The Cancer Journals

Lorde starts this chapter with a series of journal entries from March to December 1978. In October, Lorde writes about the pain she feels and how she tears up, though she’s not sure what she’s sad about—her lost breast or herself? Maybe she is wondering how she can meet this personal tragedy with grace. What she does know is that she’s tired. She wants to feel like herself again. Part of her thinks it’s all a dream and that she’ll soon wake up.

In an entry written the following month she transcribes a short dialogue with an unnamed woman. The woman asks how she spends her time. Reading, mostly, Lorde answers. This isn’t true. Lorde cannot tell the woman that she usually stares at blank walls. One day, when she discovered that she had the energy and desire to masturbate, she did this for hours. The pleasure was “a welcome relief to the long coldness” (23).

When Lorde shifts back to the essay form, she tells the reader that she must do her work alone. For months, she has wanted to write a piece about cancer and how it has affected her life and consciousness “as a woman, a Black lesbian feminist mother lover poet” (24). She knows that women are not usually allowed to express what they need, how they feel, or what their lives mean.

Lorde recounts the pain of her mastectomy which was “at least as sharp as the pain of separating from [her] mother” (24). However, having experienced that pain once before, she knows that she can endure it again. A year earlier, she had been told that there was an 80 percent chance that she had breast cancer, though her first biopsy was negative. Still, the possibility of having cancer resulted in a confrontation with her mortality. The fear that she overcame in the three weeks since her biopsy made her more determined to speak, while feeling freer to do so. She also felt that she could finally enjoy her life on her own terms. Accepting death empowered Lorde and gave her new energies.

In September 1978, Lorde returned to the hospital for a second breast biopsy. When feeling this second lump, Lorde was unfazed, having been through the process before. However, this time, the lump was malignant. She awakened in the recovery room feeling colder than she had ever felt in her life. She was horrified and in pain. She wanted to leave the room and warm herself. She screamed and complained about the cold and asked for extra blankets, but none came. The nurses became annoyed.

Frances arrived at her door “like a great sunflower” (25). When Lorde woke again from anesthesia, Frances took Lorde’s hand in her own and bent her face over Lorde’s. Lorde asks Frances if the lump is malignant, and Frances confirms that it is. Lorde grapples with her diagnosis. She wonders what she will do and if there are any other women like her who have been in this situation. She cannot think of anyone. She realizes that she’s on her own.

Lorde decided that she would have surgery if it were necessary. She had wanted “a two-stage operation […] separating the biopsy from the mastectomy” (26). Lorde revisited the decision while spending much of her time reading. Her women friends—including Blanche Cook, Clare Coss, Adrienne Rich, and Michelle Cliff—arrived at Beth Israel Hospital to visit Lorde. Lorde’s daughter, Beth, cried when Lorde explained that she would have a mastectomy, revealing her sentimental attachment to her mother’s breasts. Adrienne comforted Beth and explained how their experiences were different. Adrienne, Blanche, and Clare managed various errands for Lorde and Frances, in addition to keeping their children company. Lorde’s sister Helen made chicken soup and dumplings, while another friend, Bernice, gathered information about those who offered alternative treatments for cancer. During the three days between the biopsy and the mastectomy, many good wishes poured in by door, mail, and telephone.

Lorde considered alternatives to standard medicine, including changes to her diet and vitamin therapy. She remained in a state of disbelief about her condition. She regarded the problem intellectually, wondering what the wisest approach would be to “a diagnosis of breast cancer and a history of cystic mastitis” (27). In other instances, Lorde felt “overwhelmed by pain and fury,” and inadequate in response to the choices she had to make (28).

