Using the cancer card

I was riding my bike to the Belmont L and had stopped at the light at Belmont and Sheffield. I felt someone bump against my basket. Some guy who was maybe in his 40s with blondish hair and a t-shirt wearing a belligerent attitude. You're in the crosswalk, he said, rather heatedly. I was. I hadn't meant to be. And I hadn't expected people to walk across the street without looking. He was irate. I said, Peace on earth. He was already at the curb. What did you say? What did you say? Peace on earth, I said. Peace on earth? He walked back toward me. I've got plenty of peace. You shouldn't be stopped between these lines. See this line? You're stupid. Stupid! I thought he was going to slug me. I thought I was going to slug him. He went back to the curb. Peace on earth, I said. The light changed.

I was upset. I was mad. I thought later I should have used the cancer card: You rammed into my bike and I have blood cancer! But that seemed a stretch. That night I went to my desk at Smart U, a communal desk that I'd been squatting in for about three years, and the drawers were locked. There was a vase of flowers (kind of droopy but still bright pink) and a welcome note to someone other than Cancer Bitch, who was now occupying this space. Where was all my stuff? My assiduously collected pile of scratch paper, a few books I'd meant to bring home, originals for course packets. Beyond that, I felt displaced. Because--I had been displaced. Without a note or warning.

Later I went upstairs to the office of Smart U's magazine and there was the box of my precious stuff: a cloth bag, the papers, the hot pot I never use. Some ginseng tea. At least They hadn't thrown everything away.

Today I was on my way to Smart U and thinking about what I would say to the Paper-and-Stuff-Removal Guy: I've been around here instead of the other office for the last few months because I'm getting treatment around the corner three times a week for symptoms caused by blood cancer. Of incurable blood cancer! And why didn't you email me about moving me stuff? I have incurable blood cancer! Give me back my drawer!

I was getting so worked up about the incurable part. I had never put it that way before. I do have incurable blood cancer. Polycythemia is chronic. There's no cure. Therefore, not curable. I kept getting sadder and sadder. People have leukemia and they get over it. They're cured. They're in remission. It's gone. PV is never gone. There's the joke (dead serious) about advice to med students: Become an allergist. They never get better and they never die. Except people with PV die, die early, though lately the word is that we could have a near-normal life span. Just gotta watch out for clots. That move up from your legs into your lung or brain and then--

out like a candle.










For info on ordering an actual cancer charge card (pictured at top), click here.

The Cancer Card

Today I used the cancer card. It was the second time. The first was when a telemarketer called in the morning (!) and I said, I'm going to have breast cancer surgery and I'm on the do-not call list and I hung up. The second time was this afternoon. Using the card is apparently a big issue in breast-cancer circles. In Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, Miriam Engelberg says her support group discussed whether it was ethical to use cancer to get rid of a telemarketer. (Yes and no.) In Cancer Vixen, Marisa Acocella Marchetto devotes a page to The Cancer Card--"When you carry the cancer card, it gets you out of dinners, lunches, breakfasts, brunches, social obligations, family functions, concerts, shows, sporting events, parties, movies and more!" Today I was walking from the subway to Fancy Hospital to get my heart scanned to see if it could withstand chemo. I was on the corner of a large shopping street when a young woman approached me. She had on a cross, so I immediately assumed she was an evangelist. But her first question was, Do you live here? Usually I pass up street hawkers but I was curious. Yes, I told her. Then she said, Can I talk to you about your hair? I said, I'm going to have chemo and lose all my hair. Oh, she said, falling back.

I felt so guilty I called L immediately on my cell. He said that no one has a right to accost me on the street, that whatever she got in return was fair. You didn't invite her to talk to you, he said. Later tonight he said, People don't have an inalienable right to sell things.

Yep, that's true, but it's also true that telemarketers and street hawkers are low paid and so we should be nice to them. Am I saying that we should be mean to people who are high paid? What I mean is we should sympathize with these people who can't find any other jobs except those that involve harassing other people. I'm afraid I traumatized the hair-girl. But she was back in action about two hours later when I emerged from the hospital. I saw her on another corner, still approaching people, this time wearing sunglasses.

I'll bet by now she's already told 12 friends what I said and she'll dine out on my remark for years to come.

The real mystery is: Nobody I know listens to telemarketers, but their pitches must be successful or else companies wouldn't hire people to make the calls. Who are the people who pick up the phone and say, Yes, yes, tell me more?