For those of you confused by all of the news stories and discussion concerning mammograms a few weeks ago here is more to think about. As a breast cancer survivor women ask me for my thoughts about tests, and medical decisions. But my personal experience won’t help to clarify anything for you in this new controversy because my tumor didn’t show up on a mammogram.

I found my tumor on my forty-seventh birthday. It hurt when I raised my arm to blow dry my hair. And the pit of my stomach flipped because I knew something was very wrong and this was not going to dissipate like previous little lumps had. When I got a mammogram they put a metal bead on the lump to let the radiologist know where to focus. But the tissue was so dense that the lump wasn’t defined. So I had an ultrasound and that is how they decided that I needed to see a surgeon. The surgeon did a needle biopsy but that came back negative. I decided I wanted it out anyway so I had surgery to have it removed. It was when I went back in a week later to have the incision checked the doctor told me the biopsy had come back positive for cancer and he hadn’t gotten clean edges.

The facts are that the average age of women diagnosed with breast cancer is 47, and based on age, 70 to 90 percent of those women didn’t have any family history or any other indicators. So what would my advice to women be? Get a mammogram at forty as a baseline. So that as you age and get more they can compare them. The doctor that did my sentinel node before my second surgery said there was a dramatic difference between my most recent mammogram and the one two years before. I have a sister who just turned forty. As a woman with a family history I would tell her to get a mammogram now and I think every two years between forty and fifty would be sufficient.

The most shocking thing happened after I finished treatment a year after finding the tumor and needed a follow up mammogram. As a matter of course most insurance companies offer free routine mammograms to women after the age of forty.  I found out after having breast cancer that the word routine is defined very narrowly by insurance companies. They claim that after having cancer it is no longer routine and patients must then start paying the co –pay.  Their policies are counter to preventing a recurrence. But then nobody thinks that insurance companies really care about the patients.

   If you do make purchases to support Breast Cancer look carefully at the tags and signs. Some companies bring out merchandise with a pink ribbon but no money is going to charity. I think it’s despicable but believe me, now that you know about it, you’ll see it in drugstores and supermarkets.

    I’m probably being placed on somebody’s watch list as you read this, because I made out a check to the Sutter Medical Thieves and mailed it off. In July I mailed a check made out to the City of Oakland Parking Thieves. I got the idea many years ago from an Herb Caen column in the SF Chronicle. Someone had made a check out to PG&E using derogatory words that started with the letters PG&E; I’ve long forgotten what it said but remember the sentiment. When I was surviving cancer treatment I decided to become more of an activist in causes where I felt bureaucracy and big business were squashing people. I have done better since then of speaking up more, but not enough. I still wallow in my own self pity about how much being sick cost me.  I support civil disobedience but not any type of destruction of property. I’m still paying for radiology and lab work and now they are charging me interest. Anything to do with health insurance and bills frustrates me and makes me cry.

     I spent my last night in my old room on the 23rd and the next day helped them get ready for movers. I wasn’t there when the movers came, but that day I had dinner with my friend Heather who was packing up and heading home after finishing grad school. Heather invited me to her apartment in the Berkeley Hills to drink wine, eat some food and watch the sun set. Her apartment was high enough that we looked down on the fog bank that coated San Francisco Bay leaving only the tips of high rises poking through. We could see the sun set to pale oranges and purples. And then I said good-bye to Heather the person that has been my closest friend from school.

    The next morning, Thursday, I woke up in a paralyzing depression. Almost unable to get out of bed I was wondering if I was okay. And as I lay there I realized that it wasn’t one event like a death or tragedy, but the culmination of so many endings and so many employment rejections that had weighed me down into feeling very tiny and small and almost unwilling to continue the fight. The only bright light in the past eight months is graduating from graduate school. Losing my job on January 12th put me into this spiral that doesn’t appear to have an ending. I lost a good friend from work about six weeks later. He had lived a good full life until his heart gave out. He always had my back and gave me emotional support during very tough times, calling to see how I was feeling when I was sick. When I finished the first draft of my thesis I missed him the most because I had been counting on him to read it and fix my punctuation. I know he’s sorry he didn’t get a chance to read it. He would have been so proud of me for finishing school.

