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Songs from a Lead-Lined Room: Notes--High and Low--from My Journey through Breast Cancer and Radiation - Softcover
Songs from a Lead-Lined Room is a unique and remarkable book rooted in truth and raw experience, and the first memoir to focus on the personal experience of radiation treatment. As with Shea's best-selling fiction, her sharp and insightful wit and her reporter's eye for the most telling and sometimes quirky details inform every page. She shares what she learns about the process of her treatment, her bouts of despair, indignity, and fear, as well as the faux pas, the innocent blunders, and the compassion and caring of her family, friends, and fellow patients
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Suzanne Strempek Shea, winner of the 2000 New England Book Award for Fiction, is the author of Selling the Lite of Heaven, Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Lily of the Valley, and Around Again. She lives and writes in Bondsville, Massachusetts.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Chapter One
my new guru has an office on the deep-down floor of the big hospital.
The walls here are yards thick and they are lined fat with lead.
There is bad stuff being dealt with here, and it needs to be contained—not
just the danger that people who come here are carrying inside themselves,
but also the things that are aimed at them down here to try to kill that
danger. Everything here is bad. Even the radio reception. Only one station
can be caught through the fortress walls and it's lousy. Lion King. Disco
revival.
The guru's room is the size of a car. A budget rental. Two chairs,
and a shelf for a desk. Today she has offered me the option of having our
session observed by an intern. This hospital is a teaching place, so at least
one student in on an appointment or exam or procedure is not uncommon.
Since late winter, in the name of education, dozens of strange hands have
been placed on one of my more private areas. I'd get probed, and then
thanked, and then later they'd see me in the hall with my clothes on and they
wouldn't even nod a greeting. Kind of like high school. The weird thing about
today is that it seems odder to have a stranger in on the listening than the
touching. But I don't mind. I feel bad in my soul and at this point might even
say yes to a live telecast.
The intern's name is Holly. It's bright, and, of course, holidayish.
Holly wants to become a nurse and is attending Springfield College, so I
compliment her because that is a fine school. She smiles from a face that
belongs on a good-looking religious statue. Clear and open and ready for your
prayers, and I wonder, in years to come will she turn out to be the kind of
nurse who held my hand an hour past the end of her shift even though she
really needed to get to the grocery before it closed. Or will she get burned-out
and hateful like the one who shouted at me the time I asked again for a
painkiller. You can't tell these things in advance, about how Holly, or
anybody, might act in time. But for now, she shows every sign of being the
type of nurse you'd want: interested, leaning in, but not getting in the way of
my guru, Wendy, who knows what to say and when to shut up.
Wendy has not had this. I know because I asked, the first time I
met with her as part of the package deal of radiation. If we have the
inclination and time, we patients down here can be connected to helpful
resources and activities that include a chaplain, massage therapists, reiki
practitioners, meditation sessions, writing groups and art workshops. Colorful
posters and leaflets hang in the waiting rooms and locker rooms, announcing
the next series of courses. I was more in the mood to complain about my
problems than to weave potholders. So I leaped at the chance for
psychotherapy, and in Wendy found one of those huge iron posts to which
they moor freighters at a dock. I was bobbing around, she was a possible line
to stability. I connected with her right off, and right off I asked her: "Did you
ever have this?" Knowing that was important to me. A lot of such things
were—and are—important: and, top of the list, am I going to die from this? I'd
asked that one three months earlier, of the nurse, on the phone the night I
received my diagnosis. Cindy later said, "Wow, you asked that? I never
thought to ask that." My bestfriend never thought to ask; even though her
diagnosis eight years before had been dire. For me, despite the blessing of
early detection and a classification of Stage One out of four, it was the first
thing I wanted to know. You hear the word "cancer" and your name in the
same sentence, and you can already see your name carved into the stone.
At least I could.
