Friday, May 15, 2009

Cancer is a Total Bitch

A few weeks back I headed south of the border with a bag full of goodies for one of my best friends and her two kids. For Ann the Eldest, I packed hand-me-down princess purses and a dolphin charm for the bracelet I gave her when she was baptized. When Ann’s mom Sarah asked my husband and I to be Ann’s godparents, she joked we’d provide the agnostic view from above—the “above” being liberal Madison north of their Chicago suburb. For Kyle the Youngest I came bearing a Scoobie Doo DVD. I almost brought him a Packer T-shirt, too, but I decided not to offend my gracious hosts.

On the way down I stopped at the Border’s in Schaumberg (yes, it’s right next to Ikea) and bought my friend Sarah a terrific new book, Cancer is a Bitch, by Madison author Gail Konop Baker. When the book came out last fall, I wasn’t ready to read it. Cancer is a bitch, I thought to myself. I certainly didn’t need a memoir to convince me. Then last February, Sarah called me in tears. “I have breast cancer.”

She’s my age: thirty-eight. I honestly didn’t know what to do with the fear and frustration that came over me. So I grabbed Gail’s book from the cluttered little shelf that is my bedside table and devoured her story in a single afternoon. It was like chicken soup for the sad friend’s soul.

Later, when I interviewed Gail for this blog, she wasn’t surprised that I had found comfort in her book—sisters and friends of survivors were reacting the same way. What surprised her, though, is that another audience had found its way to her book, and the blog that led up to it.

“The diagnosis crystallized a lot of stuff women face mid-life,” Gail says. “The book brought it out like a strong reduction sauce.”

The memoir’s themes of age, marriage, family and relationships caught her publisher’s attention as well. Read on for where Gail’s writing career is headed next.

The book explores your marriage pretty explicitly. What’s that been like for your husband and family? When I started writing the column, he said, “Just please change the names,” because he felt like it would be better for the kids. Now we go out and everybody calls him ‘Mike’ (the name of his character in the book).

I love how many Madison references you use. Getting that sense of place is really always important to me as a writer.

What’s it been like since the book came out? Nothing like I imagined. I really didn’t expect to launch with a memoir because I’d written fiction forever, and certainly not a breast cancer memoir. You just don’t plan these things. There’s a bittersweet quality, where I had to suffer through this to get that kick that got me launched. After the column and the book contract, I thought, “Do I really want to stand up and be the woman who had breast cancer?”

It’s turned out to be such a blessing in disguise. Not only do I have this new, exciting wonderful career, I’m doing patient advocacy. I hear from survivors who tell me my words help them feel less alone, and it gives them courage facing surgery. That never would’ve happened if I had launched with a fiction career.

But it’s still hard.

At a recent book reading, my son and husband were in the audience. I feel like I’m retraumatizing all of us. On the other hand, when patients and survivors come up and thank me, this is what I’m giving back. I do believe that cancer is a last-standing taboo in that you say the word and there is a stigma. So if I can stand up here and wear that label it helps someone else.

Last fall when the book was coming out Andrew [her youngest of three children] kept riding down to Borders to see if the book was there. Then he calls me from his cell phone, “Mom, I’m standing at the front table and I’m holding the book. You’ve gotta come down here.” He’s looking at me and the book and me and the book. And he said, “You know mom, you really turned this thing around didn’t you.”

How has it affected your two college-age daughters? A woman can launch herself mid-life in the midst of something so scary. A woman can do that. Now I’m traveling, I’m being interviewed all over the place. I was on Dr. Oz!

What about some of the characters in the book that didn’t always come off as friendly or supportive? I was open and honest but careful. I always erred on the side of kindness. In every situation that I recounted, it had to be accurate but when you write something you can tilt it in the way of kindness. Eleanor was a composite of three women. Everything that was said was true but I put into detail enough that they wouldn’t identify themselves. “Everyone knows an Eleanor.”

The book title, is, well, so right on! I didn’t have any of that writer’s distance. That’s why it reads very raw and intimate. When I read it again now I get choked up because it was so raw and unfiltered. Dr. Oz loved the title!

Was it difficult to write? I moved my pen across the page. It came out really fast. The columns I wrote over a period of months. The rest of it I wrote in four months. Getting it out on the page was very cathartic. And then playing with it—flipping the words and changing the phrases—felt like something I could control.

You’re very revealing about marriage, which can be a taboo subject, too. People have identified and thanked me for being so honest about marriage. My new book is about marriage. Somehow this whole thing did really make me re-examine my marriage. The working title is “Anatomy of a Marriage.” I conducted interviews. Every story is unique and universal. In every story there was a kernel that talked to me personally.

I’ve learned that what we think of as a typical or normal marriage doesn’t exist. We’re a wedding and a divorce culture. We don’t discuss a lot about that complicated thing called marriage and what it really looks and feels like. To not talk about it as a culture means we really need to talk about it. It’s a very moment-to-moment thing. People who aren’t married look at it as a monolithic thing.

Besides your marriage, what were some other “a-ha!” moments? It woke me up to the fact that now was the time in life I was always meant to live, to be the person I was always meant to be. I feel like I’m living with a stronger sense of purpose and urgency. When an opportunity would come up I could talk myself out of it. But I went from the why of everything to why not?

It’s had a dramatic impact on my life. Book, career, travel, a million more new experiences in the last year than in the last fifteen years combined. I’ve run two half-marathons; I’m running the Chicago Marathon in the fall; I’m getting my yoga certification. The fear of experience turned into a fearlessness.

Tell me about the normal writing process for you. Getting started is always the hardest thing for me. A lot of times I get physical. I get the pen. I like to write sensorally and a lot of that experience is feeling the pen in your hand and on the page. If I’m feeling stuck, I often pick up the pen. When you’re writing you shouldn’t be thinking. I think it’s important to move the pen across the page. There’s a parallel to running. A lot of times it’s just putting your shoes on and tying them and putting one foot in front of the other. If you’re not over-thinking it you don’t get stuck.

How do you know when you’re done with the book? It’s really hard and it’s done when you send it off to your editor. It’s kind of like sending your child off to school.

After a double mastectomy in April, Sarah started chemo this week. Cancer is definitely a bitch. But for the first time in six weeks, Sarah was able to pick up Kyle from his crib. He wrapped his legs around her waist, tucked his sweet little face into the well-worn groove between her neck and shoulder, and let out a primordial sigh of relief. Mother and child were both back home where they belonged. Cancer and all.

3 comments:

Rebecca del Rio said...

"... I went from the why of everything to why not." GKB
Thanks for your interview with Gail, who I consider to be one of the most entertaining--and wisest--writers around.
She's got the guts to write life as it is, including cancer, flat tires and everything in between.
Wishing the best for your friend,
Rebecca

Madison Magazine said...

Rebecca-I love that quote, too. "the why to why not"... I'll be the first in line for Gail's next book. OK, second behind you! Best, Brennan

Gail said...

Thanks Rebecca and Brennan... how nice to wake up to your kind words!