One Tooth Over the Line

A few weeks ago I found myself thinking about losses, and how many one could manage to handle without just crying all the time.  I thought it was pretty wonderful that humans were built to somehow "manipulate" their sadness by allocating energy to really feeling it only when they were ready to, and (mostly) not at inappropriate times in inconvenient places, like during a child's choir concert (tears of sadness, not joy) or on line at the grocery store or the bank.  (Yes, I still go into the bank once in a while, because the wait is shorter than at the ATM.  Don't judge.)

Then other things came to be be on my mind, like finishing the religious school year, and refurbishing my office, and getting ready for confirmation, and celebrating milestones (birthdays, work anniversaries - fun stuff) and I forgot about the conversation I was having with myself about loss in general, and my losses in particular: mother, sister-in-law, friends, breasts, etc.  Life went on.

This morning I got a call to (I thought) confirm my dental checkup appointment for tomorrow at noon.  As I was getting ready to say that yes, I'd be there, the receptionist told me that the dentist will no longer be doing my cleaning, and that they would make my appointment with a nice hygienist. 

You should know that for much of my life I have hated the dentist.  As a child, our dentist seemed to do his best to pull my lips completely off my face in an attempt to reach every tooth in his inspection, as did all the hygienists while they cleaned.  As a young adult I never found a dentist who could "undo" the anxiety that had built up, and luckily I have pretty strong teeth so it wasn't a huge problem. 

About 25 years ago the local pediatric dentist brought in a part-time guy to treat the parents, to see if he could build up a bigger clientele.  And that's when I met my dentist, Dr. Boff.  He was pretty young but nice, likeable, didn't treat me like a child (has NEVER ONCE said "I see we aren't flossing, are we?") and was gentle but thorough.  He nursed me through my first and only crown and has been my dentist ever since.  At the time, he didn't get assigned a hygienist, so he did his own cleanings. 

It was a perfect setup for me - I only dealt with one person, I trusted him, he treated me well, and he inspected while he cleaned so it saved a little time.  Then he left that office and I followed him to someplace in Ridgewood, where he continued to be my dentist in just the same way.

 When he set up his own shop (a lifelong dream of his) in Ramsey I was there, and Alex, my "idiosyncratic" son trusted him, as Dr. Boff took extra time with him to allay his fears.  Shortly afterward the other 2 boys chose him as their preferred dentist too.  I've sent many friends to him over the years, and I don't regret that at all.  He and I have chatted (well, he chats, I mostly mumble through his work) over the years about baseball, his wife, his kids (all of whom he acquired during our relationship) and his health.

Despite a few fillings, some painful scraping, and all that goes with a dentist visit for the non-scrupulously brushed/flossed/rinsed set, my anxiety about going to the dentist gradually faded, until I no longer regularly delayed my appointments. As a matter of fact, I haven't delayed them at all - until today.

I told the receptionist that this would really be quite a change for me and I would have to think about it, half hoping she would say something like "Oh, never mind, I didn't realize it would be so hard for you - we'll just make an exception in your case."  Or that Bob (that's his name) would suddenly call out, "Don't call Rebecca - I'll keep just her!"  But she didn't, and he didn't, and I hung up the phone.  I started to write an email to the office to make my case for exceptional treatment, because I had always had "exceptionally good" (got that nice turn of phrase there?) treatment, but I just couldn't figure out what to say.  So I called her back and promptly burst into tears.

She was horrified, told me it was nothing personal, which I gulped that I understood, and said I'd have to figure things out on my own and get back to her.  I told her it was NOT. HER. PROBLEM.  But I can only imagine what I must have sounded like, sobbing away and trying to explain that I needed to talk to all my friends who went there (remember, I got them some nice business, but I didn't say that) to see which hygienist might be the least problematic for me.

 I told her that I certainly don't feel as old as I actually am in people-years most of the time, but that this particular thing has made me react like an "old person."  Make that "old, cranky, demanding" person.  So she said she'd talk to him and I said I'd talk to my therapist (that I have because I have BREAST CANCER and a MASTECTOMY and couldn't you people be just a little sympathetic? - None of this was said out loud but I sure did think it.)  And we left it at that.

