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#230 – Dinner Therapy, or Laughter is the Third-Best Medicine
“I just wanted to let you know that my wife Jo Anne is having an operation to remove a lump from her breast ….” That’s how I start telling friends and family that Jo Anne has cancer and now you know too.
YOU PLAY THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT
I’m not afraid of saying the word “cancer.” Maybe I once was but not anymore. I know, however, that almost everyone else is afraid of saying it, so much so that they don’t even want to HEAR it. So when I eased them into it before Jo Anne’s surgery last Wednesday, I let them get used to idea before saying the word. Without exception, they would ask, “Do they think it’s …” and trailing off so they wouldn’t have to complete the thought.
I would spare them by interrupting, “Oh, it’s cancer alright.”
People feel bad, upset, sad, sorry, guilty, powerless. I understand all that. In fact, I wrote during the World Series, in #211 – “Wonderland at Nightfall, or Shannon the Redeemer”, about MY feeling that way when my friend Byron told me his son Michael had nearly completed chemotherapy before I returned his call to learn about it. Part of my job now is to help people get over that.
People want to hear good news. They want to be reassured. Did they get it early? Have they found that it hasn’t spread? Did they get it all? She won’t need a mastectomy, will she? Is there a chance she won’t need chemotherapy?
And when they learn it’s not going to be good news, they want it to be the least bad news possible. I want to accommodate them but so much is uncertain that even when they hear the good parts, I can feel them poking holes where the uncertainties are. The tumor they removed on Wednesday was almost the size of a golf ball. At least one of the lymph nodes looked cancerous so they removed several. She will have to undergo chemotherapy no matter what we learn from the pathology of the other lymph nodes.
No one ever “grades” or “evaluates” the developments in their lives. Life sucks sometimes and you have to deal with it. We’re dealing with it. Our optimism is rooted in the brilliance of our medical team, the advancements in science, and in Jo Anne’s health, attitude, and fearlessness.
Jo Anne is the strongest, most positive person I know. My REAL job is to make sure she stays that way. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Jo Anne is beloved. She has no enemies or former friends or even friends who like her less than they used to. She doesn’t have a “best friend” (other than me) but she is regarded by many, many women as their best friend.
There is an outpouring of emotion and I want to keep her strong and focused and positive. “Doom and gloom” is Jo Anne’s shorthand expression for some of the people she has spoken with, and that’s my signal to straighten them out. For her, the hardest part is telling people and having to deal with their unspoken fears – of pain, disfigurement (you’d be surprised at the number of people who are worried that she’s going to lose her hair during chemotherapy; she almost 100% will), and death.
So I play communications director, briefing people on her condition and developments and issuing press IDs. These are the conditions to remaining privy to her condition:
1. Understand that Jo Anne feels fine. This is a condition, not an illness.
2. She is going to feel crummy a bunch of times during the next year. That’s the CURE, not the CANCER.
3. She has a positive attitude and is fine dealing with this. She’s going to keep teaching, even during chemotherapy.
4. The best thing you can do is not get down about it. Don’t be afraid of cancer or of the future because Jo Anne isn’t.
5. The next best thing you can do is bring me dinner. You know how to cook?
People worry about crazy things at times like this. When I would learn someone had cancer, I did too. What will Jo Anne’s breasts look like after the surgery? Will she need a mastectomy? Will she lose her hair?
Hair grows back. I’ve been losing mine for 25 years and haven’t received a single card. And Jo Anne’s breasts are fine. They’ve put up with a lot in 26 years of my manhandling (actually, 30 years this November if you include pre-marital manhandling). Plus, one of the hidden perks of breast cancer is free boob jobs, courtesy of Unca Insurance. Jo Anne is not a vain person – she let the surgeon know up-front that she’d opt for the double mastectomy if that was the best surgery – but if we think my playground has been tampered with and she wants renovations, it’s Candyland for me.
CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE BEST MEDICINE
My Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer almost ten years ago. She is an incredibly strong, brave person but she goes to great lengths to keep that part of her personality hidden. When she was first diagnosed, she told her husband that she didn’t want surgery or treatment. The whole thing was so scary and distasteful that she was going to ignore it. But she braved it all – surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. She was also a diabetic and she broke her foot walking on a jetway ramp to an airplane in the middle of all this.
But she didn’t miss any work. I was with her when she broke her foot and it affected our trip to Aspen but didn’t ruin it. She and her husband still went to see shows. They went out to dinner with friends.