On Wednesday, Lorde told Frances that she would have a mastectomy. Frances became teary. She later told Lorde that she had been afraid that Lorde would refuse to have surgery and had prepared herself for the possibility of Lorde choosing an alternative treatment. She felt, however, that surgery was the wisest decision. The malignant cells in Lorde’s right breast were “encased in a fatty cyst,” and the cancer would kill her if she did not act quickly (28). She avoided radiation and chemotherapy because, based on what she had read, the treatments in themselves were carcinogenic. The efficacy of the experimental treatments remained unproven. Then again, the alternative therapies might soon become validated. This led Lorde to wonder if she was losing her breast in vain.

During the three days between the biopsy and the mastectomy Lorde became “positively possessed by a rage to live” (29). She wondered if she would sustain that determination after she was discharged from the hospital. She wondered if she would ever be discharged. She was afraid of undergoing anesthesia again. She was also afraid of her lack of control over the situation. She wondered if it was too late to halt the spread of the cancer. She wondered if the pain might overwhelm her.

A year earlier, while waiting for the results from her first biopsy, Lorde felt angry with her right breast. She got the idea that it had, in some way, betrayed her. The day before her mastectomy, September 21, 1978, she wrote in her journal. Lorde describes feeling less angry at her breast and prepared to lose it, as it has become a choice between her breast and her life. She recalls feeling relieved by the results of the first biopsy, as it gave her an extra year “to learn to love [herself] in a different way” (30). Besides, she reasons, her life is worth far more than the sensual pleasures that her breast offered.

The thought of sensual pleasure leads Lorde back into the essay form and her recollection of her former lover, Eudora Garrett—the first woman to whom she had ever made love. Garrett had also had a mastectomy. Lorde dreamt of Garrett that night, and imagined that they were holding hands. The next day, she wrote a journal entry about the memory, wondering, as if speaking to Garrett, what Lorde had offered her former lover in Mexico so many years ago. She wonders if Garrett knows how much Lorde loved her. Eudora, she recalls, never talked about dying. She spoke only about her work.

While in a haze induced by tranquilizers and marijuana, Lorde thinks about Frances holding her hand and the sight of her face, which seems to her like a sunflower. Lorde recalls “screaming and cursing with pain in the recovery room” while “a disgusted nurse” gave her a shot and asked her to be quiet (31). Lorde told the nurse that she had a right to scream. At 5:00 AM, another nurse rubbed Lorde’s back and helped her up to use the toilet because Lorde could not use the bedpan. She then made Lorde tea and fruit juice to help with Lorde’s thirst. Lorde’s pain subsided greatly. Still, her arm and shoulder were numb. She had a wide Ace bandage wrapped around her chest. Two plastic tubes emerged from under the bandage and drained into a hemovac, or a small plastic bottle. Lorde acknowledged that she was alive, drank her tea slowly, and returned to bed.

Lorde awoke again around 7:30 AM. Frances was near her door, but Lorde couldn’t see her through the sides of her hospital bed. She did her best to raise her body up and look at the person she most wanted to see. During the first couple of days after her surgery, Lorde slept and spent her time with other women. Occasionally, Lorde would touch “the flattish mound of bandages on the right side of [her] chest” and remind herself that her right breast was gone (31). If she was alone, she would shed a few tears over her loss. Still, however, she had “no real emotional contact yet with the reality of the loss” (31). She was emotionally anesthetized. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she noticed little change due to the thickness of the bandages.

On the third day, the pain returned. In some moments, the muscles in her back and shoulder felt as if they were being pulled apart. In other instances, she felt a stabbing sensation in her chest. Her phantom breast felt as if it were being pressed in a vise. As the pain worsened, Lorde became angry because she had never been warned about how severe it would be. However, in a way, the physical pain also became a source of power, as it distracted her from her feelings of loss.

For two weeks, Lorde experienced many changes. She felt groundswell of love and support from the women around her—a tide of positive energies during a period when she wanted only negative silence to complement the pain within. Frances was there, as well as Lorde’s many female friends. Lorde knows that, had it not been for the women in her life, she would have died long ago. She also recognizes the love that she received from women she did not even know and even credits the memories of women she did not like—a nun, her high school principal, and a boss.