Conclusion:  my theory that the sadness of personal loss is cumulative is pretty dead-on, at least for me, and my theory that I can manipulate my sadness into appropriate and tasteful times/places is shot to hell.

Can't Touch This

Way back in late June of 2010 while I was still in the hospital recovering from my mastectomy,  I remember each breast surgeon's nurse (my roommate's surgeon works with my surgeon in a partnership) coming to us and giving us a "care and feeding" lecture on our new selves.  We were told, in particular, to be careful about getting burned.  Because nerve endings were disrupted (destroyed) in the surgery, the reconstruction areas would have no feeling.  (I desperately hope this will not be permanent, but based on personal experience, well, I just keep hoping.)  The shiny side of this (if you want to look at it that way) is that any further surgery I've had on that particular area just doesn't hurt.  It's so odd.

At any rate, she said to be careful about too-hot showers, mostly.  But also she said not to cook with that area "exposed."  Now, I do not regularly cook topless.  Jokes about men cooking bacon come to mind but all joking aside, there are WINDOWS all over my house, and sometimes (now adult) male children.  So, cooking barechested over an open flame is not going to happen until I get old enough not to care what people see.  And maybe by then I'll have some feeling back, anyway, so it all works out.

We acquired a Roomba the other day, and that same day I bumped into something, as usual, chest first (other than stubbing my toe endlessly, which is decidedly not numb.)  I felt a little like the poor Roomba; it bumps into something, and its sensor bumpers make it turn around and go someplace else.  The difference is, it FEELS somehow that it has run into a thing and reorients itself, then merrily heads off in another direction, while I just look around to see if anyone else noticed.  

This morning in the shower, I flashed back to the whole "being careful in hot showers" advice.  In a classic, really belated case of "I wish I'd thought to say that at the time," I realized that being in the location that they are on my body (not like a toe you'd dip in or a hand you'd wave in the water) the odds of me making a shower hot enough to burn one part of me while NOT burning the rest of me were pretty small.  (Doesn't the water usually hit you kind of all at once?)  But in June of 2010 I didn't think of that quick retort, probably because of the little anesthesia thing, the pain thing, the waking up missing major body parts thing.......

So a question I did not ask at the doctor's office the other day is: will more surgery disrupt the nerves even further, and take me back to square one on getting some feeling back (will I ever NOT be on square one?)  As my priorities in life constantly rearrange themselves, I'm beginning to wonder how much I really care. It's one thing to say you don't care, but it's another thing entirely to follow through when you walk into things/people without realizing you're actually touching them.

Meanwhile, the Roomba (no name yet) provides distracting entertainment.Yesterday (the day we unpacked it) it got stuck on one of the sticky traps we keep under the sofa to catch crawly things.  It went quiet for a while, screamed something, and gave up.  Not lethal - Rod fixed it last night - but kind of hysterical.  Alex says it needs googly eyes.....

Non Nervous Nellie

The plan WAS to go for a quick walk after services, go home, shower and dress for the appointment with the plastic surgeon.  For starters, I was going to see him alone for (I think) the first time.  No Elyssa, no Rod, no Evelyn, nobody but me.  I had left a lot of time to get from services, to the walk, to the cleanup, to leave early for my appointment, to give myself time to calm down for the argument over aureola tattoos I was sure we'd have.  He is historically behind; it's just how things are at Dr. D'Amico's office and that's what you plan for.

Having been back home now for a couple of hours, I would say that I am inordinately pleased with how my day turned out, though not how I envisioned.

Services went as planned (not that I was in charge.)  Lovely small (but big enough) group who put their "whole selves in," as Joel Mosbacher likes to say, with prayer and song.  We chanted the Torah and Haftarah blessings together, we cried together about our losses, and we finished with kiddush and a sweet snack of chocolate toffee matzah (I didn't make this particular batch, but I have the recipe!)