So I needed to know if Wendy had personal knowledge of what
she counseled people about while she sat all day in her tiny office on the
deep-down floor of the hospital, doing her social work. She told me no, she'd
never had it, but she went on to tell me she had known some of the forms of
hardship that befall anyone who's alive, and I was all prepared to hear her go
on and tell me about her cesarean, thinking she might be another of the
surprising number of women who, when they learn about what's happened to
me, scramble for a story to swap and start reciting, "Well, I went through fifty
hours of labor only to have a cesarean." They got a child for all their misery, a
bit more positive an experience than having mortality in your face, which is
how the guru put it the first time we met. In your face. That's where it is with
cancer. Of the fingernail, or of the brain. That's the thing. And even though
Wendy has not had this, or any cesarean that she cared to mention, I felt
she knew what she was talking about, and that she would help.
So I regularly will be going to see her in her office on the deep-
down floor, where the waiting room is packed with people wondering what do
you have and how bad is it? I should note, that is what I am wondering:
what's he got? And what about her? A couple is sitting together, and you try
to guess which one of them is the patient. Most of the people I see there are
older. Some look terrible. But some look pretty good, and you have to remark
about that, if only to yourself. One elderly man was showing off a diploma
today. They actually give you a diploma when your treatments are over,
which I think is a ridiculous thing. But this man apparently didn't. He
appeared to be very proud. And, I have to say, he looked great. He didn't look
sick. But then, I don't look sick. I don't feel sick. Yet I'm to be coming here
five days a week for the next six and a half weeks, to get myself radiated
while the theme from The Lion King plays and the technicians answer my
fears by saying no, don't worry, this is not a dangerous thing being done to
you here, and then they file from the room and shut the door and a red
warning light beams from the ceiling so nobody will come back in until it's
safe again.
This machine on which I am to be radiated is so old the
technicians admit they don't even know its age. It is the dull tan color of the
IBM Selectrics I used in the newsroom when I first worked as a reporter. Like
the Selectrics, it is worn and scratched. But unlike a typewriter, it takes up
an entire end of a room and has a moving arc-shaped part that curves around
your body to the sound of a compressor, and if you were claustrophobic you
might have trouble here. There is a new high-tech machine at the other end of
the hall and there is to be an open house next week to show it off to the
public. I have been given a laser-printed invitation to this event, which will
include refreshments, and I ask if this means I will be treated on the newer
model. No, I'm told, it is for dealing with parts found only in men. The cobalt
machine—mine—does what's needed for me, I'm assured, has done the job
for women for who knows how many years, and certainly will for my six and a
half weeks. Maybe so, but to look at my machine, you'd think the power
source was a crank and a pair of hamsters on a treadmill. Somebody has
stuck pictures onto the part that encircles you. Transfers, the kind that
people once dipped in water and applied to their kitchen walls. Two cardinal
birds, both boldly red males, sit on a pine branch. A big pink flower blossoms
nearby. These are supposed to cheer you, I guess. They don't work.
I feel rotten, I tell Wendy afterward, back in her little office with
Holly in a chair she's jammed into the corner behind the door. I am worn out
and defeated and I don't want to be coming to this hospital or anywhere near
this hospital and I'm not happy that it's going to take no less than three
weeks for the country's number-one antidepressant to kick in and give me a
leg up and over the wall. I don't want to have cancer. I don't like having
cancer. I turn to Holly even though the deal is I'm supposed to be pretending
she isn't there. I tell her this has been going on for way too long, in my
opinion. Since March. Fucking March. And here it is, September. Annual
mammogram at the tail end of winter—what's this here? Another appointment
to find out—no, that was nothing after all. But can you come back so we can
take a look at the other breast?
I'm forty-one and in the best physical shape of my life. Or so I thought. Go
down the waiting room–posted list of preventative measures, and I've met
them all. Because I thought my parents would kill me, I never once smoked.
Or inhaled. Anything. Because I love being outdoors, I walk daily, in all
weather. Because I woke up to the cruelty involved, I stopped eating meat
more than a decade ago. Because it doesn't take much, I don't drink much. I
was happy without having to force it. If this counts for anything, I went to
church, I gave to charities, I packed groceries at the local food pantry, I
recycled, I captured and released any bugs found in the house. I even bought
the postal service's special breast cancer postage stamps, despite their
costing seven cents more than the regular kind. Nothing's perfect, but I was
in a life that always had made me feel lottery-lucky. I didn't squander that—I
took care. I have no family history of the disease, but since age thirty-three
faithfully have been going for mammograms due to a benign cyst discovered
the same exact month Cindy was diagnosed. And about which, due to my
guilt over escaping away free that time, I did not tell her until this year. Until
my own bad...
my new guru has an office on the deep-down floor of the big hospital.
