionists, secretaries, gardeners, mothers
lawyers, sisters, poets, lovers: they all have minds
and know their Selfs, but they die prematurely
when your righteous Self thinks only he’s got a clue
and only He can construe what’s wrong
with their beautiful bodies.
You were no longer my Doctor
when I finally appeared in your
office at the end of that terrible year...
when I demanded you look me full in the eyes
when you choked, sweat, apologized, and
whispered you were absolutely surprised that
I had made it and somehow survived.
You may be a Doctor, but tables can turn, and
patients can know more than you, that we’ve both learned.
You may be a Doctor, but we all make mistakes
despite schools, status, income or stakes:
I was deathly ill for years
and you missed it. Tell me, Dr. G
—who else have you missed?
I appeal to you now Doctor, to check twice now
even thrice
lumps, moles, pains, and tears of patients
you’ll have in the upcoming years. I challenge you
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Listen to worries and aches, nightmares and fears
of every patient you’ll face: don’t let anyone suffer
an assumption you make.
I am a patient, and will be ‘til I die
but it’s my right to ensure you apologize
that you question with caution
that you listen and learn
that you sleep well at night
with respect you have earned.
Please. Ease your ego, champion your role
accept there are things you may never know
and my last words to you are these
Dr. G: you’ll be a better Doctor overall
if you always just think
of Me.

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Chapter Five

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epilogue
cold that is endless starts at the top of the spine
cold this constant may always be mine
fatigue which assaults me day after day
I’m told is normal and may never ebb away
my memory is fractured, my focus gets lost
but in the interest of FUTURE everything’s well worth the cost
Life is a gift which I partly control
and losing a breast doesn’t make me less whole
although fear of recurrence may never abate
I will not wither, I will not wait

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