And then commenced the socializing.  As it happens, long-time friends Leslie, Jane, and Lisa were there today, and we all sat together during services.  Afterward we did some catching up, and since my doctor visit was by then generating a decent amount of anxiety, it became the topic of conversation.  "You'll be fine."  "Don't forget to ask questions." "I'm sure he's very good; you look great already."  (This last bit is always nice to hear, considering how far I've come to get to this point.)  Long story short (or short story long, as it were,) I was there enough time kibbutzing that I did not have time to change into my jeans and sneakers and go for my walk.

So I hightailed it home, grabbed a quick shower, changed into the thinnest white tank I own (more about that later) and flung myself into the car.  It was then almost 1:20, and I had planned to allow 45 minutes to make what is under ideal conditions, a 30 minute drive to a 1:45 appointment.  I called the doctor's office and confirmed that he was already behind in time, and the information seemed to "free" me somehow.  I relaxed, but instead of taking a leisurely right-hand lane Sunday drive kind of path, I drove my trusty minivan more like a race car.  All of a sudden I paid careful attention to all the lanes of (hated) highway; I signaled, and moved back and forth to maintain the highest (legal, sort of) speed possible.  I was no longer nervous about my appointment, and when I finally glided in to the parking lot EARLY my anxieties were gone.

Of course, arriving early does not guarantee being seen early.  So I sat in the waiting room for over a 1/2 hour (sometimes we've waited over 2 hours) filling out some new paperwork.  He now takes my insurance.  Is this good news?  Time will tell (and so will I, when I find out!)

A review of the basic "he said, she said" history - Dr. D'Amico feels that a reconstruction without aureola tattooing and nipple reconstruction is like a car without headlights, among other interesting metaphors.  I feel that one of the benefits of the mastectomy (other than the obvious, that of cutting out cancer cell-hosting tissue) was that I could FINALLY wear thin, close-fitting shirts.  And for the past four years I've been fairly adamant about this.   I wore the special white top to show him what I meant.  He reluctantly agreed he could see my scars through the shirt, and conceded on the nipple reconstruction...

He's been fairly adamant about his opinion on the tattoos though, and in conversations with other women who have faced this dilemma I have no clear "winner" one way or the other.  Even other doctors I've spoken to have come down on both sides of the discussion.  Bottom line is, I should do what feels right for me.

And I just DON'T KNOW.  If I get them, will I fell more like these parts of me are now "real?"  If I get them, will I now have the unwanted visibility through the shirt issue I had before?  If I get them light enough to NOT show through, will that be so light that it just doesn't look natural compared to what I was born with?  It's pretty damned permanent, and so hard to decide.  Shouldn't I be healthy enough psychologically by now and grateful enough to be alive that this should not be such a big issue for me?

Today he started with "Let me ask you, are all the pictures on your walls unframed?"  I responded, "yes, I know, car without headlights, unfinished painting...."  

I was completely honest.  I told him I've wavering a little, but I wanted to know if this SHAPE (right kind of round with a flat front, left kind of more realistically shaped) is what is going to be now and forever.  One remaining concern is that even if you put a tattoo on something that (from my looking-downward) viewpoint isn't shaped ideally, that won't make it any more realistic-looking.  The silk purse-sow's ear story comes to mind every single time.

I told him if I could afford it, I'd go through the latissimus surgery on the right side to become more symmetrical up front.  (Please understand, I look okay in clothes, and in profile things look fairly even, and from the medical measuring point of view, the "projection" is actually the same. But it's not going to fool anyone, and bras are shaped to fit how my lefthand side is now shaped, so there's always a pucker on the right.)  But he said right away (as my wallet breathed a sigh of relief) that he would never put me through that again unless it was medically necessary.

Fun fact: the lovely dream that once you have reconstructed breasts you don't ever wear a bra again, is pretty much a fantasy, at least as I have experienced it.  If you go without a bra for many days in a row and do any kind of strenuous moving, things start to get sore and you realize that you need support once in a while.  So you still have to buy bras, and they still have to fit.

But wait, there's more.  He started to say something and I interrupted him, hardly believing what was coming out of my mouth:  "I heard there are new implants that are shaped more realistically and can be customized, kind of like a pyramid-ical shape?"  He is used to Rod and I asking more unusual questions than the average bear, since we study hard about what's going on with me.  So he really didn't skip a beat and said that indeed, there are.