     So with no job to go to, no school, no close friend nearby, no familiar family home, I feel as though I’ve had too many endings this summer and really need a beginning or a new opportunity show up soon. I deserve something good to happen, it’s about time.

     Two days ago the media was saying that the President was willing to back off on the public option since that was what was riling up the Rabid Republicans. I have been hoping that in the future I would have that option since I have a pre-existing condition. I immediately sent an email to President Obama asking that the public option be something that he fights for. It is the most important part of reform to me any one who can be denied coverage. I told him that I had worked my whole life and now at fifty-one have no job and no healthcare. The next day the president’s office said that reports that they were backing off on the public option were wrong. Coincidence? I think not.

     Astra Zeneca has a program to provide its prescription medication to the uninsured or low income for a year. Two weeks ago I tried to get a brand new prescription for Arimidex to mail into the program. It is an estrogen inhibitor that I must take for a minimum of five years since my tumor was estrogen positive. I couldn’t get anyone at the Tang Center at UC Berkeley to write a new prescription for me. One of the two women I had seen previously retired and the other was off for the summer so I saw Dr. Batten. He has no bedside manner and was so hurried when he walked in the room that the first thing I said to him was, “Are you in a hurry?” He is very young, around thirty and looked like he had just finished med school. He acted like I was wasting his time. He refused to write a new prescription since I would not be in his care after the fifteenth. Later I found out he is the doctor for the CAL football team and specialized in sports medicine. That explains a lot. There was a huge difference between him, who has possibly never lost a patient and all of the other doctors I’ve had in the past four years. 

     The very nice pharmacist at Tang Center Keith Dong gave me three months of Arimidex for one co-pay. Thank You.   Onward!

            I work for a temp agency for servers, chefs, and whatever you might need to put on a private party, large or small. Most of the clients are small to medium catering companies who need to supplement their own on call staff for big events. The jobs that everybody wants are house parties. Which translates into working directly for the party giver, i.e. there’s a tip most of the time.

            Usually people are grateful to have professionals come in and take care of everything so they can have a good time at their party. They treat us like guests, introduce themselves and help out when needed. And then there’s BW, of BEBE woman’s clothing company. I can’t lose my little barely-above-minimum wage job so you’ll have to figure out her name if you care. She’s mid-fifties and doesn’t seem to have family since there were no photos in the house. She has a house on the water, without a view, in Mill Valley. It’s nice but I’ve been in bigger and much nicer homes. The house and décor are minimal and modern with no personality, just like its owner. BW greeted us in curlers, a long dressing gown in blue paisley polyester, and thick pink flip flops. She seemed nice and told us exactly what she wanted, she had detailed everything even to the time frame what to do and when serve the food and printed it all out. She went to get ready. She took the curlers out of her hair showing a need for some sort of color and changed into big chunky wedgie shoes, leaving on the outfit which was a maxi dress.

            We set-up and were ready to go at 4pm when the guests were supposed to arrive for this wedding reception for a couple that had been married for six months already. The couple was there, another couple arrived at four, and a friend of the bride. That was it at five when, just as another couple was arriving; the first couple passed them in the entry saying they had to go. As time went by it looking like the 50 to 70 people might be 30. BW got more stressed and unhappy. From then on BW was pretty pissy and could hardly wait to get the party over with. I think we all felt that way. I could hear people talking as I waited by the front to greet the people who weren’t coming. The groom was an artist who had painted several of the pieces in the house. He was a small stocky South American man, the bride was a much taller late fifties woman happy to be on her second or third marriage. These two did not match at all. The guests were all friends and family of theirs, mostly hers, not BW who was throwing the reception. Finally right before we were to serve the main course(s) two large groups of the brides family arrived. Three hours late. When BW filled out the post event email for the company I work for she took out her frustration by being hypercritical of us. Thanks BW, we don’t want to come back either.

            On a different note, I had a phone interview for a full time job today and the lady said I didn’t have enough experience in formal dining. They are looking for someone with five plus years. That seems to be the new magic number in hiring. Because they can, employers are requiring way more experience than necessary for the positions they have. Is there really a huge difference between two and five years of serving? My college years of serving didn’t count since it was to long ago. This afternoon I had an interview with a woman who owns a small catering company to work directly for her. The interview lasted less than ten minutes and I left with the assurance she will call me soon for a job. She and the chef were both really nice and came well referred. Yea!!

