Herceptin Part II: HERs

A disclaimer: No breast cancer patient has ever had it easier or better than I am having it. I am surrounded by love and support and help. All of you. All of my neighbors. Everyone in my life is our corner. The sheer wealth of it is almost an embarassment.

It's a disclaimer because I'm about to start making fun of the Herceptin literature. I can imagine instances when women are not wealthy is this way that I am wealthy, and that maybe this kind of literature is actually a (needed) help for them. That makes me sad, of course, that some women might claim as a main source of support the company that manufacturers their medicine.

But it still needs to be made fun of. This is because there's an unseemly side to cancer. The business side. The marketing that goes with it. Money gets made as lives get saved, so I don't begrudge them. I guess all I can do is mock them.

To whit:

I was given a Herceptin care package of literature, all contained in a pink over the shoulder backpack. It bears the Herceptin logo--the sihloette of a naked woman shooting an arrow. She has a breast. I admit this pisses me off.

She's on this page: Genentech: Access Solutions

Genentech is the company that manufacturers Herceptin. And, I suspect, who discovered the HER2 protein and named it. How can I be sure? Because its real name is Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2. Which, conveniently, includes the letters H E and R and lo!

We now have Herceptin.

And the books that explain it are called HER Strenth and HER Hope. So perfect! And they both have women on the covers who are wearing white capris and pink, knit tops, posed in a Yoga stance of some kind and they both have big breasts. Have you no editors, Genentech???

On one piece of literature is this unattributed quote:

"Divide your day into moments, then live each moment as if it were one full life."

Huh.

So. Like the moment that started today at 8 AM as I was still sleeping when the doorbell rang and I thought, "Who could be here this early?" and Gemma yelled upstairs, "It's Miss Chris!" and I thought, "Why on earth is Chris here?" and THEN thought, "Protein day!"

I had completely forgotten.

What were the kids doing? I checked. They'd put a movie on for themselves and gotten breakfast, which, this morning, was Cheetos.

I got dressed in seconds. Didn't have to do my hair.

Chris dressed Joshua and changed his diaper. I poured them milk because milk rounds out Cheetos as a balanced meal, right? Stephanie arrived to babysit them. I grabbed water and a granola bar before heading out with Chris to the Chemo barn.

Is that the moment I should live as though it were one full life?

Or how about the moment when I put Thomas the Tank Engine underpants on Joshua and told him it was time to use the potty like a big boy? He seemed up for it.

I led him to the potty chair, showed him how the underpants come down, made him sit. And then realized I'd spent special little time and energy considering the mechanics of male urination. I had planned--I guess--on having him sit on the potty and point it down.

Once he was sitting on that little chair, his chubby thighs were squished together and his belly rounded out and down and there would be no pointing anywhere but out. He looked decidedly uncomfortable.

But this is one full life, dammit, and we're not going to end it without a real effort. So I had him stand, started talking up how Daddy does his business, and brought him to the toilet. He's not tall enough to whiz into a toilet.

I brought a plastic step stool over, had him stand on it and. . .there! That should do it! Have at it, son!

He looked at me with he eyebrows raised and forehead furrowed. And he didn't whiz.

To date, he's neither whizzed nor pooped in any place that meets with our sewar pipes. Are these the moments I'm supposed to live as one full life?

The point is, what qualifies Genentech to be the arbiter of this "wisdom"? What do they know about it? And what's more, what do they even care about it?

Genentech, if you cared about how I'm coping with breast cancer, you'd have saved the 10 bucks you invested in my backpack and all the literature, and have given me a gift card to Starbucks instead.

So you can take your little archer girl, and your little pink backpack, and your little yoga models and wrap them all into a little moment, lived as one full life, where I tell you that HER hope and HER strength adds up to a lot of HER bullshit.