They have been in use in Europe for many years and would have been available to me in 2010 if not for the good ole' FDA and their numerous regulations to keep us safe.  (I feel neither here nor there about the FDA, but this is how he felt, clearly.)  Up until now all the implants are round (as you might notice when you see famous actresses bare-breasted and can tell "who has" and "who hasn't," and the new ones have "an anatomically shaped silhouette," to quote from the Natrelle website.  I do, in fact, have wrinkling on my skin on the right side where the contents of the round implant head mostly south (thank you, gravity); it's not only a little weird, but it's also just another daily reminder of June 28, 2010.  Between taking the medication every night and getting dressed every morning, there's still a lot of "just" in my adjusting.

At any rate, all decisions are put off while magical Marie in his office asks what the fine folks at United HealthCare think about this idea.  If we go ahead, I've promised a tattoo decision in time, and he's promised to remove (for free) a large mole dead center in my chest that I've had all my life, escaped the knife every time so far, and is (joking here) the only reason I never wear those slinky cut down to the navel dresses.  Hah!

As I said, today did not turn out how I planned, but it was good.  I think I'd better schedule the bone density scan and colonoscopy while I've still got the courage.

Yizkor - Are We Ever Too Old for This Homework?

This morning I plan to attend the Yizkor service to pay a mindful tribute to Jill Bernstein (my sister-in-law) who passed away in June from breast cancer, and to Dalia Leibowitz, my friend and a teacher in our school for over 15 years, who passed away in September from kidney cancer.  I hope to not "be" depressed, although I'm sure the service will raise depressing thoughts about not only Jill and Dalia, but also my friend Jill who died a year ago September from cancer, and my mother, who died in 2008 from lung disease. 

It's a sad service (as its name implies, Yizkor, meaning will remember, in which we are supposed to remember those who have gone) but it can be very uplifting as well.  I hope to leave it with a renewed determination to live my life in a way that makes Jill, Dalia, Jill, Mom, my grandparents, and a little boy I never met, Sam Sommer who died in December from cancer, somehow proud.  It's a huge job, and I'm not sure why we as Jews take on such an enormous "homework assignment" every day - to live like you are THE ONE who helps keep things going well here on earth while you're able.

Why would I voluntarily get all cleaned up to go to the synagogue on a day when I don't have to?  To remember, and to get a reminder about my homework. I doubt I'll get it all done by bedtime, but I hope to have many more days to polish my final draft. 

Fairway and the Oncologist

 It's not so odd that I always end up having an oncologist appointment during Passover.  Of all the appointments that I put off (dentist, etc.) so they're NOT exactly at 6 month intervals - like they're supposed to be - I will always see Dr. Ligresti right on time.  And, since as a Jewish professional I have Passover off from work, it makes sense to schedule appointments then.  As a matter of fact, on Monday I'm seeing the plastic surgeon, but that's another anxiety-inducing story...

Although I am not thrilled with the location of Dr. Ligresti's new office (I loved that I could get to her in less than 15 minutes, all back roads, for the first 8 years of our acquaintance,) there is a silver lining and its name is Fairway.  A year ago, as I was busy being upset at the new office - I didn't know the people, the bathroom was all the way through the waiting room, and I had to travel on Route 17 and find a new destination - stupid reasons - I just couldn't calm down so I sat in my car for a few minutes.  And there, like a vision, was the famed then-new Fairway Market, right across the driveway from the medical building.  (Do you hear the choir of angels?)

I don't know much about Fairway in general, except there was quite the uproar and hullabaloo and cheering when it opened in Paramus.  "Oh my God you wouldn't believe the produce!  And the meat!  And the fish!"  It is, in fact, a wonderland of food.  But shopping there is more like going to the Museum of Natural History; you can't do it all in one visit, and you'd be crazy to try.  It's sensory overload in the coffee aisle, for one thing.  There's a dizzying array of olive oils, the mind-numbing selection of chocolate bars, and the place is a rabbit warren of aisles and nooks.  Spices and cheeses and candy, oh my!