            Besides the banking bureaucracy I’ve been dealing with getting a prescription for prevention of recurrence of breast cancer. Astra Zeneca has a program to give low income patients free medication for a year. I just need a new prescription to mail in with the forms. But I can’t get one out of the UC Berkeley med center. I have one they wrote that I can refill but suddenly since the death of Michael Jackson doctors are afraid of being seen as improper. There is no Oncologist on staff so now they won’t write a prescription for anything to do with cancer or prevention. I lose my healthcare on August 14^th and for the first time in my life I will have no healthcare. In the back of my mind I’m afraid of my future health. I felt so safe and secure during treatment because I knew I had great healthcare with great doctors and surviving was not about the care but about something outside of their control. What I’m going through now is more frightening than breast cancer. There is no rutted path of what to do for the best results in this economy with 11% percent unemployment. I just hope that all of the decisions I make in the coming months are the right ones. I can’t bear another July.

     The biggest mistake I made was one thousands make every day. But I made it at the wrong place at the wrong time because the wrong lady caught it.  I got my unemployment check on Thursday July 30^th and decided it needed to go right in because I had written the check for my HOA(home owners association) fees against it and mailed it a few days before. You know the old float the check trick. So at about ten or eleven at night I drove to Patelco the co-op credit union in town associated with my credit union and deposited the check. I put it in an envelope sent it in and drove home. It wasn’t until Saturday morning that I checked online to see if the HOA check had cleared when I found out that I had a negative four hundred dollars in my checking. About a hundred of that were in returned check fees. Scrolling through in a panic trying to understand where my money went I discovered that the credit union where I made the deposit had at one pm on the thirtieth taken my money back out of my account when they discovered that the check was unendorsed on the back. I had to leave for a job were I work barely above minimum wage to make ends meet and couldn’t go to the bank and straighten it out. But I assumed the check would be at the bank on Monday and I could sign it and deposit it.

     When I went in on Monday I happened to walk up to and explain the situation to the person who takes care of ATM deposits for Patelco. She wasn’t very helpful since I was interrupting her from the current stack of checks she was going through. She was further frustrated because it was now August third and that had happened last month so she had to go find that binder. When she found the record of my check all she had was a photo copy. Which I looked at in horror thinking she may have destroyed the original. But she had copied it and sent it to their accounting department in the home office.

     She told me that since I wasn’t a member of that bank they didn’t know who I was so she had to send it in. Really? Even though I inserted my card and put in my pin number and you knew what bank and account the money went to and you found it to take it back out you didn’t know who I was??? She also gave me a lecture on signing my check since it was a government check. I never said I didn’t make a mistake I just wanted my check back so I could sign it.

      So when she finished her speech I said “Please tell me what I need to do to get this check back.” And she didn’t know, she told me that I needed to contact my bank. So I left and drove to my bank in the next town over and met Branch Manager Bryson. Young enough to be my son but a branch manger. He did everything he could while I was there and he could not crack the ridiculous bureaucracy of Patelco. What was he supposed to do? Patelco had the check somewhere in the bowels of their corporate office in San Francisco. I would have driven there to get it, but even Bryson couldn’t get any help. After two calls and being on hold he was connected to the person that was supposed to help but got a voice mail reporting they were at lunch.

     While we waited on hold. I had time to ask Bryson questions about the banking processes. Surely I’m not the only person to deposit an unsigned check. Doesn’t it happen if not daily, weekly? Well yes it does, and the banks don’t worry about it and just put them through. Nobody spends time checking and returning and putting people through this. So that was why nobody seemed to know how to fix it. Miss Lynellen at Patelco had decided not to make good on my check and send it off with the attitude that it wasn’t her problem, it was just a piece of paper to her. And I was just some number that didn’t belong to her bank. As of this writing this has not been fixed. My guess is Patelco never got back to Bryson because honestly they don’t care about getting my money back to me.

