You Can Call Me Poison Pussy. (But please don't.)
'Your pussy might poison people' was never a plot point in those Cancer Girl movies.
Love, Meg
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I have breast cancer
and other sentences I never wanted to write.
It's baby's first ambulance ride
and she's lost her shirt.
One way to understand cancer is through the lens of context collapse. Cancer cells metastasize through self-referential feedback. My cancer treatments are an effort to restore cellular context.
The problem I keep running into is that my restoration requires me to cut away lots of the things I’ve used to contextualize myself - my breasts, my curly hair, my ability to think clearly.
God, I can’t even have unprotected sex.
Did you know that chemo effectively turns your body into a gentle sort of biohazard? There just aren’t enough studies about how long drugs stay in vaginal fluids during dose-dense chemo regimens! So it’s best to use your preferred barrier method for the duration of treatment. For the next six months, you can call me Poison Pussy. (I'd honestly prefer you didn't call me that? If it's all the same to you.)
I can’t stop thinking about those godawful “Girl gets Cancer, Girl Experiences Sexual Awakening” movies. I loved those when I was a kid, watching them over and over again when I stayed home sick or slept over at friends’ houses. I can’t remember “your pussy might poison people” being a plot point in any of them.
I get that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge deal to have to use my “preferred barrier method” for a little while? But also have you seen how dental dams work? One blog described them as throw blankets for your vulva. And listen, I am a fan of safe sex! I know that if you dam it, you can still come! (See what I did there?) But I am a 40 year old woman with one long-term, very vasectomied sex partner. One of the many benefits of that situation is I don’t have to put throw blankets on my vulva!
A woman who has just had her tits cut off should get to have mind-blowing unbarrier'd sex! You know! If she wants! And I do want. I know it would help me feel more like myself, instead of how I feel now - like an initiate laid bare for a god of entropy.
It’s not all out of my hands. (I want to insert a sex joke here, but I am at the cancer clinic getting topped up on fluids and I am simply not hydrated enough to think of the joke….yet.)
There are ways I am trying to impose context. I’ll be writing here to remind myself of what I am at a molecular level - a person who gets to be alive right now. (Who I am seems too much to ask of myself or a god of entropy right now.) Context isn’t linear, so my writing won’t be either. I’ll mostly be writing about what I see out of the corner of my eye. It won't all be about cancer, but it will all be written by a woman with cancer. (That woman is me.)
When you read my writing, you’re taking the time to witness me. Thank you. We do what we can for each other, don’t we? And that’s enough. It has to be.
Message Me
You are all so generous. So many of you have reached out to find out how you can help me. I want to reach right back and hug each of you. I am working my way through my first cycle of chemo. It's been a lot! And I am having a hard time sorting through everything. So I've made a contact form!
My sister, Jaimie, is going to help me manage messages. She will make sure I read everything! I will try to respond to every message. But sometimes I am too ill to type or even think clearly.
If your message requires a response, please select requires response in the message type menu. I will do my best to get back to you! If I can't, Jaimie - who is incredibly organized! - will get back to you!