The walls here are yards thick and they are lined fat with lead.
There is bad stuff being dealt with here, and it needs to be contained—not
just the danger that people who come here are carrying inside themselves,
but also the things that are aimed at them down here to try to kill that
danger. Everything here is bad. Even the radio reception. Only one station
can be caught through the fortress walls and it's lousy. Lion King. Disco
revival.
The guru's room is the size of a car. A budget rental. Two chairs,
and a shelf for a desk. Today she has offered me the option of having our
session observed by an intern. This hospital is a teaching place, so at least
one student in on an appointment or exam or procedure is not uncommon.
Since late winter, in the name of education, dozens of strange hands have
been placed on one of my more private areas. I'd get probed, and then
thanked, and then later they'd see me in the hall with my clothes on and they
wouldn't even nod a greeting. Kind of like high school. The weird thing about
today is that it seems odder to have a stranger in on the listening than the
touching. But I don't mind. I feel bad in my soul and at this point might even
say yes to a live telecast.
The intern's name is Holly. It's bright, and, of course, holidayish.
Holly wants to become a nurse and is attending Springfield College, so I
compliment her because that is a fine school. She smiles from a face that
belongs on a good-looking religious statue. Clear and open and ready for your
prayers, and I wonder, in years to come will she turn out to be the kind of
nurse who held my hand an hour past the end of her shift even though she
really needed to get to the grocery before it closed. Or will she get burned-out
and hateful like the one who shouted at me the time I asked again for a
painkiller. You can't tell these things in advance, about how Holly, or
anybody, might act in time. But for now, she shows every sign of being the
type of nurse you'd want: interested, leaning in, but not getting in the way of
my guru, Wendy, who knows what to say and when to shut up.
Wendy has not had this. I know because I asked, the first time I
met with her as part of the package deal of radiation. If we have the
inclination and time, we patients down here can be connected to helpful
resources and activities that include a chaplain, massage therapists, reiki
practitioners, meditation sessions, writing groups and art workshops. Colorful
posters and leaflets hang in the waiting rooms and locker rooms, announcing
the next series of courses. I was more in the mood to complain about my
problems than to weave potholders. So I leaped at the chance for
psychotherapy, and in Wendy found one of those huge iron posts to which
they moor freighters at a dock. I was bobbing around, she was a possible line
to stability. I connected with her right off, and right off I asked her: "Did you
ever have this?" Knowing that was important to me. A lot of such things
were—and are—important: and, top of the list, am I going to die from this? I'd
asked that one three months earlier, of the nurse, on the phone the night I
received my diagnosis. Cindy later said, "Wow, you asked that? I never
thought to ask that." My bestfriend never thought to ask; even though her
diagnosis eight years before had been dire. For me, despite the blessing of
early detection and a classification of Stage One out of four, it was the first
thing I wanted to know. You hear the word "cancer" and your name in the
same sentence, and you can already see your name carved into the stone.
At least I could.
So I needed to know if Wendy had personal knowledge of what
she counseled people about while she sat all day in her tiny office on the
deep-down floor of the hospital, doing her social work. She told me no, she'd
never had it, but she went on to tell me she had known some of the forms of
hardship that befall anyone who's alive, and I was all prepared to hear her go
on and tell me about her cesarean, thinking she might be another of the
surprising number of women who, when they learn about what's happened to
me, scramble for a story to swap and start reciting, "Well, I went through fifty
hours of labor only to have a cesarean." They got a child for all their misery, a
bit more positive an experience than having mortality in your face, which is
how the guru put it the first time we met. In your face. That's where it is with
cancer. Of the fingernail, or of the brain. That's the thing. And even though
Wendy has not had this, or any cesarean that she cared to mention, I felt
she knew what she was talking about, and that she would help.
