Better Than Ever!

Dr. Inappropriate and the Breasts of a 30-Year-Old

The Albuquerque surgeon’s office dripped with all the worst breast cancer décor: tiki lounge streamers, ribbons, and a scroll: “You became a survivor the day you were diagnosed.”

There were flamingo-shaped paper dolls, recruiting flyers for knitters who might want to knit “prosthetic knockers,” and a homemade poster which read, bafflingly, “Women are like angels. Even when you break our wings, we fly!”

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Story by Ariel Gore, an excerpt from “Rehearsals for Dying.”

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Like always, the staff warned us to arrive early, even though we all know the surgeon arrives late.

The nurse’s aide said, “Okay, Dee-ana. Still not Jewish? Still no family history?”

Deena said, “Still Jewish. Still have a family history.” She glanced at me and winked, but these questions got less funny every time we heard them.

We waited.

Another medical assistant came in, a white lady with long gray braids. She carried a pink yoga mat. Were we going to exercise together? A gold lotus pendant gleamed from her chest. She made doe-eyes at us across the room.

“How are you?” she said. Three times.

Finally the surgeon came in, big tits and fake eyelashes. She sat down and wheeled her little stool right up to Deena, waaaaay too close.

I bit my lip hard because I wanted to give the surgeon a chance, but the sign on the wall about broken wings had been that chance, now that I thought about it.

“I have to examine you,” she insisted, staring Deena down.

Deena ran her fingers through her crew cut, did as she was told, opened her flannel shirt, and lifted her sports bra.

The doctor held each of Deena’s breasts in her manicured hands, looked Deena in the eye, and she said, “Diana, I can give you the breasts of a thirty-year-old. Just say the word. Some people think of this diagnosis as a blessing.”

Deena mouthed to me: “Mack daddy.”

Let’s call this surgeon, Dr. Inappropriate.

I looked at the yoga medical asssistant, as if surely her mouth would be open, aghast. But I guess she was used to this doctor’s sales pitch.

Dr. Inappropriate narrowed her eyes, then glanced at me like she was putting two and two together. “Or, maybe you’d like to be flat chested?”

I laser-glared into the doctor’s brain, imploring her to back off.

Dr. Inappropriate didn’t catch my psychic communication. She said, “You’ll be better than ever, Miss Chavez!”

That’s when Deena fastened her eyes on me with a look I interpreted as a plea: I hope you’re writing this down— and I couldn’t help it. I let out my held breath and started laughing.

Deena busted up, too, and she looked up at Dr. Inappropriate’s giant eyelashes, and she looked at Yoga Jones, and she looked at the recruiting flyer for knitters who could knit knockers.

Deena was laughing when she said, “I don’t know, Doc. I’m thinking we’d rather go to Hawaii and smoke joints on the beach until the end.”

I guess we were laughing too hard.

Dr. Inappropriate blanched. She scooted back.

Yoga Jones started to stand, then sat back down.

Dr. Inappropriate said, “Diana, this diagnosis is not a death sentence.”

The yoga lady shot me a hard glare. “Nor is it a laughing matter.”

I don’t know what happened next.

It was like a spell.

Or a spell broken.

The lights flickered, and the window melted, and it was as if we were already ghosts.

I bet if you’d been there, you’d have seen it too: We were flying. We lifted up out of the office and out of the medical center. Up into the blue, blue New Mexico sky. We were laughing and flying.

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L to R: Deana at the Chemo shop, cover of her first book, D, Ariel, and Susie’s last Sunday brunch, family outing with the beautiful kids, “let’s boil this big boy,” Deena’s celeb chef photo. Finally, the card D and A sent my spouse and I when we got married. THE BEST, I tell you.

Susie’s Postscript:

Ariel Gore met Deena Chafetz, sure enough, while Ariel was caring for her mother’s end stage lung cancer in Santa Fe. Deena was strong as an ox back then.

Ariel wrote about their meeting, their falling in love, in her memoir, “The End of Eve.”

I remember writing her back, saying, “Whoa, best gf ever, A. I can’t wait to meet her.”

Deena was old school. She had the integrity of salt, the heart of a lion. She’d already survived basic cancer once.

Deena was a “celebrity chef” in her heyday, beloved by her peers in Santa Fe, as well as everywhere she traveled to set up a new kitchen. When I first learned late in the game about the legacy of Anthony Bourdain, I compared him to HER.

They all lived together in the heart of Santa Fe with Ariel’s kids, good friends, and ex/co-parent Maria down the street. Complicated but flawless.

Deena first started composing wry attacks on the cancer empire on her Facebook feed, when she got her MBS diagnosis. They were the highlight of my day. That’s really how we became friends, the two of us separate from Ariel.

Here’s the thing: At any given moment, for my generation, one has between 1-5 loved ones in treatment or hospice. Your life as a primary caregiver is in its flower, and it will remain that way until you’re on the other side of the bed.

Deana and Ariel decided to write a book together about her MBC, to be clear-eyed observers til the end.

But of course, the “end” came before the book’s last page.

A couple months after her death, Ariel asked me to help her edit the last draft of “Rehearsals Before Dying.” —To spend that winter editing.

To say her request was an honor, is hardly to say enough. It was too soon since her death, of course. I was scared shitless. And it was exactly on time for grieving. We kept looking up from the drafts, expecting her to walk in the room. Expecting that card to turn up.

When you love a lot of people, far and wide, and they love you— end-of-life becomes a full-time gig as you grow old.

And it’s hard. The American way of death is a nightmare. No one ever tells you, you don’t have to do a damn thing. Prognoses are soft-pedaled like butter. The dangling “exceptions to the rule” are used like bait. You’re bankrupted, of course. The treatments are painful, martyr-level pain.

All the while, you just want to have one more good meal on the table, one more time to make love, one more day that you don’t have to “count.” I’m on the side of those days, unmediated by the Big C Industry. I miss Deena. I love Ariel. And it’s a good day to write about dying.

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Books by Ariel Gore on “Last Days.” The best:

Rehearsals for Dying: Digressions on Love and Cancer

Kittens, Blunts, and MBS

The End of Eve

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