influenza vaccine

Get your flu shot, people, or you’ll end up like me. The same week I’m diagnosed with breast cancer, I get sick with the influenza. I alternate between sweating and shivering, and everything aches, and I can’t tell if it’s because of the cancer or the flu. I never felt the cancer until I was told I had it, but now? Now, I feel it everywhere even though technically it’s only in my left breast. I stubbed my toe the other day and oy, how the cancer hurt.

But listen, having cancer isn’t so bad. People are suddenly super kind, sending sweet messages, and offering to pick up anything I need from the grocery store. My friend Julie bought me a fabulous fur blanket and my sister dropped off a delicious dinner. My parents, who I keep telling to relax and enjoy their golden years, were at my house today cleaning and making chicken soup. My husband and children are doing everything I say without argument. If I had known it would be like this, I would’ve gotten cancer a lot sooner. In fact, I recommend every woman tell her family she has cancer, just so she can get a break.

Yesterday, my fever was so high that I had hallucinations. My lamp morphed into my mother’s face and then the lightbulb became her face. It was disturbing. And it’s all because I forgot to get my flu shot.

When I was a kid, my parents bought a purebred American Eskimo from a pet store. The first time he growled at a stranger in his tiny puppy voice, we thought it was so adorable. But once he became thirty plus pounds with killer fangs, not so much. My mother called up the petshop owner named Dennis, and Dennis explained that with purebreds, certain traits become more dominant.

And that is why I have breast cancer. Because I’m a purebred. My ancestry.com results showed that I was one hundred percent Ashkenazi Jewish, and that’s what happens when your ancestral cousins can’t keep their hands off each other.

xoxo

Heidi