So I’ll keep on tryin’ to sing
But please, just don’t ask me how.
“Cycles,” 1968; written by Gayle Caldwell, sung by Frank Sinatra

My friend Jenny once described a panic attack to me: the chest pains, twitchy skin, throbbing temples, all wrapped up in a Dostoyevskyan-sized sense of dread. “It happened just once, but I’ll never have another,” she said. “How do you know?” I asked.

“It’s a downward spiral thing,” she said. “You start thinking, ‘Ohmigod, am I dying?’ – which makes you so scared, your adrenaline begins racing. That only feeds more panic into you. But, once I said, ‘Screw this. I’m not really dying,’ it subsided.”

“But what if you really were dying?”

“Well,” she said, “then I’d be dead, and at least the damn panic attack would stop.”

“Mmm, good point. But what if your panic was over someone else?”

Jenny’s a tough gal, but she’s not that tough. She was probably thinking about her kids when she replied, “Thanks a lot, Mike. I thought I had it all figured out.”

No one has it all figured out, Jenny.

I was driving by David’s Bridal, fast in the fast lane on Route 4 West one sunny March day, when Ann called to tell me she had breast cancer. The results of her mammogram were explained to her bluntly and without ceremony by her physician at Murray Hill Radiology. This is what you have, and this is what we want you to do. They immediately contacted a surgeon, Dr. Daniel Roses of NYU, and within 72 hours, my brother Frank had his oncologist on board: Dr. James Orsini of Clara Maas Hospital. On July 7, immediately after Dr. Roses performed the surgery, Dr. Mihye Choi began the preliminaries of her very thorough reconstruction.

If I went a little fast there, I apologize, but I wanted to give you a sense of the breathless movement one experiences on this roller-coaster ride. Our anecdotes could fill a book: the flowers, prayers and cards, all the much-welcomed meals delivered during the dark days of chemo and post-surgery. But they’re not much different from the uplifting stories you’d find in O, The Oprah Magazine. Except, they’re ours. One new thing: I probably know more about breast cancer now than most women do. I also know more about Ann.

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “instinct” as “a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason.” Holding your breath underwater, for instance, is not instinctive, because you are consciously doing so. Exhaling, however, is, because you have no choice on the matter, just as Ann had no choice. When circumstances called for her to be positive, she did so by instinct, not by design.

Her inherent good providence – some would say karma – meant she did not have to go down to the basement to find her hope, dust it off, try it on. Admittedly, there were the obvious initial hauntings that put hope to work on overtime. Is it too late? Has it spread? Is surgery a fait accompli? These outcomes were out of Ann’s control, but once the problem was precisely defined, she went on automatic pilot. Actually, that’s not fair. That infers no struggle. She did struggle, but quickly took grasp of her illness, putting things in emotional order – including the very private splendor and humor we share as husband and wife. “We are not,” I told a friend recently, “the kind of people who sit around the kitchen table saying, ‘Woe is me.’” Laughter is always on the menu. 

Beyond that, I’ve no new eloquence to add to the topic of breast cancer. Perhaps Ann can.

Ann: At one of my follow-up visits to Dr. Choi, I told her that mine was a good life, and I wanted it back. She reminded me that my surgery was traumatic – both physically and mentally. Physically, I was cancer-free now, and recovering. Emotionally, I had detached from my breasts and all their significance, from training bra to nursing and beyond.

Before leaving, I told Dr. Choi, “I want this cancer to just be a bump in the road.”

She replied, “You mean two bumps.”

Then we laughed.

Today, Ann will tell you, it’s all good. Such things, she’ll say instinctively.

M.C. Martino can be reached by e-mailing editor@201.net.