Lila 's Older Son Thinks She Should Carry A Sharpie

And offer all her friends the chance to sign her hairless head, like they would a cast...

We howled at the idea, she again, with evident relish, I the first time, on the ragged edge--if only for a moment--of hysteria. Today's her first 'day off' from therapy since June 16, excepting weekends. She sounded rested. She said yesterday had been 'emotional.' There's an irrevocability to the loss of your hair, I think. Folks will tell you that your hair will grow back pretty much within a year of the end of treatments. Aye, and there's the rub.

She has another chemo treatment on Wednesday, prior to which 'they' have to inspect the proper operation and healing around that super-spiffy, very elegant, multi-purpose port-and-catheter arrangement they installed in her chest last week. This is the second course of chemo this treatment round. There's another in another three weeks. What goes on in the interim, I don't know. Or what should follow? Haven't got a clue, myself. I'm open to ideas and suggestions.

Lila's cautiously enthusiastic about the granulocyte treatments being tested at a Center pretty near her. The fact of locality is a big issue, a lot of times. There was a story in the local news here in Albuquerque about a woman from Alamagordo, about 200 miles south of here, who was no longer able to drive home on weekends to be with her family between week-long cancer treatment regimens at one of the big cancer centers here in Abq. She spent her weeks in a cheap motel. The price of gas to make the 400-mile round trip in her husband's pick-up was more than the family budget could bear. So, if Lila's an acceptable candidate for these next trials--and maybe there's a graspable straw there--she'd be spared those sorts of hardships, which MUST impede the capacity for folks with such maladies to concentrate on their own well-being. She's going to take the data to her oncologist on Wednesday and ask him for advice/guidance/assistance (choose any number).

I am NOT above grasping at straws, believe me, and neither is my Lila...In fact, the more the better. Cuz the more there are, the more buoyant the eventual bundle. Has anyone tested/tasted Essiac, for instance? Natural ingredients and remedies are not inferior to the laboratory-derived ones. I mean, why not? Her diet is pretty restricted as it is. I'm not talking naturopathy, here, but the free-range pharmacopoeia. Other ideas? Experiences?

Lila's Locks: Lila is investigating the local access system for less well-off women to acquire wigs and other self-esteem-maintaining accoutrement through the local National Cancer Society. She reiterated today her concern that women undergoing these humiliations of the body for the sake of their very lives should not have to endure humiliations of the spirit for the sake of the prevailing aesthetic. (Well, that's how I'd put it.) So tomorrow, another day off--except for the check on the soundness of the 'port'--she says she's gonna go to the local Cancer Society and check into how they provide for these needs. Then, depending on what she learns, we may turn our attentions to establishing a little foundation locally for wig up-grades, etc. I'll keep the blog posted on the progress.

We've also been considering publishing a pamphlet, in cooperation with the cosmetician/scarf-lady, pulling together all the tips she passed on to Lila quite by accident a couple of weeks ago. The scarf-lady's (i'll call her) clientele is probably a majority women with cancer, and she has been paying attention to their stories. This pool of advice and reflection is a community resource, the kind of local knowledge that's self-legitimating for the participants. It makes 'em experts in their own life-worlds, which is the essence of empowerment. Nobody 'empowers' anybody else. Empowerment arises spontaneously from self-knowledge, self-awareness, and self-esteem. That's why the oligarchs hate it so, and strive to deprive students, for example, of opportunities to experience their own creative agency.