So I regularly will be going to see her in her office on the deep-
down floor, where the waiting room is packed with people wondering what do
you have and how bad is it? I should note, that is what I am wondering:
what's he got? And what about her? A couple is sitting together, and you try
to guess which one of them is the patient. Most of the people I see there are
older. Some look terrible. But some look pretty good, and you have to remark
about that, if only to yourself. One elderly man was showing off a diploma
today. They actually give you a diploma when your treatments are over,
which I think is a ridiculous thing. But this man apparently didn't. He
appeared to be very proud. And, I have to say, he looked great. He didn't look
sick. But then, I don't look sick. I don't feel sick. Yet I'm to be coming here
five days a week for the next six and a half weeks, to get myself radiated
while the theme from The Lion King plays and the technicians answer my
fears by saying no, don't worry, this is not a dangerous thing being done to
you here, and then they file from the room and shut the door and a red
warning light beams from the ceiling so nobody will come back in until it's
safe again.
This machine on which I am to be radiated is so old the
technicians admit they don't even know its age. It is the dull tan color of the
IBM Selectrics I used in the newsroom when I first worked as a reporter. Like
the Selectrics, it is worn and scratched. But unlike a typewriter, it takes up
an entire end of a room and has a moving arc-shaped part that curves around
your body to the sound of a compressor, and if you were claustrophobic you
might have trouble here. There is a new high-tech machine at the other end of
the hall and there is to be an open house next week to show it off to the
public. I have been given a laser-printed invitation to this event, which will
include refreshments, and I ask if this means I will be treated on the newer
model. No, I'm told, it is for dealing with parts found only in men. The cobalt
machine—mine—does what's needed for me, I'm assured, has done the job
for women for who knows how many years, and certainly will for my six and a
half weeks. Maybe so, but to look at my machine, you'd think the power
source was a crank and a pair of hamsters on a treadmill. Somebody has
stuck pictures onto the part that encircles you. Transfers, the kind that
people once dipped in water and applied to their kitchen walls. Two cardinal
birds, both boldly red males, sit on a pine branch. A big pink flower blossoms
nearby. These are supposed to cheer you, I guess. They don't work.
I feel rotten, I tell Wendy afterward, back in her little office with
Holly in a chair she's jammed into the corner behind the door. I am worn out
and defeated and I don't want to be coming to this hospital or anywhere near
this hospital and I'm not happy that it's going to take no less than three
weeks for the country's number-one antidepressant to kick in and give me a
leg up and over the wall. I don't want to have cancer. I don't like having
cancer. I turn to Holly even though the deal is I'm supposed to be pretending
she isn't there. I tell her this has been going on for way too long, in my
opinion. Since March. Fucking March. And here it is, September. Annual
mammogram at the tail end of winter—what's this here? Another appointment
to find out—no, that was nothing after all. But can you come back so we can
take a look at the other breast?
I'm forty-one and in the best physical shape of my life. Or so I thought. Go
down the waiting room–posted list of preventative measures, and I've met
them all. Because I thought my parents would kill me, I never once smoked.
Or inhaled. Anything. Because I love being outdoors, I walk daily, in all
weather. Because I woke up to the cruelty involved, I stopped eating meat
more than a decade ago. Because it doesn't take much, I don't drink much. I
was happy without having to force it. If this counts for anything, I went to
church, I gave to charities, I packed groceries at the local food pantry, I
recycled, I captured and released any bugs found in the house. I even bought
the postal service's special breast cancer postage stamps, despite their
costing seven cents more than the regular kind. Nothing's perfect, but I was
in a life that always had made me feel lottery-lucky. I didn't squander that—I
took care. I have no family history of the disease, but since age thirty-three
faithfully have been going for mammograms due to a benign cyst discovered
the same exact month Cindy was diagnosed. And about which, due to my
guilt over escaping away free that time, I did not tell her until this year. Until
my own bad...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBeacon Press
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 080707215X
- ISBN 13 9780807072158
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages216
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