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by joan salo

25 & Up

by SARAH WAMBOLD

I am going to be 29 next month. I’m don’t have any big feelings about this birthday. I think more about the days leading up to it, these next 20 or so days. The days between August 22 and September 13 are like a drop off the edge of a cliff; a distorted period of panicked, can’t-turn-back-now feelings. It's completely different at the bottom.

This time gap marks the 25th anniversary of my diagnosis. I was four when it arrived. I came back from a summer vacation on Lake Michigan with an uncontrollable nosebleed and no energy. A second opinion determined it was Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia and I started taking Rosy Periwinkle the next day. I turned five four weeks later. When I turned seven, I finished treatment.

I’m reluctant to call myself a cancer survivor. I don’t remember much about my life before I had cancer; I felt like I came alive right when I got sick and during treatment came to understand that this is what life was all about. You live life in between periods of feeling sick and going to see the doctor. Once that sick period was over for me, I started to become aware that people expected me to wear this experience on my sleeve, contribute my picture or my story to causes, or because I didn’t do any of those things, they assume I don’t remember any of what happened.

The thing I’ve come to realize is that I’m actually pretty shy and when you get cancer as a kid you don’t get the chance to be shy. You walk around bald, fat and if you were me, with a large ribbon tied around your head.  As a kid with cancer you get all the attention and fun every kid deserves. The pediatric oncology ward is full of cool art and toys. I watched E.T. everyday. There was so much light in there I had to wear my 101 Dalmatian sunglasses during chemo.  Many of the other kids I met became nightly news stories and went to Disney World. My mom told me I wasn’t sick enough for all that, but I don’t know what she was talking about. I could hardly eat the cake at my 6th birthday party without throwing up.

My mom is the real survivor. So is my dad. Do you know what they do to parents in the pediatric oncology ward? They make them crouch down in front of their kid so we can pull fistfuls of their hair and scream until we can’t breathe while a doctor taps our spine with a needle for bone marrow. I once kicked my mom in the face after all my veins collapsed and they had to resort to putting an IV in my foot. My parents send me gifts every year during this time gap, letting me know how happy they are. If you really want the emotional, triumphant survivor story, ask them.

Their story is tough and completely heartfelt and I can hardly write about it without breaking down.

by joan salo

I used to stay up all night when I was a kid, lying on my floor thinking about how some people die from cancer (my uncle, my neighbor, my friend’s mom) and some people don’t (my grandpa, me). My heart would beat almost out of my chest until I closed my eyes and imagined I was vibrating out into the universe like a dying star whose fast fading light we still see on earth. Those feelings don’t go away.

My friend came to visit me last weekend and we were reminiscing about the clubs in our old neighborhood that had signs that said Must Be 25 & Up. We were too young at the time to go inside. Why 25? What did you know at 25 and not at 24?

Sentimentally, my time is up. I would like to thank the doctors and nurses who kept me in the game. I wish I knew the people who took part in the trial drugs that allowed for my life to go on. It must be that if you make it to 25 & up you sometimes want to keep going, even though you don’t know why. The cliffs get higher. The bottom gets closer, faster. You find yourself down there again, living it up.

Sarah Wambold is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Austin. You can find her twitter here. She last wrote in these pages about the decay. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

Paintings by Joan Salo.

photo by brewcitysafari

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by joan salo