My name is Mia, and ...

It is New Year's Eve, and all around the city, people are drinking. Other and I decided to stay home this year. Actually, I've been sitting out the drinking for more than four years now. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I scrutinized my life and found little to change. I had eaten food, mostly plants, not too much. I had not only exercised but practiced yoga—regularly. I was not too fat, not too thin.

But I drank too little water and too much alcohol. At 5 o'clock every night—and I started watching the clock in midafternoon—I had the first of two stiff drinks. I knew that women were supposed to limit themselves to a single drink, but I'm 5 ft. 10, and I figured that meant that like a man's, my limit was two drinks. And mostly I kept to two drinks, but the drinks got bigger—and stronger—as I got older. It was my reward at the end of the day, and there was rarely a day when I went without. I remember the feeling of the alcohol as it burst into my bloodstream. It was like heroin. It made my knees go weak. I passed most evenings in a mild stupor. I wasn't down-and-out drunk, but I wasn't sober either.

When I told Other I thought I should cut back, he guffawed. But I know I had a problem. I stopped drinking when I got my diagnosis. It was surprisingly easy. And having a brain that actually functions after 5 is a relief. I'm not that ambitious about accomplishing much at night, but it's nice to know that if I wanted to I could. Mostly I fill my evenings with small pleasures. I can read—and even write in this blog if I've a mind to.

Cancer may mean that I don't live my full lifespan in years, but in a funny way, it has given me a few more hours in every day.

Curb for cancer

Everyone's got a gratitude list this time of year. And here's mine: Curb Your Enthusiasm. Curb got me through chemo four years ago, and I'm still chortling—though a little sadly after watching Episode 10 of Season 7. I've got the hiatus to get through before I can roar afresh. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Learning curve—or flatline

Have I learned anything from my ordeal with cancer or from my struggle with my elderly parents' increasing infirmity or from all the books I've read on those subjects? Not much.

As my old friend K begins the dreary, dread-filled circuit of cancer treatment—blood-test batteries, ultrasounds and PET/CT scans, doctors' appointments, surgeries, pathology reports, chemo infusions, radiation—and my friend C accompanies his father along a similar path, I wish I could offer them comfort or shortcuts or secrets—or anything at all. I am sadder but not much wiser as a result of my travails. I have little to offer.

Nothing can really ease the agony of a life-threatening illness. You are stuck, essentially alone, in your own private hell. But a few strategies limited the damage for me. Because life never really settles into round numbers like 5 or 10, there are 11 that come to mind:

1. Write down your obsessive thoughts—maybe in a blog!—so you don't have to keep repeating them to yourself

2. Take notes—write down everyone's name and phone number and e-mail address and what he or she said—and transfer your notes to a computer file so you can search it easily

3. Keep a calendar of every medical event—from lab tests to treatments to doctor visits—on your computer

4. Get copies of lab and pathology reports

5. Keep every bill, annotated with the date and the check number of your payment, clipped to a copy of the relevant insurance report

6. If you don't get a call with the result within a day or two of a lab test, call the doctor

7. As much as possible, treat your illness (or your parents' illness) like a job: make lists and cross off completed tasks

8. Drink 8 cups of water or green tea every day

9. Eat 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables every day

10. Take deep breaths

11. Get exercise (preferably in the form of yoga) every day

Odious comparisons

There's a woman at work who dislikes me. There may be others I don't know about, but I'm sure about her. And I don't blame her. She and I were treated for cancer at about the same time, and the path I took made her path more difficult. 

When I told my boss I had breast cancer, my boss told me to take off as much time as I needed and hired a sub to cover for me. The sub was redundant. I didn't take any time off. I clung to my place among living, healthy people. I didn't want to join the tribe of the sick. It wasn't easy showing up for work when I had drains hanging from my chest and a fluid-filled seroma swelling in my armpit and chemo nausea and an itchy wig that bore no resemblance to my own hair, but I could do it. It wasn't courage, however. It was cowardice. Being at work was being normal. Taking time off and being home alone with my thoughts would have been terrifying.

I got a lot of praise for my "great attitude" and "strong work ethic." I resented the former (would I have been to blame if I gave the—accurate—impression that I was bummed out?), but I took pride in the latter, even though it didn't reflect the source of my motivation (fear!).

Meanwhile, a colleague in another department who was battling a different kind of cancer took a leave and moved in with family members in a different city so that she could have their support while she underwent a particularly grueling form of chemo, which involved infusions directly into her abdomen. I kept in touch with her a bit over the six months or so that she was out of the office and got reports of how desperately ill she was.

Eventually, people started making comparisons between her handling of her disease and my handling of mine—even though we had completely different kinds of cancer in completely different organs with completely different treatments. I heard rumors that my colleague had been given a hint that she might lose her job if she didn't return to work soon. 

I know she must have had some awareness of the running commentary. And she must have seen me as the grownup equivalent of a grade-grubbing, ass-kissing classmate. She must have resented me for making her look bad. And the stakes were way higher than her getting a C to my A. My "strong work ethic" put her job at risk. So far we've both held on to our jobs, despite several rounds of layoffs, but I regret that with so much in common, we are not better friends, and that at a time when she was miserably ill, she had to suffer by comparison with me. 

A milder tension has developed between me and a good friend who was treated for breast cancer shortly after I finished treatment. Whereas I was able to get by with an occasional Tylenol or Advil after my various surgeries—the stronger stuff brought on constipation, more hateful to me than postsurgical discomfort—her pain was intense and still has not abated. Her doctors have pressured her to give up the opiates she feels she still needs. It's clear that once again I've set a "good patient" standard that causes grief to someone less fortunate.

"Comparisons are odious," wrote John Donne. True enough.