"The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you."

Woody Allen


I had to get a stupid MRI because a lump had formed on the back of my neck, and after an ultrasound, nobody could tell what the hell it was. Instead of the doctors saying, our equipment is only so good we can’t see everything the way we would like, they said in effect, that thing on your neck is creepy and scary; it is probably nothing, but we want to rule out deadly, slow-killing, unbearably painful cancers that may be curable with invasive, drawn out treatments that leave you bald, sick, weak and ugly.

"Hi I'm here to check-in, when will I get my sedation?" I said the second I arrived at the doctor’s office.

“Not quite yet,” the receptionist said. “You freaky drug addict,” she didn’t say.

Minutes later I asked again, "Okay I have filled out my paperwork, can I have that Valium now?"

She did not look up. She did not answer.

"Now will I get my drugs?" I asked the nurse taking my blood pressure.

“In a little while,” she answered. Do you ever feel like you are missing front teeth, have a grinding jaw and desperate, dilated eyes?

"Are you allergic to any medicines?" the nurse asked later.

"Just penicillin. NOT Valium," I said.

I am so uncourageous it is embarrassing; but brilliantly, I have learned if I take drugs and keep my mouth shut, nobody knows.

Every since I found out I needed an MRI, and I would need a sedative if I was claustrophobic, I have been so excited about getting a Valium Buzz. The excitement over the buzz made all the worrying worth it. My stomach lurched for the entire hour and a half of waiting in the lobby and I sat there thinking that after all these tests and procedures; MRI ($3,300), ultrasound, TB test, doctor's appointments, an impending biopsy, and after crying, fretting, and milking attention, I damn well better have some kind of cancer.

If I don’t have cancer, this has been the biggest scam and waste of time and emotions. What a fucking racket: $3,300 to be told I am healthy? Man I will be pissed. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely don’t want cancer, but after all of these dramatics and fancy machines, expensive procedures and sleepless nights, it better be for a huge, scary disease. Would they do all of this if it were just a kink in my neck?

I haven’t even had the MRI and already I can't wait for the chemo to start so my god-dammed hair will fall out. I will save so much time and money that I will be able to afford a trip to Europe or a Lexus. I spend $150 per month to color and cut my hair, then another $50 per month for hair care products. That is $2,400 per year. Jesus, I can't afford to be cancer-free. I spend hours every week shaving my legs, arms, bikini area, butt crack, nostrils, ear holes, mustache, and chin hairs, having chemo and losing all my hair will save me so much time. I will not like the nausea because it feels like I’m dying when I am nauseous and throwing up, and I am a hulk of a crybaby. I like losing weight though; I'll be skinny but bald. I will have a flat stomach, but a sickly pallor. I’ll be bald but rich. I don't want a damn wig either...they are hot and sweaty. And what, do I super glue it? I will milk my doctor for great anxiety pills, and if I can get a lifetime supply of Valium, it will all be worth it.

And if I do have cancer now, man it feels great. I have had the damn lump for two years and never felt terminally ill. If this is dying of cancer, I can take it.



"Have you ever been sedated before? Were there complications?" the nurse asked me.

"Oh no! I do quite well yes yes quite well with these sorts of things. Yes I am very good with sedatives and sedation in general I assure you, quite well with being sedated indeed,” I replied holding back the urge to wrestle her to the ground and get the drugs I knew she hid in her little white pocket.

The third nurse came into the waiting room and said, "I have your sedative. It is Valium."

"Can I get two more to go please?"

She handed me a gorgeous, little, clear, plastic cup holding three elliptical salmon colored pills. The relief insinuated into my muscles and brain the minute I saw them so you can imagine the ease I experienced once I actually took the pills. Jesus Christ, when they kicked in, I began telling my sister Julie about my epiphany of the Lord that I had never told anyone; I told her about a certain teenage sexual experience that I would rather have remained private, and some various other secrets that I would not like to go into here. After fifteen minutes of thoroughly enjoying my buzz and revealing every embarrassing moment in my past, revelations which my sister Julie did not try to dissuade, the nurse came and said it was time to get the MRI.