Once, she had to fill out some forms when visiting one of the army of doctors responsible for her health during this time. At the end of providing her entire medical history, she was supposed to rank, on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the best), the current state of her health. The doctor came clutching her completed form and said, “Myrna, you don’t have anything to worry about. You have breast cancer, chemotherapy side effects, a broken foot, and diabetes. You graded your state of health as FOUR? And that’s after initially writing FIVE and crossing it out? With your attitude, you’re going to make it through just fine.”
And she did. She is a breast cancer survivor of more than 9 years.
DINNER IS THE SECOND-BEST MEDICINE
“How can I help?” Everyone has asked that question. I know they all want to help but what, realistically, can they do? I figured out an answer.
Bring dinner.
A few of Jo Anne’s friends coordinated to bring dinner for a day or two after the surgery and it’s grown into a feast of Bacchanalian proportions. Melanie, an emergency room physician, said she was going to bring dinner on Wednesday night, the day of the surgery.
Why? Melanie already introduced us to the surgeon, Dr. Elena Sibley, who seems like a real-life magician to us. Then Melanie got us an almost-instant surgery consult and surgery date from Dr. Sibley, a great relief to Jo Anne, plus the only way I could go to London with Full Tilt for WSOP Europe on September 3. Wasn’t that enough?
Julie told us she was cooking Thursday night and Miki would bring dinner on Friday. Joanne, a friend of ours who is a breast cancer survivor herself and triumphed over a couple other forms of cancer, made lasagna on Saturday. Kay, my lawyer and a close friend of both Jo Anne and I, brought Sunday brunch.
Perhaps I should be insulted. Does this imply that I can’t handle a single meal without Jo Anne? She barely cooks as it is. Part of me thinks I should give these women the bum’s rush and let them know that I cook for this family more than my wife and, in any event, can handle anything. ANYTHING.
Whatever part of me thinks that, it isn’t my stomach. These women are such damn good cooks that we’ve never eaten so good.
It started with Melanie’s pot roast. Who would think an emergency-room doctor could make a falling-off-the-bone pot roast? And she also brought us a pumpkin pie that we polished off for breakfast on Thursday. (Until Kay brought the bagels and lox, these women left us to fend for ourselves before sundown each day, a clear flaw in their plans.) Jo Anne was home for Julie’s cheese spaghetti, and had to join us in agreement that it was better than her own rendition of the same dish.
Four days later, we still haven’t caught up on desserts. Hillary, in from Chicago, brought by about forty pounds of cookies and a raspberry pie. Joanne, concerned the truckload of lasagna wouldn’t sate our appetites, brought a bundt cake that should be registered by the police as a lethal weapon. We did attack Miki’s homemade brownies; not even the crumbs survived to Saturday morning and I was thinking of boiling the brownie platter as a base for soup.We haven’t even gotten to Julie’s ice cream and Sundae fixings, even though this family traditionally vaporizes ice cream.
It’s been an embarrassment of riches. Five days ago, I was afraid I was going to have a confrontation with these women. Now I’m worried about what we’re going to eat on Monday night.
Jo Anne goes back to teaching on Monday. We’ve both talked with the teachers at her school, who’ve been worried about her and are thrilled she’s returning. Because she can’t drive until she has a surgical appliance removed on Tuesday, I’ll be driving to and from. Maybe I’ll learn that a couple of these teachers know how to cook.
COMING UP
So is this actually a 1,500-word apology for not completing “Chris Ferguson and the Art of Bankroll Maintenance”? No, but I’ve got notes and an outline to complete it; I just haven’t done it yet. Assuming the gravy train hasn’t stopped delivering to our Scottsdale home, I should complete and post that later this week. And I’ll be flying to London on September 3 to play and write about the first World Series of Poker Europe. I’ll also be covering, live in real-time, the Million Dollar Cash Game in London on September 18-19.
On September 9 at 18:30 ET, I’ll be participating in a $5 + $5 Bad Beat on Cancer tournament on Full Tilt. This is for the charity organized by Phil Gordon and Rafe Furst; they’ve raised a lot of money for some great cancer-related programs and organizations as part of the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation. (Rafe is on the board of directors.) You can learn more about their work at www.preventcancer.org/badbeatoncancer.htm . For the September 9 event, go to the “private” tournaments; the password for registration is “badbeat.” I’m putting a personal bounty on myself of fifty bucks, but I’m winning the thing so good luck.
