The weight of cats and cancer
Believing in things I can't see. Plus, Does the cat weigh more than a gallon of milk?
Happy New Year, friend! Many end-of-year emails go unread so I appreciate that I made your nice list. You are a gift.
The weight of cats and cancer
My surgeon said I’m still allowed (post lumpectomy) to pick up my cat Nyx but not her brother, Hades.
Ok, that wasn’t exactly the doctor’s orders.
She told me to not to lift anything that weighed more than 10 pounds. Nyx is exactly 10 lbs while Hades weighs a hefty 15.2 lbs. What I didn’t anticipate was how heavy ordinary daily things are like pouring milk into my coffee or moving my basket of crafts or our cast-iron skillet collection1. I found myself wondering what weighs more: a gallon of milk or the cat?2
Heavy stuff
You know what else is heavy? Knowing you have cancer.
Too heavy? That’s why I started with cats.
There is lightness and wonder and curiosity here too.
Believing beyond what can be sensed
I’ve believed I had cancer since the doctor told me. It was the day before thanksgiving. I was willing to believe — i.e. I had faith — because I trust medical science.
A few weeks ago, I let them stick me with needles, drugs, radioactive fluid, and blue dye, then carve into my body to remove a lymph node and a piece of my breast “the size of a lemon3”. All because of a pattern of dots on a monitor that indicated that I had a deadly disease that I could not feel, see, or otherwise sense at all.
It’s been surreal. Even the day of surgery, it didn’t really feel like I had cancer. I believed but I didn’t know. Not that deep-in-my-bones kind of knowing.
That changed 2 days later.
Seeing is knowing
After 48 hours of compression, I removed the thick elastic binder around my chest.
Seeing is believing.
I finally saw my misshapen and bruised flesh. Purple, black, yellow and magenta bloomed on my skin. Someone had written letters on my arm with a fat-tipped marker, indicating on which side to operate. Black lint from the binder stuck to the glue sealing the two incisions. The shape of it all was… wrong. Missing a lemon?
I’ve never felt more certain that I “had cancer”.
That’s when the full weight of it hit me.
The weight of knowing
Knowing is somehow heavier than believing. The burden is very personal.
My sister had breast cancer a few years ago. Hers was different than mine. She had to go through chemo, getting physically weak and losing her hair. She knows cancer differently than I do. It’s perhaps heavier than mine.
My cousin is going through cancer treatment right now. Her own mother died of cancer 15+ years ago. She is a mother now. Her experience is heavier than mine.
People all around you are carrying the weight of their experiences. Sometimes it’s shared. Not always.
I think it’s a benefit to society that humans experience things differently. We are not equally burdened at the same time. When someone is weak or incapable, others are capable of helping. But it requires compassion and the willingness to believe unseeable truths.
Faith and the willingness to believe
Everyone has moments when they are called to believe in something they cannot see or understand. When it happens to you, will you be ready and willing? Do you have faith?
Faith is an unfamiliar topic for me. I didn’t grow up in a religious household. We didn’t talk about faith. I’m not sure we even talked about believing beyond Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. We were logical. Practical. I grew up needing things to make sense. I demanded answers, relentlessly curious4. If things still didn’t make sense, I’d get frustrated or dismiss them as nonsense.
Except that plenty of things don’t make sense.
What I’ve learned since childhood is that not everything has to make sense to me for it to be true. Alternatively, what is real for me may not be real for others.
I believe… No, scratch that. I know there’s more to this world than what humans can perceive. We cannot expect to know or understand everything that happens in the universe. There are invisible, imperceptible things far beyond our comprehension. But many people — myself included — need to see things in order to believe (or know) them. The change I felt after seeing my body after surgery was a profound reminder. I’m not sure if I can change my instincts around seeing and believing, but I can learn to pause. To remember: Things exist that I cannot see.
This year, I will believe in more invisible things.
New year, new perspective
Enough with the deep thoughts. I’m still Kate, lifting cats and milk.
Here’s to a new year, cancer-free and self-employed.
Thank you for reading. If this post made you feel something, please share it. I know there are people who’d appreciate what I have to say if they knew I existed.
Thanks for your support. Wishing you health, wealth, wisdom, and an extra serving of faith in this limitless and benevolent universe.
Love,
Kate
p.s. Regarding my health… I am recovering just fine. The pathology report was encouraging. The cancer hadn’t spread to the sentinel lymph node (cancer’s first stop on its path through the body). I will undergo radiation treatment. I don’t need chemotherapy (fingers crossed that remains true).
I know cast-iron is heavy. I just didn’t realize how often I lift multiple skillets at once.
A full gallon of milk weighs 8.6 lbs, which is lighter than an average house cat.
“The size of a lemon” was actually how the surgeon described it after the procedure was done.
Hence, the domain name of my Substack.