"Oh no, but you had a long wait after your sedative. Would you like one more Valium just in case?" the nurse asked me.

"Well yes I would, yes, as a matter of fact, come to think of it, yes, I would thank you very much," I said.

"She won't remember any of this," the Nurse told Julie.

"Oh yes I will. I will never forget any of this," I said.



Nurses shouldn’t tell a patient’s sibling that their sister is so buzzed that she won't remember anything later. Julie could have started poking me with sticks or tripping me with my hospital gown on, or worse making me apologize for the time I flicked boogers all over her door and in repentance make me strip in front of the old people and dance like a freak, even though she knows I dance terribly. She already stripped me of a truckload of private information.

Feeling excellent, I tried not to look too carefully at the MRI machine when I entered the testing room; I didn’t want reality to ruin my buzz. The machine was huge and looked animated. I thought of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory and wished its purpose was more along the lines of non-invasive, laser cosmetic alteration; I’ll take a tummy tuck, a toe removal, a designer labiaplasty, and some acid on my face. I lay on my back on the table, and the nurse put a cozy warm blanket on my footsies. The tech said it would be incredibly loud. He really stressed that it would be enormously loud.

"This will be louder than you could possibly expect,” he said.

He stuck earplugs in my ears the size and shape of large gourds.

"Wow, you are serious about this," I said.

They then put a flat tray over my face; about five inches from it, and then the table slid me mechanically into the coffin-like tube while my ear gourds stuck out left and right. I felt like a meat patty on a conveyor belt at Carl’s Jr. Really, who puts a metal tray over your face, it’s so rude. It reminds me of when Luke wants sex and puts a flat screen TV over my face and tunes into The Girl’s Next Door. But it didn't feel coffin-esque because everything was beautiful and I loved the technicians and nurse.

I slammed my eyes shut tight and fell into a blissful sleep. A light beamed and I felt as if I were in a copy machine, then a LOUD LOUD noise happened right around my head. If I didn't have a condition before, I most certainly would after this. It was exactly the sound and decibel level of a jack hammer an inch from your head. The MRI machine would jackhammer for several minutes then copy, jack hammer, copy. There were other noises too. I wondered what incredible fake ass machine I could come up with and tell people it was very special and charge $3,300. I would come up with something far more sophisticated. Surely the noises on my machine wouldn't sound like a jackhammer and it wouldn't seem like a copier. I would at least have an interesting whirring sound and if there must be light it would be blue or red, not plain white.

I was in there for 45 minutes and was thinking about Krista when she said, “If you have only one year to live, then waiting one month since the ultrasound, the doctors have wasted one tenth of your life.”

Even with the Valium, I had a few moments of panic. I wanted to start flailing around like a fish on deck, and bang on the sides while pulling my hair out in massive clumps, frothing at the mouth like Old Yeller and peeing on the table, but I maintained.

Even with earplugs, the noise was deafening. What a circus. What a racket. What a way to make people die earlier. What a way to make money. What a way to make a perfectly good death, miserable. I am not getting anything checked again.

Suddenly bam, the jackhammer would start and stop again. It jolted me and hysteria surfaced through small unguarded holes in my drug induced euphoria, but a couple of deep breaths and I was good again. What would it be like to be brave? With no drugs, I would have needed a straight jacket so that I wouldn’t do involuntary aerobics in that confined space, claw my eyeballs and tongue out, give myself a hemorrhoid, kick the lights and electrocute myself. I would be stuck in the lights and my face and hair would be bloody, the gown burned off leaving my ass bare in an un-sexy way what with the hemorrhoid and all. I’d have been better off dying at home alone with neck cancer.



It took seven long days of waiting before I got the results. The MRI lab said they sent the results to my doctor three days after the MRI, but it took many phone calls and much begging before the doctor called me back. I was crushed that my doctor cared so little that she didn't call sooner. Dumb I know, but I thought this was what I had to look forward to with my future cancer treatment.

I didn’t want to do anything at all during those seven days of waiting, but Krista pushed me out of my mental malaise and said, "Mom let's go to LA tomorrow since your days are numbered; we definitely should not wait."