But my favorite spot is the smoked fish guy's station (henceforth referred to as "the fish guy.")  It's not just lox (salty? nova?) it's also Scottish salmon, Norwegian salmon...there are easily 6 or 7 huge fillets of smoked salmon, plus herring, whitefish (also salad) and goodness knows what else.  The lox is not cheap ($8.99 per 1/4 lb) but it is good and it is SO hand-sliced that it's kind of painful to watch in this hurry-up-and-get-someplace-else-quickly world.

My son Andrew clued me in to the "scrap" containers; if you go later in the day they have filled deli tubs containing the lox edges that they carefully sliced off the lox when you buy it, and the contents of the tubs are just as yummy, and far less expensive.  So I learned quickly to buy a little lox and a tub and I get just what we need, which is lox slices for Alex and ready-made little pieces for me.

THIS time when I went after my appointment, it was 9 a.m. and there weren't any scrap tubs yet.  So I asked the fish guy if I could buy my own scraps and as he s-l-o-w-l-y and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y sliced my lox he created a fresh scrap tub.  While I'm standing there, a man comes to get in line (the line consisting of me and him) and waits patiently through the slicing.  He waits patiently while I also get a little creamed herring (a treat) and then...he asks to buy the scrap tub that he's been (patiently) watching get filled with the smelly, oily, yummy pieces. 

 "Oh no," I think, feeling simultaneously guilty and outraged.  "It's mine!  Why didn't he ask before he waited all this time?"  As the fish guy informed the customer that I had already claimed the scraps and he walked away, I resisted a (very small) urge to go after him and give him the container. But the bit of cotton and tape stuck to the inside of my elbow where they took blood at the doctor's office hurts and itches a bit and reminds me that I get to have some luxury (read: lox) in my life.

(Pause for fond memory that is ALWAYS brought on by the lox scrap tub acquisition:  my mom always cut her lox into little tiny pieces and placed each piece "just so" on the freshly cream cheese-d bagel.  I thought it was so she could get some lox in every bite but now I'm pretty sure it was so she wouldn't get the stuff stuck in her teeth. To this day, I cannot just lay an entire slice of lox on a bagel when I don't have a knife and fork to tidy it up without a twinge of regret.)

But I regress.  (Regression is the entitlement of a blog writer.  I'm sure I will come up with other "entitlements" as I need them.)

My visit to Dr. Ligresti this past week was fairly uneventful.  She asked me if I was taking my medication (yes) and if I was having side effects (yes, but apparently not badly enough to have me stop) did I get to that colonoscopy yet (sadly, no) and what about an updated bone density scan? (getting there.)  She verified that considering the current studies, I'm going to need to take medication for 10 years.  For a person who never really took medication, the nightly reminder that I have cancer (still) will be with me for another 7 years or so. 

Long-term depressing thoughts aside, April 2015 will be five years since my diagnosis and surgery, and so I will be able to call myself a five year survivor. Dr. Ligresti confirmed that all the studies still maintain that after 5 years of non-recurrence, you have a much better chance of long-term non-recurrence.  I know that compared to others I have had a bounty of better results than others, so maybe I shouldn't still be listening for data to make me feel "better" about my prognosis, but I can't help it.

The "Annual" Letter

This is for everyone not on our mailing (or emailing) list.  It does give a good summary of 2013, so I include it here.  By all means, if you'd like to be added, let me know.  It's been in continuous publication (except for one year) for almost 30 years.

This year's "Family Photo"

Dear Friends,

At many Passover tables, people sing a song called “Dayenu” (pronounced die-ay-noo.)  It means, more or less, “it would have been enough;” if one good thing happened instead of two, it would have sufficed. So, if Alex had graduated from college, it would have been enough.  If, in addition, Ari had graduated from high school and gotten into college, that would have been enough.  If also Andrew had gotten married, it would have been enough.  If I was honored for 10 years as educator to my congregation, that would have been enough. That was May and June.  Were they the only things that happened last year?  Nope.  But they were definitely the highlights.