     Since it was a State of California check I can’t just call and say can you stop payment on the one that Patelco won’t give back and write another one. I’m lucky that through all of the State mess I even got checks. So here I am, Bryson has reversed all of my NSF charges and I’m only $200. in the negative. It’s only Monday.

 I spent seven years there. I started as a Table Setter, it was such a busy place that there were two or three of us whose job was to go behind the bus boys and set the tables they had just cleared. A job that I was perfect for since I was so painfully shy that I couldn’t speak to a stranger. One night after I’d been there only a month or so somebody called in sick and I was sent to the front to greet customers till the hostess came back to seat them. It was very difficult for me but I made it through the night. The hostess, Rosalie, liked me and wanted me to join the hostess schedule. So soon I was hostessing which I did until I turned twenty-one, the age I had to be to become a waitress. Nowadays waitress isn’t politically correct, but I’m not sure why. I now have to tell people I’m a server. Bus Boys have become Bussers. But Hostesses are still Hostesses, which seems way more politically incorrect than Waitress. Technically they aren’t just hosting the customers they are seating them. So why aren’t they called Seaters?

I’ve had many different job titles since I graduated from college and left the waitressing job. But now here I am falling back on those skills trying to earn enough to as a server to supplement my unemployment. And as I tinker endlessly with my resume job titles have become important. employers in this buyers market are only willing to talk to you if you meet every single demand on their list of requirments. Work ethic, personality, willingness to learn, not on the list. I think that employers are losing out by only looking at people who are already in the job they are hiring for somewhere else.  They may be hiring someone else’s problem employee or someone less grateful for the opportunity.

          My first trip to Paris was a day trip on the Eurostar from London. I wanted to see what Paris was like and if I would want to go back. This was during the time of “freedom fries” and I wasn’t happy with their politics. Now we look back and admire their foresight. We had picked up Vietnam when they left. I fell in love the minute a climbed up the steps from the metro station in front of the Arc de Triomphe, my first above ground view of Paris. I climbed to the top and got my first sight of the Eiffel tower. That trip we saw the Eiffel tower and Notre dame before taking the train back to London. Smitten I soon planned another trip with four days in Paris and three in London. This trip I saw the museums. The most impressive object at the Louvre to me was Winged Victory. I don’t understand the fascinations with Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa with the large impressive Winged Victory of Samothrace in the same building, guarding the entrance to the Denon wing. The summer after I finished chemotherapy I gave myself a two week trip back to Paris. I had been accepted to a one week writing conference and stayed an extra week pretending to be an expat. My first Sunday back in Paris was a free Sunday at the Louvre. So I joined the throngs at opening and made my way back to visit Winged Victory. I have a great photo of a crowd all moving in the same direction up the steps in front of her.

     Back before Cody’s books on Fourth Street in Berkeley closed, (a whole other topic) I came upon a small paperback with Winged Victory of Samothrace on the cover. It was a daytime photo all beiges showing the huge stone base at the bottom. I picked up the book based on the cover and the title “The Art of Living”, the modern interpretation of Epictetus, by Bay Area philosopher Sharon Lebell. You can judge a book by its cover in today’s age of marketing. Many a student of writing asks established writers about their cover. And many a writer has complained about the cover of their novel. And I’m worried about the covers of books I have yet to write. We all want them to look impressive on our friends and families bookshelves. But this was the perfect cover. Winged Victory does symbolize the freedom that can be had by disentangling our feelings from events and facing forward outstretched with a strong base beneath us.

     I’ve kept this book on my nightstand ever since, picking it up and reading a passage a random whenever I need inspiration or positive thoughts to push my own out of the way. The passage that I found this week that I kept going back to is titled, “Events are Impersonal and Indifferent.” The passage begins with “All situations unfold as they do regardless of how we feel about them. Our hopes and fears sway us, not the events themselves.” Further down it says “Events themselves are impersonal, though judicious people certainly can and should respond to them in beneficial ways.”  What is happening in the economy and the fact that I’m struggling to find work is not personal.  Even the dog eat dog, elbowing to get jobs, in the “on call” catering world can get me down when the professional smoozers and players get the jobs. But it’s not personal, and someday this will be behind me.