Cancer, Clothes, and Change

When you see two articles, on the same topic, in the same day, it must be a sign that you need to think and write about that topic. Right?

This morning, Blood-Cancer.com re-ran an old article by a blood cancer patient named Daniel Malito called "Cancer & Clothes." I write for Blood-Cancer.com about once a month, and I read pretty much everything they publish. I especially like Daniel's work. He's funny and honest.

In this piece, Daniel writes about how his body has changed, and how none of his clothes fit him after treatment. And, on top of everything else, now he has to spend money on new clothes.

Yesterday, I saw a different piece in the new York Times called "The Emperor of All Maladies' New Clothes." It's written by a cancer survivor named Susan Gubar, who also happens to be a famous literary scholar. She wrote a book about her experience with ovarian cancer called Memoir of a Debulked Woman. (I haven't read that one, and I probably won't. My mom died of ovarian cancer 5 years ago. Funny how I can read anything about my own cancer, but not about some others....).

I like the title of Gubar's piece. We all know the story of The Emperor's New Clothes, which she combines with the book Emperor of All Maladies, Siddartha Mukherjee's great book about the history of cancer and its treatments.

Gubar also talks about how her body has changed, and the effects it has had on her clothing choices. She talks about some clothing that has been designed for patients with ports, or ostomies, small changes to clothes that make it a little easier to deal with necessary things.

With two articles that deal with the same thing, arriving at my computer within a few hours of each other, it's gotten me thinking about the whole issue.

Things do change for us. I mean physically. Mentally and emotionally is a whole other story.

But things do change for us physically. Maybe it's the cancer itself. Maybe it's the treatments. Maybe it's the medicine to help us deal with the side effects o the treatments. But things change. I like to hold out hope that, maybe it's change that we can be happy about. But I also know that's usually not the case.

And, in general, clothing does one of two things -- it helps hide parts of us, or show parts of us. Conceal or reveal. And maybe our attitude about our cancer, and the changes it brings, is revealed in our clothing.

Long sleeves and high necks and head scarfs can hide our scars. I know plenty of people who do that. But short sleeves and v-necks, and "lymphoma warrior" shirts and "Fuck Cancer" hats can reveal things that people might not otherwise be able to see.

I've never been one to put a bumper sticker on my car, or a cancer slogan on my body. I've always been fairly private. Which might sound funny, given how much I write about my experience with cancer. And, come to think of it, how little it bothers me now to strip down in front of a doctor or nurse -- I think I've been seen naked by well over a hundred health professionals in the last 11+ years.

But it took a long time to strip of my clothes -- my actual clothes, but also the clothes I use to conceal who I am in other ways. Apart from the blog, which rarely used my full name, it's only been a few years that I've signed my name to things I have written.

Our clothes can be literal -- cotton and leather and polyester. Or they can be figurative -- the ways we act and the things we do that conceal and reveal our cancer. But ultimately it's our own, individual choice to let people know who we are and what we've been through. I would never tell another cancer patient how to act. We must all make those choice for ourselves.

For me, it's been a long way coming. But taking off my clothes -- sharing my story, using my name -- has been a good thing. I'm glad I made that choice. And I hope you're happy with whatever choices you make, too.