I do not know nor have I ever met the ten women who authored this book.  But we share a common bond.  All of us were watching our prime-time lives pass by when a voice announced, "We interrupt this life to bring you cancer."  We didn't even have time to turn the dial.

 

I have read a hundred books on breast cancer - war stories of women who did battle with the most frightening adversary in their lives.  But Breast Cancer? Let Me Check My Schedule!  is different.  These are the personal stories of ten women, all over thirty, who pursue careers outside their homes.  They were part of a project conducted by McCarthy Medical Marketing when they discovered that these women reacted differently to cancer than other women.  The way they accepted their diagnoses, the decisions they made, their approach to therapy, and the way they coped all reflected their experience in the workplace.

 

I wanted to be part of this book mostly because of the title.  It fit me to a tee.  I too am a working woman complete with a little calendar that tells me when to have a headache.  If it isn't penciled in, I don't have one. On April 23, 1992, under "Things To Do Today" I jotted down "mastectomy, noon."

 

I was a lot like Amy in the book, who, when her gynocologist warned her that lumps in her breast suggested a mammogram, got dressed, added this item to her Filofax under "medium level priority" item number eleven, and went back to the office.

 

When a woman is busy with a career, there is something really intrusive about cancer.  Anything is intrusive that doesn't have an appointment.  It doesn't fit in the schedule.  It doesn't enrich your qualifications.  It looks out of place on your resume.  I never wanted to be a poster child for cancer.   It isn't that I don't want to help other women through their ordeal.  It has to do with the fact that I've worked twenty-eight years trying to get people to laugh at themselves.  I don't want to go out of this world leaving a legacy of people with sad eyes who say, "You know, for the  last three years, Erma Bombeck's columns have had a right-breasted feeling to them, don't you think?"

 

The George Burns line "I can't go yet, I'm booked" is a universal one in this book.  The same drive that catapulted these women to superwoman status kicks in with cancer.  The more demands cancer makes on them, the busier they get.  They thrive on stress.  It's exhausting, but it's invigorating.  They have to ask themselves, did stress play a role in their disease?

 

There is no answer.

 

And yet, the focus that could be dangerous to your health is the same one that gets us through it.  It may not be business as usual - but it's still business.  Without deadlines to occupy my mind, maybe I wouldn't have crumbled - but everyone around me would.

 

We are women who no longer have control over what we are going to feel like, what they are going to do to us, and when they are going to do it.  (We don't even know who "they" are.)  But we have control over our work.  And it feels good.

 

As I read this book I was hoping it would address the one emotion that all cancer patients rarely speak about: the uncertainty of our future.  It did.  We are a unique group that has been allowed to face our mortality, and oddly enough, it has made us better people for it.  There isn't a survivor who doesn't admit she has changed.

 

We learn quickly how to deal with our fears and our anger.  We no longer take anything for granted.  Our priorities change.  We live our lives on its terms - not ours.

 

Cancer is not doable without humor.  I mean it.  The note from my good friend Dear Abby who said, "So, you lost a hooter.  Big deal!"  (Is she Iowa, or what!)  The woman who sent me a card reading, "When life gives you a bunch of lemons - - stuff 'em in your bra."  My dental technician, whom I asked after my mastectomy, "Do you see anything different about me?" and she said, "You changed the color of your hair."  The interim cotton prosthesis a nurse gave me that prompted me to observe, 'I've got bigger dust balls under my bed."

 

I've heard women say, "I can't read cancer books.  They're downers."  Breast Cancer? Let Me Check My Schedule!  is not a downer.  How could it be when you enter the lives of these ten women who triumph over an invasion of their bodies.  These are women with drive and purpose who aren't ready to give up.  Cancer?  It's a full week.  I'll have my people call your people and set something up.

 

(Erma Bombeck, 1994)