Protocols in Here Be Dust

The bank teller asked me, “Where’s your camera?” Thus began my most recent cancer spiel.

For almost a decade I wore my camera everywhere, ready for a photo op. It could be the female cattle egret in breeding coloration, moseying around my supermarket’s parking lot:

It could be a pair of ibises nonchalantly crossing the street:

Or a Southern Emerald Moth relaxing on the post office window:

The bank staff is used to seeing me with my camera case strapped across my chest. In 2006 one teller asked me if I could identify “a big green bug on the yellow pole” at the drive-through. Before I even saw it I said, “It’s probably a katydid.” Down here katydids are big green bugs par excellence:

This is a Giant Katydid, Stilpnochlora couloniana. It’s about three inches long. The species ranges throughout Florida.

So, what does this have to do with cancer?

I told the teller my camera was in the car and explained, without going into detail, that I had not worn it during cancer treatment. (My main reason for not wearing it these days is that the strap would rub against my chemo port and especially the line that goes into my jugular vein. On occasion I wear my camera case off my shoulder, but I juggle enough around so that I vastly prefer strapping it across my chest.)

For a couple of minutes the teller and I engaged in slightly awkward conversation because cancer still has a taboo ring to it. She asked me how I felt. (Generally fine, I said, even though I’m not back to pre-treatment levels.) I told her I was happy to have a “hair day” and mentioned that I had been in and out of the bank in my chemo cap last year. She remembered seeing me in the cap.

“You don’t know if you should say anything,” she said.

I nodded. “Used to be nobody talked about cancer at all. I’m very open about mine.”

The temperature had reached the 80s and I wore a tee. No sleeves hid the medical alert bands on my wrists. The left band details lymphedema risk (no BP, IV, needles); the right band proclaims my penicillin allergy.

I don’t blab about cancer, but neither do I avoid it. The practical issues of cancer treatment are the only reason I don’t carry my camera like an added appendage. Asking me where my camera was had opened up that conversation.

The nature of the topic makes it awkward by default, and it’s a case where the best thing to do is to follow the speaker’s lead. I hoped to convey the message that I’m comfortable talking about cancer. In this case I held it to within the context of why I didn’t have my camera with me and basically left it at that.

I can identify with the teller’s uncertainty, because each person is different. I had worn my chemo cap to the post office for the first time very shortly after I had lost my hair. The postal worker, used to seeing me bare-headed, had asked me if I was wearing the cap for fashion reasons.

I grinned and told her that I was about to have my second chemo infusion.

She’s been there. For months she had worn a turban to work. I had not said anything then, afraid of being intrusive or of guessing wrong. I thought her question to me had been a nice ice-breaker, a kind of “I know you know I know.”

Speaking of hair, I now know what this “chemo curl” business is about:

My hair has been wavy, but never like this. Chemo curls tend to grow out, so I assume this fuller-bodied look is temporary; but who knows? As M put it, “It’s like looking at someone else.” On the one hand it’s a treat; on the other hand it’s a little weird. Then again, weird is the story of my life, so why stop now?

My meditation doodles continue. Tinkerlab is re-running its Sketchbook Challenge from last April, so I’ve been playing with the same prompts that I had first used during the month between my lumpectomy and my start on chemo. So far, I’ve been using Art Rage exclusively.

Here is one of my pieces from the end of March. Prompt: “Change”:

I made my moon phase shots into a sticker sheet. The “planet” in the foreground is made from a stencil that uses part of a glass brick sequence. The glass bricks are at a local café where my partner and I had eaten nine days after my lumpectomy.

This next piece, from the April challenge, is done to the prompt “Non-Dominant Hand”:

Here is how I had responded to that prompt last year:

More art pieces from the challenge are here.