Fighting Breast Cancer

My parents flew home to Michigan.  My dad had to return to work and my mom had a few doctor’s appointments of her own.  Mom is going to fly out to Arizona again in a few days to be with me for my next chemo.  She will be staying with us indefinitely; until I’m better.

If I haven’t explained it before, I come from a very WASP-y family.  This means that we hide our emotions at all costs and pretend that everything is fine.  We avoid confrontation like the plague and never ask probing personal questions that are none of our business.  Understanding this, I’d like to talk about a very uncomfortable conversation that I just had with my father.  It went something like this:

Me:  “Hello?”

Dad: “Well, hi honey!  How are you feeling?”

Me: “Great Dad!  What are you doing?”

Dad: “I’m just sitting here in my chair watching Fox News.  They’re covering the war in Iraq.  I guess there was another suicide bombing over there.  The asshole took down about 15 people with him.  You should turn it on and watch this.  The restaurant that he walked into is completely destroyed.  Now they’re showing the family of a soldier that just got killed.  You know, that’s too bad.  The kid was young.  Now they’re cutting to Tony Blair and some speech he made about the war earlier today.  By the way, what kind of birth control do you use?”

Me: (not sure I heard right)”…..huh?”

Dad:  “The reason I ask is because there are some birth control pills that can cause breast cancer.”

Me:  “Dad, I know.  I appreciate your concern, but I’m not having this conversation with you.”

The funny thing about this is that I know it took all the courage he could muster to ask me this question, and the only way he could do it was to sneak it in while talking about the most manly thing he could think of:  The War. 

The tragic thing is that I never took birth control pills.  Dad thought he might have the answer to why I have breast cancer, but this is not the case.  I never used a contraceptive that might cause cancer.  Neither I, nor my doctors, know why I have cancer.

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