Moving on from figs to wigs

Warning: The following entry contains adult language and adult themes. It may not be suitable for young audiences.

"Fuck! Can't we just go to a bar and drink?"

MM turned and smirked at me, but didn't respond.

I was thinking about how when we were in pharmacy school, MM and I would drink after a bad day, bad week or bad test. MM and I had a running joke that we knew we were sufficiently drunk when we couldn't feel our teeth. We would sit at the bar, turn to each other and go, "Look!" Knocking on our teeth with our fist, we'd state, "I can't feel my teeth." That was the sign of a good evening.

Unfortunately, we weren't having a bad day. We had just come from one of those 'cancer' shops. You know the one . . . Tons of shirts and buttons stating, 'Cancer Sucks' or 'Bald is Better.' A shop that has a variety of head scarves and wigs. We were in there because MM starts chemo in three weeks. Mid-February, MM was diagnosed with uterine cancer. After a seven hour surgery that removed her female organs, a shitload of tumors and portions of her colon, she was stapled together and told that her first round of chemo would resume in five weeks. Great.

Needless to say, our wig shopping trip did not go well. Granted, we had a very nice sale associate, but my friend, MM, doesn't do well with the velveteen glove approach. She is more of the hard-line, tell-it-like-it-is, this-is-how-it's-gonna-be woman. I guess it didn't help that there was another woman in there, our age, who was having her head shaved and wig fitted because she was starting chemo in a couple of weeks.

Up until the wig shopping, MM's cancer was just a six letter word and a huge ass incision. In some parallel dimension, the visual of her losing her hair made the cancer real. The first wig MM tried on was hysterical because neither of us knew how to put the damn thing on. The second time was still funny, but by the third, we both felt it. 'It' was the fact that we shouldn't be here. MM and I half-heartedly looked at the book of wig styles, but by then, most of my energy was spent keeping the tears back.

We beat a hasty retreat to the car, at which point I said, "Fuck! Can't we just go to a bar and drink?"

Then, her anger spewed forth. "I don't need everyone looking at me with pity or sympathy. Don't feel sorry for me. If you want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for my kids."

I pondered this outburst for a moment and said, "OK. So, what you want me to say is, 'Yo Bee-yach! If you're gonna puke, do it out the window.'"

MM laughed and nodded her head. It was then that I realized I couldn't do it. I couldn't hold back any more. As the tears start to well up in my eyes, MM looks over, huffs and said, "Oh God. Not you too?" With the tissue jammed half way into my eye sockets, she went on to explain, "You know you can't push those things out the back of your head, right?"

"Yeah. Right. But it helps some," I explain.

"Am I your first cancer friend?"

I sigh. "Yes. You're popping my cancer friend cherry."

MM and I laugh as we pull into the CostCo parking lot. "Come on," I said. "We gotta get some water if we're going to lose all this fluid crying."

With that, we hopped out of the car and tried to be 'normal.'

Love you MM.