When Lorde returned home on the fifth day after her surgery, she spent most of her days reading, wandering between rooms, staring at blank walls, or lying outside in the sun with her eyes closed. When she could, she masturbated. She recalls an interim period, between her mastectomy and coming to terms emotionally with having cancer, when she began to think about what these events would mean in her life. She often felt, during that period, that she could not think clearly. Some of this was due to shock, the rest was the result of anesthesia. In the hospital, Lorde did not take the sleeping pills that were offered to her, unwilling to numb herself. She insists that “many patterns and networks are started for women after breast surgery” that encourage them to deny the reality of their bodies, pressuring them to “reject the adventure and exploration of [their] own experiences,” however painful and difficult they might be (34).

On her second day in the hospital, Lorde had been crying. The head nurse sent in another patient who had undergone a mastectomy a week earlier and was about to be discharged. The woman “was a smallbodied [sic] feisty redhead in a pink robe with a flower in her hair” (34). Lorde thinks about her “permanent and inexplicable weakness for women with flowers in their hair” (34). The woman was around Lorde’s age and had adult children who wanted her at home. Lorde knew instinctively that the woman’s children were sons. The woman patted Lorde’s hand and gestured at their respective bandages. She told Lorde not to feel bad, joking that their breasts weren’t much good anyway.

The following day, a woman from Reach for Recovery arrived “with a very upbeat message” and a parcel containing “a soft sleep-bra and a wad of lambswool pressed into a pale pink breast-shaped pad” (34). The woman proudly told Lorde that she was 56 years old. While handing Lorde the prosthesis, the woman insisted that other people will never know the difference between the enhancement and Lorde’s actual breast and that Lorde herself would never know the difference. Lorde bristled at the latter statement, knowing that she would know the difference between her lost breast and the material. The woman then opened her jacket and showed off her bust in a tight sweater. Lorde thought that both woman’s breasts looked unreal. She then looked away and wondered if there were any Black lesbian feminists in Reach for Recovery. She wanted very much to talk to women about her experience, what she could expect, and how they were managing. She also knew that she needed to talk to women who had endured her experience while also sharing some of her “major concerns and beliefs and visions” (35). This woman from Reach for Recovery was not in that category.

The Reach for Recovery woman continued to talk to Lorde, telling her that the mastectomy wouldn’t interfere with her love life. She asked if Lorde was married. Lorde answered that she was no longer married and avoided admitting that she was a lesbian. The woman noted that, in the six years since her operation, she had married and buried her second husband. She also mentioned her habit of carrying “an extra form just in case,” preferably a silicone one (35). She also offered to give Lorde the phone numbers to some of the higher-quality salons. Privately, Lorde wondered what making love to Frances would be like now and if her partner would still be attracted to her. The thought makes her feel her first “groundswell of sadness” (35).

Before leaving, the woman from Reach for Recovery gave Lorde a book of exercises that turned out to be helpful. She also showed Lorde how to perform the exercises. She noted that the woman’s hair “smelled a little like sun” (35). Lorde thought it a shame that such a spunky woman wasn’t a lesbian. She figured men “had gotten to her too early” (35). Lorde also noticed how the woman’s naturally gray hair was heavily teased and dyed blond. The woman assured Lorde that her organization was always on hand to help. After she left the room, Lorde examined the packet that she left behind. There was a bra, which was similar to the one that Lorde was already wearing. When Lorde announced her size—38D—the woman left behind a 40C.

Lorde stood in front of the mirror in her room and stuffed the lambswool into her bra where her right breast had been. The prosthetic looked awkward and lifeless. It was also the wrong color. She pulled it out and let her pajama top settle over the flatness on her chest. She thought of how strange she looked with one breast but, somehow, she also seemed so much more herself than she looked with the lambswool. She realized that she had either to love her body with its one breast or become “forever alien to [her]self” (36). Lorde then climbed back into bed and cried herself to sleep. It was 2:30 PM.