January of 2013 was greeted with our host of friends, and the winter wore on as we prepared for Andrew and Jackie’s wedding.  In April we traveled to Cape Cod for our nephew Isaac Bernstein’s Bar Mitzvah, and celebrated with my Dad and the rest of the family.  We knew that my other brother’s wife Jill was still fighting a breast cancer battle far tougher than my own, but did not know that weekend was the last time we would see her.  Jill passed away on June 17.  She left behind my “baby” brother Jonathan, our beautiful niece Emily and our very cool nephew Aaron.

July took us to Cape Cod for some R & R.  Each son had a friend (or wife!) along and that made for some wonderful mini golf outings and great dinners.  We now needed two cars to go anywhere, but it was worth it.  Ari started Ramapo College (his first choice) in September, and made the Dean’s List! Although it is 5 minutes from home and 1 minute from the synagogue, he lives on campus and we really don’t see him as often as one might think.  He is getting ready to register for the fall semester and is hoping to land a room in one of the campus’s apartments with one of his suitemates from this year. 

Alex graduated from Montclair State University in May with a Bachelor’s degree and a paralegal certificate and a more than respectable GPA but now is not sure that paralegal work is something he can be “passionate” about.  So, he is going to take on some temporary jobs and see what the rest of the working world has to offer.  He has, however, been extremely helpful around the house when it comes to grocery shopping, running errands, shoveling SNOW, and helping to keep Mario and Luigi, Andrew and Jackie’s chinchillas (my foster grandchildren) healthy and happy. 

After a 10-year courtship, Andrew and Jackie tied the knot on May 19.  It was a rainy day, not what anyone would have chosen for a planned outdoor wedding, but the bride was gloriously stunning, the flowers were beautiful, the music was fabulous, and the food was delicious.  Everything was perfect, right down to Jackie’s blue peep-toe pumps.  The McVeigh men were decked out in gray Vera Wang tuxedos.  Our own rabbi and cantor performed the ceremony under Jackie’s family heirloom lace and my grandfather’s tallis.  They left for their honeymoon in Iceland the next day.

Memorial Day weekend the rest of the family flew to Denver for Francie Amdurer’s wedding to Jens Kuhlers high up (imagine even higher than the mile-high city) at a gorgeous castle with Colorado vista all around.  It was a whirlwind time, but Alex, Ari, Rod & I enjoyed our adventure.  I think a highlight for the boys was all the iPads at LaGuardia Airport!

Rod is still very busy at Konica Minolta, and also has a hand in Project Literacy and the Bergen Community College Foundation, as well as volunteering time at the synagogue.  Project Literacy’s annual gala and the BCC Foundation Medallion dinner dance were both great events that gave us a chance to dress up a bit and win a few things at the silent auctions.  He also regularly sees his parents in Teaneck, sometimes just to say “hi” and sometimes to help out.  Andrew and Jackie, who live about 5 minutes away in Hackensack, are also around if Maggie and Tom need a quick hand.  With everyone so close, it’s been easy to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and holidays.  Alex, Andrew, and Jackie were in Teaneck with Rod’s sister Lindsay (in from Indiana) and her family for Christmas.

Rod, Ari and I were not in the United States for the holidays – we were in Israel!  Along with Ari’s girlfriend Liz and members of our congregation, I acted as co-leader with Joel Mosbacher, our rabbi while we did some traditional touring (Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Eilat, Masada) and then some non-traditional things like picking fruit, helping prepare lunch at a soup kitchen, seeing East Jerusalem from two distinctly different political points of view, and hearing from the leader of the Women of the Wall and a prominent reporter from the Jerusalem Post.  We walked the Old City, of course, but we also took a day trip to Jordan and REALLY walked as we viewed the wonder of Petra.  We returned home early on the morning of New Year’s Day, and so did not host brunch this year.  (But Rod drove over to the Shearers in Ramsey to visit our friends after we got home and I heard they were wonderful hosts!)

Two weeks after that we drove to the wilds of Pennsylvania for our congregational retreat, picking up Liz along the way from her dorm at Muhlenberg College.  I had helped to plan some of the activities and so was running most of the weekend at the camp we had rented, but it was terrific to see so many of our families (over 100 people) together in such a relaxed, informal atmosphere.

