I'm Finally Whole Again

By Betsy Carter

After cancer, I felt like a collection of stitches, staples, and medical devices. But I put myself back together with love, exercise, and dog slobber.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer 14 years ago, the illness came on fast. One day there was a lump in my left breast; the next, doctors were throwing words at me like chemotherapy and reconstruction. I opted to get a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery at the same time. Suddenly, I had drainage tubes and stitches and staples that seemed to be holding everything precariously in place.

When you're faced with a life-threatening disease, worrying about your breast seems beside the point. But I liked my breast. It was a comfortable size and, frankly, had never given me anything but pleasure. Now it felt as if it had been inhabited by aliens.

Yet in a funny way, losing my breast turned out to be the least disturbing part of the whole cancer process. Losing my physical confidence, my sense of my body as my best buddy--that was much harder.

From the age of 4 until I turned 17, I spent every summer at camp. I know how to fence, shoot a rifle, ride a horse; I can play almost any sport. Activity makes me feel alive. It also keeps me a step ahead of the anxiety that is a part of my temperament, constantly nipping at my heels. But after cancer, nothing seemed to be where it used to be; nothing did what it used to do.

One month into chemo and desperate to outpace my nerves, I went to the local pool. I learned to swim when I was 2 and was accustomed to feeling powerful in the water, but that day I found myself out of breath after four laps. The surgeon had cut the nerves under my left arm to remove my lymph nodes, and lifting it to do the crawl was nearly impossible.

On the tennis court, I couldn't raise my arm high enough to toss a decent serve, either. Tennis is my favorite sport, and I'd been playing steadily for 15 years. But by the third game, I was so fatigued that I couldn't continue.

At this point I was bald and tired and discouraged about ever getting my sorry body back to where it had once been. And then help arrived in an improbable 10-pound bundle of white fur and pointy teeth--a Tibetan terrier puppy named Lucy.

My husband loves dogs. I'd never had an animal before, but after what I'd put him through, a puppy seemed a paltry way to pay him back. As it turned out, I fell hard. Suddenly I was spending hours crawling on the floor, singing to Lucy and talking nonsense.