Too Much Information, Part 3

(With this audio supplement.)

Ducks; recognizing the need for personal space (After over 1 year together, vindictiveness, passion, simultaneous talking and not listening, ends with muted bitterness and forgiving and fakeforgetting but somehow still complacent and almost easy-going as though used to such tension)

breast cancer, ovarian cancer

[Small talk, like over morning coffee, not a particularly good or bad mood—distant from each other, sometimes stepping on each other’s lines, sometimes not listening.]

A: Statistically speaking research has shown.

B: Research has shown—

A: Exposure to radiation. Statistically speaking—

B: Sadistically treating chronic abdominal/gastrointestinal pain w/ auto-ignore & brush off...

A: (Annoyed) Borderline ovarian cancer.

B: Laparascopic discovery.

A: This suffering lasts a lot longer—

B: Hereditary.

A: Her head is fairly—

B: (Annoyed, but amused) Bald. Chemotherapeutic—

A: Aggressive debulking. Pap smears do not detect ovarian cancer.

B: (Not wanting to argue, feeling warm) Noni juice. Potato leaves.

[Constant overlap of lines, not really listening to each other at all but talking at each other.]

A: Casually swollen lymph nodes pointed out first noticed with sick virus.

B: Infection in the umbilicus later diagnosed as metastasized tumor from left ovary & over three months such cycles of radiation... And...

A: Mammogram, thyroid ulrasound, nuclear thyroid scan, CAT scan...

B: (Given up; relinquishing hope) Remission. Remission. CA-125 rising—

A: (Muted bitterness at B) Revelations. Revelations. The best breast specialist. The top oncologist. Revelations. Suspicious mammograms. Advanced localized breast cancer and stage IV ovarian cancer.

B: It isn’t advisable—

A: Not at all it isn’t advisable—

B: (Firmly, glaring at A) It isn’t advisable to leave ovaries in a woman who has had ovarian cancer.

A: No, yeah. Yeah. No nausea really no, yeah, but the appetite is eaten so by the chemo so things don’t taste good. Things don’t taste good. Things don’t taste. Good things don’t. Taste good things don’t—

B: Tumor like... like... the size of a newborn baby’s head attached to the colon & the stomach wall—

A: And like muscle and bone aches and so fatigued and tiny tiny veins the nurses can’t even handle! Neuropathy in the feet! It isn’t advisable—

B: Glutamine. And, uh... surgery scheduled to remove—

[Fast, passionate, annoyed at each other but also still very attracted, stepping on each other’s lines.]

A: Uterus.

B: Remove!

A: Fallopian tubes...

B: Remove!

A: Ovaries...

B: Remove!

A: Umbilicus...

B: Remove!

[Pause.]

A: Six five hour cycles of aggressive chemo.

B: Taxol and Carboplatin cocktail.

A: Oh cheers.

B: But you have to heal yourself.