She had a point.

“Okay, let’s do it, but clean up the dog shit first,” I said.

"Don't worry about the dog shit Mom, soon you'll be dead and it won’t matter.”

Some may not find all of this funny, but it was therapeutic and terribly hilarious to me. And the few times she did say, "Mom I really don't want you to have cancer, it would be awful." I appreciated the genuine feeling and brevity.

There has not been one minute since the ultrasound that I wasn't positive that I had cancer. I can't stress enough how sure of cancer I had been especially after the doctor and ultra-sound lab girl talked about the large and unusual lump on my neck that reminded them of the deformed monster in the basement with the basketball genital growths. I was already planning on things to do with my business, finances, and children. I already relaxed about shit I didn't like doing, like paying taxes, scrubbing the floor around the toilet, and being nice to strangers, knowing soon I would be dead. It was great.

So you can imagine the strange let down I had when my doctor called and said, "Suzie, you are good. It is a fatty tissue. It needs to come off, but it is not cancerous and looks good."

I told her thank you so much as if she cured a terrible thing; as if she were responsible for my good health, as if she revealed a truth that I would have died from had she not examined it. I was disappointed. I had bought Tuesdays with Morrie, Life After Death by Deepak, I had written my eulogy, I wrote down my passwords and User IDs and willed my business to a family member. I planned on the savings of hair products, imagined the Brazilian cut with no stubble. I was pissed that after all that worry, stress, expense and preparations, that there was nothing wrong after all and all of that ridiculous over-zealous testing was for nothing. I felt betrayed. Sure I was glad I wasn’t dying, but dude, does Medicine really need all the theatrics for a piece of fat?

But Krista was as relieved as could be; Mom and TT, who had called several times a day over the last week, were audibly relieved.

They were both choked up and Mom said, "you choose a strange place to grow your fat."

Things like this give you a chance to notice how loved you are, and I see how much I love my family and could care less about my earlier petty complaints about stretch marks, rude bladder infections, and hard mattresses. Luke however was a different story. He was sure nothing was wrong from the beginning, and was therefore not concerned. He didn't ask or call to see how I was doing/feeling.

Before I had even gone in for the MRI he asked, "Oh did you get those results in?"

“Um, I haven’t had the MRI yet,” I said patiently. He can be an airhead.

Later he said, "I have two weeks off now that it is January and the year has started over. I better not get sick or have to take a day off. There is nothing on Earth worse than having to take a day off in January and destroy the clean slate."

"Oh then I guess you won't be going to the doctor's with me," I didn't say.

"Mom don't tell Luke about your results and see how long it takes him to ask. Two years will pass and he'll finally ask, tell him that yes you had cancer and are still being treated for it," Krista said.

This cancer business is powerful stuff. I don't pretend to have never thought of the leverage I could use with this. I am almost disappointed now I can't make Luke feel bad or play on his sympathies.

Luke didn't call the entire day of my MRI even though he had been over the night before and knew I was extremely nervous. (We were not married yet). What can I expect, he wasn't even slightly nervous before either of his own two surgeries, not even a little, so he can't understand my fear.

In some sick way, I wanted Luke to think I was dying of cancer so he would love and appreciate me more. Or at least I wanted him constantly in fear of my contracting some rare disease or in constant worry about someone or something coming and killing me. But he never fears and never worries about me. For that matter, he doesn’t worry about anything. His stable mental health is so annoying it drives me barking mad. Fine Luke, I’m healthy and safe: are you happy now?











So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumberable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams

Thanatopsis, by William Cullen Bryant



I just read that 267,000 women die from heart attack every year, 41,000 from breast cancer. Most women over 65 die from heart attack. That is awesome great news, unless you are a death denier. We are all going to die, it is silly to say beware of heart attacks, they kill more women than anything else. Death, God, Nature kills everyone. What better way to go than a heart attack: quickly, albeit extremely painfully? But it doesn’t drag on and on like stupid cancer. It isn’t so grisly, the treatments aren’t so draconic. BTW Breast cancer is 80% curable. And a healthy diet and exercise can prevent most breast cancer.