A Day at the Cancer Clinic

Yesterday morning early early I set off in a cloud of serenity for my 6 month contrôle at the René Huguenin/Insitut Curie cancer center in St. Cloud.  These follow-up appointments are very important - there are tests to see if the cancer has returned but it is also a chance for me and my oncologist (a goddess among women) to touch base and see how things are going.

My serenity was tested almost immediately.  I usually take the train from the Gare de Montreuil here in Versailles to St. Cloud.  It's a good 15 minute walk to that train station and for reasons that I will go into later I used www.ratp.fr to find an alternate route that would allow me to leave from the Porchefontaine train station which is only 2 minutes away.  It was not to be.  I arrived at my train station only to discover that all the trains to Paris had been cancelled due to technical problems on the line.  So I turned around and walked up to the other station where the trains were running normally.

I arrived in St. Cloud right on time and went in to register with the front desk and get the show on the road.

Walking into the center is like coming home.  It is a surprisingly cheerful place.  The walls are painted a bright yellow and the floors shine.  It has a particular smell which is not unpleasantly antiseptic and the waiting rooms are warm.  In a few short minutes, the chill in my hands and feet went away and after getting my fiche de circulation at the front desk I walked up to the first floor to get my blood work done.

Coming back downstairs for the consultation, I noticed a large group of women in the main hall.  They were dressed in long black skirts and had small caps on the back of their heads.  It had the feel of a cultural compromise - though they were dressed much more modestly than Frenchwomen they had on sheer black tights and black heels under those skirts.  The age range was from young adult to quite elderly and they were speaking a language I didn't recognize.  Just outside the clinic was a group of men also dressed mostly in black who were smoking and talking.  It was blatant segregation by sex - the women were inside and the men were outside and they did not mix.  But it was clear that they were together even though they occupied different spaces.  I watched the body language and I didn't detect any angst or fear so much as a kind of solidarity and concern.  Something was going on but it didn't have the air of a catastrophic event.

My consultation went very well.  The test results were not ready but there was a very thorough exam.  My oncologist has the most wonderful gentle hands and when she runs them over my shoulders and chest, it never feels invasive or uncomfortable.  Sometimes she even closes her eyes and just feels and at those moments I feel such peace - like a person and not a patient.  She also listens very well.  I've been having a lot of joint pain in my hips which could have any number of causes including age. It's not that I am writhing in pain - it's more like something that slows me down.  An almost constant ache which makes it hard to walk sometimes and saps my energy to get out and do even small things.  We had talked about this at our last visit and she remembered.  This, she said, was worthy of further investigation and she put me down for an MRI.  Just to be sure.

We also talked about life.  How was I doing?  Not to miss a moment to evangelize, I told her about some of the activist work I'm doing and why I'm doing it.  She was very interested and gave me her email address so that I can send her the published articles Lynne Swanson and I wrote.

In spite of not having the test results, I left her office around noon feeling pretty good.  Since my next appointment was much later in the afternoon, I walked down to one of my favorite churches for the 12:05 mass.

The church is called St. Cloadald (St. Cloud).  Born in 522, he was the son of a king and renounced the throne in order to become a monk and later a priest.  There has been a church or a chapel on this site since 560, they say, but it wasn't until Queen Marie-Antoinette that it was decided to build a church (not a chapel) there.  The stones were laid, some of the walls raised and then came the Revolution.   Work stopped until Napoleon II restarted it and the present church was finished and consecrated in 1878.

I've visited many times but each walk through yields something new.  There is a fresco at the entrance which asks that we pray for Marie Antoinette.  At the back of the church is the chapel where the relics of St. Cloud were regathered after the revolution.  One side of the chapel is a fresco that tells the story of St. Cloud and the other side are a few words about a visit from the bishop of St. Cloud, Minnesota in  the US in 1922.  Going farther into the church, there is a statue of Jean d'Arc and there are always candles burning there.  At the very back, to the left of the altar is a chapel to Mary and almost always a few people praying regardless of the hour.

The Mass itself is always wonderful.  Go to Mass anywhere in the world and it's always the same ritual in the local language or Latin.  There are, however, small variations according to the inclinations of the local priest and parish.  The prelude to this Mass is a singing of the Psalms.  The Mass itself is a mix of French, Latin and Greek - mostly sung which is not always the case in all Catholic churches.  This linguistic mix is, from my experience, quite common in the French church.  For example, we almost always use the Greek for the Penitential Rite:

Κύριε ελέησον Kyrie eléison (Seigneur, prends pitié, Lord, have mercy)

Χριστε ελέησον Christe eléison (Christ, prends pitié, Christ, have mercy)

Κύριε ελέησον Kyrie eléison (Seigneur, prends pitié, Lord, have mercy)

And the Latin for the Gloria, the Sanctus and the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei):

Agnus Dei
qui tollis peccata mundi
miserere nobis...

The rest is in standard modern French which, honestly, I find less elegant than the English used in anglophone Masses.  "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...."

No Catholic parish anywhere in the world is required to use the Latin/Greek but I like the ones that do. If a community can be said to unite the living, the dead and the yet to be born then using the same words in the same language as the generations before is one way to make the past live in the present.

After Mass I picked up a sandwich at the local bakery and went back to the clinic to wait.  Two hours later I was ushered into yet another consultation room for a meeting with the plasticien (plastic surgeon).  This visit was not nearly as rewarding as the time I spent with my oncologist.  

What I retained from my chat with the surgeon was that, yes, I could have reconstruction but the only real option is implants - I simply don't have enough flesh on my tummy and my back to do otherwise. Concerning the implants, I must choose between silicon or another kind and the surgeon gave a brief overview of the pros and cons not one word of which penetrated my tired brain.

After that I was given the bad news which is that I am now on a waiting list and the earliest available appointment is one year from now with the surgery to be done 6-12 months after that.  That means an 18 month to 2 year wait.

I left her office with a pile of paper to read and a sense of discouragement. As I walked out of the clinic in a deep depression I discovered the reason for that large group of migrants I saw earlier.  A woman, about my age, with a walker and a bandage on her shoulder being helped out of the clinic and placed gently in the back seat of a waiting sedan.

At that moment I did not feel like a "fortunate" migrant.  I cursed my own culture which is not one that places a lot of value on solidarity at home or abroad.  One that is radically individualistic and places a premium on independence and not needing or asking for help from others. There were over 40 people at the clinic just sitting there and talking - all for one lone woman.   Not fair, I know, to make comparisons but in that moment I was painfully conscious that I was tired, hungry, bewildered, and alone.

When I finally made it home an hour later the first order of business was food and the second was rest.  That made things brighter.   And then my mother-in-law called from Amiens to make sure I was alright.  That made things even better.  By the time my husband arrived at about 9:00, the world was right once again.

It was quite the day.