Cancer and Fashion

I’ve owned this book –“No Time to Die” by Liz Tilberis--for years and never sat down to read it until now. That makes no sense to me because this is a book about two things that I love to read and write about: Cancer and Fashion.

Yes, how about that for a combination? And it works.

Liz Tilberis was the Editor-in-Chief at Harper’s Bazaar. She was living quite a glamorous and very hard working life—magazines are hard work—when at 41, she was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer.

This book has all you would expect: stories of celebrities and designers and oncologists and treatments…and the most expensive cancer wig you have ever heard about. Let it be said Liz Tilberis looked as good as any woman can look with cancer and brutal chemo treatments.

But the book has more than the typical cancer memoir and more than a fashion editor’s story. Liz was also a Mom and wife and great friend—and British, and this book covers all of those topics too.

If you loved Diana Spencer—there is a lot of Diana in this book. If you liked “The Devil Wears Prada” there is a lot of behind the scenes for you here, and if you or a friend has Ovarian Cancer you’ll see what you have in common and what the special perks are for the wealthy and well known in Cancer Land. Yes, there is a teeny bit of a social hierarchy in cancer.

I loved this book and loved learning about Liz Tilberis. It is no secret that she died of her cancer. But what I can take away is how she lived with cancer and the choices she made to make her life as an executive and a Mom –also with cancer.

Guest Writer: Laura Orem

 I am very pleased to introduce you to an amazing writer and amazing woman: Laura Orem. Here is her first guest post for "Love in the TIme of Cancer.":

When you receive a cancer diagnosis, it swallows you up in a way that other diseases do not. First, of course, there is panic – am I going to die? But after the first shock, when death seems less imminent in the face of treatment, the question morphs into something else – who am I now?

In May 2010, I was diagnosed with stage 1C ovarian cancer. I had a radical 6-hour surgery to remove my ovaries, uterus, and various other abdominal accoutrements, then another surgery to insert a catheter port in my chest, then four months of intensive chemotherapy. I was physically weakened from the surgeries and wiped out, as almost everyone is, by the chemo drugs.  My mouth turned into a burning cesspit of sores and pain. I lost my hair. I lost my stamina. I lost the subconscious safety net we are born with: the confidence that, while other people must die someday, an exception will be made in our case.

On top of everything else, the cancer surgery threw me into menopause. So, in addition to chemo, I had to deal with violent hot flashes and night sweats. It was miserable. But I came out alive on the other end, with an excellent prognosis. Perhaps, the thought has occurred to me more than once, I should stop complaining and just be thankful to be alive.

Believe me, I am grateful. I had wonderful doctors and nurses; my family and friends – well, what I feel towards them would seem trivialized by any attempt at description. But I am not the same woman I was before cancer. In some ways, this is a good thing. I’m not afraid of much anymore: spiders, other people’s BS, speaking my mind. In fact, these days I’m virtually unintimidatable. In other ways, it’s not so good: I’m physically weaker; I weigh a lot more; and I feel defeminized in a profound way. To put it bluntly, I’ve lost almost all my girl-parts. I used to luxuriate in my own body; now sometimes I drag it around with me like a beaten-up Airstream.

I feel mended, not healed. Deeply grateful for surviving, but deeply changed.

Our culture, having been fed a diet of positive-thinking propaganda from Lifetime movies and organizations like the Susan G. Komen Foundation, wants cancer survivors to be endlessly upbeat and optimistic, to come out the other side more able to stop and smell the roses, to almost be thankful for their disease experience. But I think this does many survivors a great disservice by dismissing their own narratives in favor of a fairy-tale ending.

What happens when you don’t feel positive and optimistic? What if you’re so angry you’d rather decapitate the roses with a pair of scissors than smell them? Cancer isn’t a romantic movie. It’s terrifying and it’s horrible. It grabs you by the ankles and slams you against a rock until you cry out for mercy. I’m wiser, yes, and my cancer has been cured, thank God, but I’ve also lost a lot.

So, after the treatment was over and the clean bill of health issued, when I was standing there with the pieces of the-rest-of-my-life in my hands wondering what shape they made, what did I do? I did what I always do – I wrote about it. Castrata: a Conversation is an heroic crown of sonnets that is presented as a dialogue between the speaker (me) and Carlo Faranelli, the great Italian castrato singer. We have a lot in common, Signor Faranelli and I. Why sonnets? Because for me something as messy as cancer needs a structure to render it manageable as a subject, to move it beyond a primal cry and into, hopefully, art.

Make no mistake, I’m glad to be alive. I have many, many good things in my life: my family, my friends, my animals, my work. I’m basically a happy person. I’m going to live, and I’ve got a lot to live for. But, as one of the sonnets says, “I will name my losses, too.”  To deny this would be unforgiveable dishonesty.  I owe my readers – and myself – nothing less than the truth.

Laura Orem

 Castrata: a Conversation is available for pre-order from Finishing Line Press. Price $12 plus $2.99 shipping. Shipping date Nov. 1.

Click here to reserve your copy: 

https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=2159

Memoir of a Debulked Woman

A new book by feminist scholar Susan Gubar describes the experience of treatment for ovarian cancer. The New York Times review of her book says that ovarian cancer has been called "Breast cancer's poor neglected cousin." More shockingly is also says that, "Ovarian cancer lacks breast cancer's public recognition for a terrible reason: so few women live to write about it".

The title of Gubar's book is provocative. We learn that the standard treatment for advanced ovarian cancer is called "debulking"--surgery in which as much tissue and as many organs as possible are removed in hopes of removing as much cancer as possible.

As awful as that description may be, and the reality of the surgery must be, this is a moving and powerful book written by an amazing scholar and writer. She leaves little out, as the surgeons left little in, and she gives us a moving picture of the inner life and decision making process of a woman living with, and dying of, cancer.

Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/books/review/memoir-of-a-debulked-woman-by-susan-gubar.html?smid=pl-share