Nora McGann
When I got the call, I was sitting on the couch with Lucia, our dog. It was late afternoon the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I was boiling cranberries for the dinner tomorrow and they bubbled softly on the stove. The long afternoon sun slid through the blinds, making the TV hard to watch.
“Cancerous cells in your cervix,” the nurse said. My ears started to ring.
“Me?” I thought. Surely not. This call was for some other Nora.
The nurse said many more words after those first ones including “chemotherapy” and “radiation” but I couldn’t make them out. For a long while after, I couldn’t breathe. All the air everywhere seemed to be gone.
It was our first Thanksgiving, just the two of us. The day before The Call, Tuesday, I had written something in my journal about feeling sad to be away from Mom and Dad. 33 and this was my first holiday away. Sadness loves perspective. Nora McGann
I cooked so much food that Thanksgiving because I didn’t know what else to do. I had to keep busy somehow so I kept looking up more and more complicated recipes to create: sweet potatoes au gratin, charred Brussels sprouts, fresh rolls, the turkey of course, gravy, the cranberries, a salad, a salad dressing. We ate at the kitchen table that I had set with candles and linens. In between my crying it was a lovely dinner. We toasted each other in little champagne glasses with the cocktail napkins Sadie had gotten us for our engagement, embroidered with a D for Dorn. We were to be married in two months. Nora McGann
“I don’t want a cancer wedding,” I said. Phil laughed, but then we thought about how tragic it would be if people were giving toasts and talking about my cancer and it was too depressing to imagine.
Mom and Dad had gotten us a pressure washer as an early wedding present. I spent the next week pressure washing everything: our sidewalk, our deck, our patio furniture, our grill, shoes, the siding. You can lose yourself in pressure washing. Your hands go numb after a few minutes because of the vibration of the handle and then your fingers tingle a little and all you can hear is the whir of the machine and see how clean you’re making the sidewalk. Maybe, I thought, I could wash this cancer right out of me.
We walked a lot that week, Phil and me and Lucia. Moving was good. Cleaning and cooking and moving meant I didn’t need to think. When I did think, I thought about death. Nora McGann
Nights were the worst. We’d get in bed, Lucia between us, and I’d pretend to read. Sometimes I’d fall asleep right away only to awaken an hour later. One night I woke out of a dream thinking of the word “terminal.” It sounds dramatic, only it’s also true.
There were ten endless days between The Call and our first visit with Dr. Barrington. Ten days! I tried to imagine myself getting chemo and losing my hair before the wedding, but I couldn’t get the picture quite right. We hadn’t told my parents yet, so whenever they called, I put on my telephone voice and talked about what we had seen on our walks or what I was cooking for dinner.
Dr. Barrington’s office was clean, but cold. Behind the chair where I sat waiting was a framed black and white photograph. “Terminal” it read. It was the old New Orleans airport terminal building off Hayne boulevard. I started to cry again. The nurse took my blood pressure and my temperature and had me stand on the scale.
“You nervous baby?” Nora McGann
Yes. “No ma’am.”
“We gon’ fix you up real good, hear? Dr. Barrington is the best.”
Dr. Barrington was the best and he did fix me up real good. Three weeks after The Call he cut a tiny cone out of my cervix and took the cancer with him. Said he was confident they had gotten it all out. I was mostly healed by Christmas. Our wedding was in January and it was lovely and there was no talk of cancer.
The thing about it is, I don’t even know if that happened to me anymore. Not me, surely not me. I couldn’t have survived that. The sadness and the fear would have been too much. If it had happened to Phil or Sadie, they could have survived it. Even Lucia could have survived it, I think, though I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Sadie and Phil and Lucia are strong. But not me. I think I was right in the beginning to think it was some other Nora.