On Lorde’s fourth day in the hospital, her doctor told her that she could go home the following day, as her lymph nodes showed no sign that the cancer had spread. When she looked down at the surgical area while her doctor changed the dressing, she had expected her wound “to look like the ravaged and pitted battlefield of some major catastrophic war” (36). Instead, all she saw was her soft brown skin, puffy from the middle of her chest to her armpit, and “closed by black sutures and two metal clamps” (36).

Lorde cried several times that day—first, because her chest hurt and she could not sleep, then because she felt like someone was stepping on her breast “with hobnailed boots” (37). Though she was eager to go home, she also knew that she would miss the hospital room’s protective environment and its capacity to numb her. When she left, Lorde would have to feel again. She would also have to account for the new changes and demands on her life. For example, she would have to reassess her willingness to admit new people into her life. She would also have to reconsider the presences of those who were already there. She thought about the family she had created among her women friends, which was “fundamentally supportive of a life force within [her]” (38).

Lorde quotes writer Carlos Castaneda when she mentions living with death as one’s guide—that is, maintaining a sharp awareness of all the possibility that existed within a chance or a moment. For Lorde, it means balancing her desires with what is already accessible to her. It also means learning to say what she needs to without concern for being “understood, tolerated, correct or heard” (39). Being factually correct is less important to her, too, as she knows that the world will not care much if she makes a mistake.

After leaving the hospital, it was difficult not to feel like an outcast. People avoided her, while others expected her to be nearly saintly. Then, there was still the pressure to wear a prosthesis, which Lorde felt again while she was dressing to leave the hospital. The head nurse entered her room and asked Frances why Lorde wasn’t wearing it. Frances told the nurse that Lorde didn’t want to. The nurse told Frances that she simply wasn’t persistent enough. Giving Lorde a no-nonsense look, the nurse put it on Lorde, who was too tired to resist.

At home, Lorde wept continuously. She then masturbated “endlessly and repetitively” (39). She still wanted to talk to a lesbian who had had a mastectomy—“to share dykeinsight, so to speak” (39). She made a call and her friends, Sonny and Karyn, arrived. They shared their stories and fears “across age and color and place and difference” (40). Sonny advised Lorde to rest, saying that she isn’t really as strong as she may feel. Sonny talked about going to an educational conference three weeks after her surgery, which was probably not a good idea. Still, Lorde understood the need to work and, three weeks later, decided that she, too, needed to go to Houston to give a reading, despite how weak she felt.

Lorde thinks, too, of the gratitude she feels toward Li’l Sister and the visit when they “shared perfunctory remarks and inquiries about each other’s children” followed by “pre- and post-mastectomy experiences” (40). They did everything, Lorde recalls, but show each other their scars. Li’l Sister then told Lorde how nice it was to meet her before prompting her brother, Henry, to take her back home to Philadelphia. After they left, Lorde had the feeling that Li’l Sister had never talked to anyone about mastectomy before, though she acknowledges that she could have been wrong.

Lorde found that she could only sleep for several hours per night because of pain. In a journal entry for October 5, 1978, Lorde writes about needing to aerate her grief. She knows that she can learn something that she can then share. She expresses sorrow for the women who mourn their physical loss alone and “do not move into the whole terrible meaning of mortality as both weapon and power” (42). Lorde wonders, when we accept the fact that we will die, how can anyone have power over us?

Lorde returns to essay form and notes that she is writing in a new year, in which she is still trying to understand the events from her recent past. She writes to understand who she was and was becoming during that time. She is creating artifacts, preserving them for future scrutiny while also trying to free herself of them.

Lorde starts another journal entry for February 20, 1979. She finds herself overwhelmed by fears and worries for her health. She looks at her yellowing complexion, a problem she had a year earlier, and wonders if her cancer is returning. She resents how she expends time and energy on these concerns.