I cried. I cried the same way I cried when I found out my father was leaving when I was thirteen. Sobs. Fearful, deep, breath-stealing sobs. I'm not ready to die. I actually love life, and my life in particular.
Oddly, I had just read an article in The New Yorker all about the bad choices sick people make when they near the end of their lives. If they had only said no to more treatment they might have had a lovely few months, maybe even years, of normal-ish life with hospice care instead of dealing with constant chemo and experimental therapies.
I decided right then and there that I wouldn't die while suffering from treatment. I didn't want to die in pain, and I didn't want to die after a long struggle with treatment. I needed to tell someone. Someone needed to know my wishes.
I called my sister Lizzie, who was waiting for my call anyway.
"Ingy, are you ok? What happened?"
"Hi Lizzie. [sob] It turns out I have cancer. [sob sob sob]."
"What? Oh Ingy, what?"
"The call was from the doctor in NYC. My biopsy came back positive for endometrial cancer. It's FIGO grade 1 to 2, slow growing, and apparently the friendliest cancer. Can you believe that? Friendly cancer. Fuck. A hysterectomy should fix it but I'll probably lose my ovaries and I may need radiation and it might have spread because they can't stage the cancer until surgery." [sob sob. sob.]
"Oh God Ingy, I'm so sorry. What do we need to do? You should come to Boston. We need to find a doctor."
"I don't know Lizzie, I can't think right now. I just want you to know my wishes if I become incurable. I don't want to pursue a lot of treatment. I want to die feeling as normal as possible with the people I love around me. I don't have a living will so you need to remember this!"
"Oh Ingy. Of course. I'm listening."
Pause.
Wait a minute - is she really buying this? Does she really think it's possible I might end up in hospice care? Am I really going to die? I had expected Lizzie to say something along the lines of "Ingrid, you're going to be fine. We don't need to talk about this stuff right now...etc." But, there she was, lovingly listening to my instructions and promising me that she would help me carry out my wishes. I couldn't decide whether to laugh at myself, or freak out because she actually believed this malarky about the cancer and stuff. I mean, it couldn't really be bad or true because it's not possible. It's not really real, and Lizzie was supposed to snap me out of it with a well-placed barb about my melodramatic nature. But she didn't, and I couldn't even think of a single thing to say. I got myself off the phone because I had to call Mom, Dad, my other sister and my closest friends to tell them the news.