I did have another surgery in August, but it was more reconstruction, which I needed.  Although my doctor says one can never be “cured” of breast cancer, every 6 month visit that goes by with a clean blood test helps me get to that “5 year survivor” point that they say decreases one’s risk of recurrence. Before the weather got cold, I had started doing a lot of walking at a nearby park, and I think that has helped with some of the side effects of my medication AND I lost some weight, so win/win!

I was able to travel to San Diego earlier in December for the URJ Biennial convention with 3 other leaders from our synagogue, and I now supervise not just our school staff but also our youth director, so I’ve done some professional stretching.  I’m finding that responsibility, risk, reward are all part of one package, and my renewed confidence has been one of the best rewards.

It seems like we’ve been in the process of removing snow forever at this point.  As I write, there’s more on the way, but it may only be a dusting.  Still, it’s got to be cleaned up and honestly, we’re all a little sick of snow.  (The snow blower we bought Rod a couple of years ago has been a huge help, though.)

Just one amazing thing to greet with joy in 2013 would have been enough.  But we wouldn’t have missed all the others for the world.  In July Rod and I will celebrate our 30^th anniversary while we are on Cape Cod with the family.  For those of you who have shared all or part of this journey with us, can you believe it?  We wish you all a wonderful year filled with good health, the company of loved ones, and celebrations large and small.

Rod, Rebecca, Andrew, Jackie, Alex, & Ari

31 Seton Hall Drive, Oakland, NJ  07436

 mcveigh@verizon.net ~ 201-337-0255

Stupid, Stupid Breast Cancer - An Apology to Jill

Yesterday afternoon, at about 4:30 p.m., my sister-in-law Jill Bernstein passed away after what everyone will call a long "battle" with breast cancer.  She was diagnosed at about the same time as I was in 2010, but her disease had progressed much further than mine when it was first found.  She had the best doctors, the most advanced treatment in the world, and my brother would have gone to the ends of the earth to find that one medication that would be the "miracle."

And, for a while, some of those toxic cocktails worked.  She did not have any surgeries, but every chemo out there that could be tried, was tried.  She had good days, and she had awful days.  And things looked very hopeful for a while, although no doctor (including my own) will ever say of breast cancer that it is gone, and it was never in any way "gone" for Jill.

She was amazing - my niece and nephew are pretty wonderful kids (and I will say that because they are still kids and that is awful too) and my brother is a better person for having had these 24 years with her.  She could pick up the phone as she was waiting to go from blood testing to chemo treatment, sitting in a hospital hallway, and call me just to pass the time.  Although I never knew her as a child - we both grew up on Cape Cod but she was almost 8 years younger than I am - for some reason we could talk for a long time, or not talk for a long time, but we could talk.

I am so, so sorry that we did not talk enough, that I did not have the courage to pick up the phone in these last few months, to call just to say....I don't know what I would say.  She was already not well enough to make the trip here for Andrew's wedding, and at our nephew's Bar Mitzvah in April she looked to be in pain, but I did not know it was because the cancer had spread to new, bad places.   I thought she was sore and stiff from treatments.

I am not sure how many times I have to learn this lesson.  One of my dear friends, also named Jill, passed away near the end of last August from a cancer that was diagnosed less than a year earlier.  And again, I had no idea how close to the end it was when Ari called (she was his best friend's mother) to tell me the news that she was gone.  I cried then, and I cry now.

Only I cannot go back and say anything to Jill to let her know that I loved her indomitable spirit, that I loved how patient she was with my sometime impossible "baby" brother, that I loved how she handled her son's innumerable food allergies when he was young.  (I think he couldn't have egg, wheat, peanuts, strawberries, tomatoes, chocolate....and goodness knows what else.)  But she did it all and his big sister, my niece is a beautiful person and a beautiful dancer and a caring child and I don't know what to say to her or her brother.

We are not geographically close, and we have never really been "physically" close; it's just the way our family tends to behave.  But it is at times like this that I cry for a sister-in-law, for a friend who was nothing but kind and loving to me, and one more person whom I did not have the strength to see beyond my own fears to comfort.

http://brezniakrodman.com/obituary/bernstein-jill-meredith-weiner/