Side Trip to Cape Fear

I'm weeping on a toilet seat at a rest stop outside of Lafayetteville, North Carolina.
The last time I sobbed in a multistall bathroom was about 15 years ago. I had spent three hours editing 20 years pages of mind-numbing crafts and recipe instructions for Family Circle magazine, painstakingly building fractions, cutting widows and realigning diagrams. With my last keystroke, I pushed myself away from my desk in triumph...and kicked out the power plug. Lost everything.
I forgot to hit "SAVE."
Today I have pulled over on our 1,200-mile journey from PA to FLA because M is angry with the GPS. He is trying to find Cape Fear, after I suggested we stop there for dinner. The irony amused me: why not face your fears in Cape Fear? M is trying to please me while he wrestles with the Gamin, re-enacting his lifelong adversorial relationship with mechanical objects. His frustration, which includes swearing, is summoning up my inner DeNiro. I hear Bobby D's mockable Southern accent "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

I pull over at the rest stop, pass 12 vending machines that contain nothing I want or need, dive into the first stall and burst into tears.
When I come back out to the car, I say, "So if I die, how are you going to find your way around? Will you be lost forever? Chill OUT." I take over the GPS. Cape Fear is too far away. It will take us out of our way. Stay on track for Savannah.
Hit "SAVE."

Bad Luck and Jersey Shore

Thanks to a mitzvah from someone whom I've never met, I get an appointment this afternoon with the top gynecological oncologist at the Carol G. Simon Center in Morristown. The Dr. S is refreshingly blunt, saying more or less, despite the clues that this is early stage cancer, these Snooki cells are out to get me. When I ask him what might cause them--hereditary, diet, hormones, reality TV--he said, "Bad luck." My middle name. So I can't blame my parents, Cape Cod potato chips, menopause or "Jersey Shore." Though I'm still going with "Jersey Shore," because, fuck, The Situation and Snooki are a cancer on my home state and they aren't even FROM my home state. Governor Christie, get your mitts out of the arts budget and toss that puttana and cazzone outta there!
Dr. S. says I am taking this surprisingly well. At that moment, all I care about is getting this taken car of without ruining my mother's 80th birthday. Then he says, "From now on, you are a cancer patient. Other people have heartburn, they take an antacid. You come here to see if it's something else."
Daughter, wife, sister, writer, friend poker player, fisherperson, cancer patient. I need new business cards.

Summer with Snooki

At approximately 11:35 a.m., Tuesday, June 21, the first day of summer 2011, I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Punchline: I am spectacularly healthy otherwise. It is the most common women's cancer and has a very high cure rate, and mine seems to have been caught early. What seems to be causing the long faces on my gynecologists is that my cancer cells are what they call Grade 3--very aggressive aberrations that can show up anywhere. Ironic, considering that my own aggression level generally hovers between stoned (Willie Nelson) and comatose (the late Terry Schiavo, buon'anima).
After the diagnosis, I exchanged a phone car charger at Staples, phoned around frantically for a consultation with gynecological oncologist and went to my monthly poker game in Manhattan. Won 25 cents.