I Don't Wanna Be Pink: How a Single, 39-Year-Old Woman Refused to Let Breast Cancer and Its Fervent Culture Define Her

By Dena Taylor

A month before she was to celebrate her fortieth birthday in Italy, Dena Taylor was diagnosed with breast cancer. In seconds, she was transformed from enthusiastic traveler to frightened patient. Told with grace, candor, and inimitable wit, I Don't Wanna Be Pink is the story of a single, independent woman and the tumor that threatens to change her life. With support from a colorful cast of loved ones and her own determination, Taylor contends with painful procedures and upsetting encounters with callous insurance reps, well-meaning strangers, and potential lovers. In her darkest moments, she doubts her strength and worthiness of love. Ultimately, she grapples with whether she must join the pink, public march of advocacy or give herself permission to live life undefined by disease.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dena Taylor
• Release date: Sep 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781977211644

Dena Taylor

Dena Taylor, M.S.W., Rutgers University, is the mother of two grown daughters, and is retired from careers in social work and education. She is the author, editor and co-editor of six books on women's issues.

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Chapter 1

Today’s the big day.

—Journal Entry

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I woke up in a surprisingly good mood. Tad anxious. Actually, I was manic. I thought about the impact a positive mental attitude can have and wondered if I could actually direct the day’s events by being bright and cheerful. With time to kill before my dear friend Steve picked me up for my appointment, I decided it was worth a try. While I normally detest the perky morning set, I found myself bustling to the neighborhood coffee shop to join them—chirping my order to the barista, grinning too hard at a couple of cute guys, and flitting about the outdoor patio before taking a seat. I whipped out my laptop and emailed my sister, Tay, and best friend, Marit, and used lots of exclamation points and smiley emoticons. Back home again, while waiting for Steve, I told the cat how sweet she was, even when she barfed on my couch, and thanked the plants for living with me all these years. It was Wednesday, September 13, 2006.

I looked around my apartment and thought how different everything would or wouldn’t be in a few hours’ time; how most of what we do every day is done with this blind assumption that things will go pretty much how we expect them to. Unless you’re a journalist or injury lawyer, no news really is good news.

I spent the last few minutes before Steve arrived sipping a bottle of Dos Equis beer and hanging a new hummingbird feeder on the deck. I don’t typically drink beer in the morning, and I know little about birds. In a fit of hope, I told myself that if a hummingbird visited the feeder before Steve knocked on my door, my test results would be negative. But no hummingbird came, and the question lingered: did I or didn’t I have cancer?

Of course I didn’t. How could I? I was too active, healthy, and young. In fact, in thirty-five days I would be in Italy, celebrating my fortieth birthday with my best friend, a bottle of Chianti, and, if the stars aligned, some handsome, single, and psychologically stable Italian men. It was a big deal, this trip. It symbolized the end of a shaky decade. While I was behind much of the shaking—the crack at acting, the dim romantic choices, the two-thousand-mile move from Seattle to Austin without a job—not everything had been in my control. There were some surprises too, pink ones, by way of my mom’s early-stage breast cancer and a suspicious growth in my own breast. But Mom prevailed, and my lesion was benign, and life went on. On the precipice of forty, I had begun to enjoy the fruits of risk and change. I was courting my new town, making friends, loosely dating (and dating loosely), performing in local theater, and earning just enough as a freelance copywriter to cobble together a birthday overseas. I was on a roll and was going to ride that roll all the way to Italy, dunk it in olive oil, and spend a week savoring every bite.

Or was I?

A routine mammogram had revealed a small mass in my right breast, which had led to a biopsy, and, according to my breast surgeon, Dr. Perry, a fifty percent chance that the results would be benign. So, I might have cancer. But I might not. I might go to Italy, I might not. I might live long enough to marry before my parents died, I might not.

Considering the odds in this way was useless and exhausting and made my head hurt. There are always exceptions, benign anomalies do happen, and that’s what I decided to focus on until somebody told me different.

Except there had been some needling signs of malignancy along the way, too, thin but peculiar instances that I had noticed but brushed off, one by one.

The first came earlier in the summer by way of Marit’s trepidation about our trip to Italy. I just feel a little apprehensive, she said, over the phone one day. I’m not sure if it’s because of 9/11 or what, but in all the times I’ve traveled to Europe, I’ve never felt this way. It’s like it’s not the right time to go or something. After wondering aloud if we should go somewhere else, she acquiesced to Italy, and I didn’t give it a second thought.

The second sign came in early September, during my mammogram, which, with all the adjusting and squishing, and stopping-dead for pictures, reminded me of a game of freeze tag, where your breast is always it. After studying the last image of my right breast on the monitor, the technician turned abruptly and looked at me. Our eyes met, and I saw the slightest shift in her gaze, an almost undetectable beat in an otherwise unremarkable moment in time. She quickly looked back to the monitor and said she wanted to get just one more shot. I figured she was just being thorough and stepped up to the plates.

The last sign emerged during my consultation with Dr. Perry, when she described a mass she saw in my films as dark with fuzzy edges. It wasn’t just the ominous conglomeration of words, which sounded like something out of a Harry Potter novel; it was how they were delivered. It was as if she had read them and said them before: words belonging to the vernacular of surgeons with hundreds of biopsies and substantiated suspicions under their belts, words with weight. It was as if she knew exactly what was happening in my breast but protocol prevented her from saying it out loud.

On their own, each of these signs was a dusky, inconsequential lightbulb, but when strung together they cast a murky shadow. It seemed like Marit, the technician, and Dr. Perry all knew what was wrong. While riding in Steve’s car on the way to Dr. Perry’s office, I wondered if maybe I didn’t know too, and my positive exterior started to crack.

Why is Steve taking you to the doctor? I thought. If you truly believe you’re going to be okay, why didn’t you drive yourself?

A pit formed in my stomach and began to dance, its steps quickening with every mile. Why all the Google searches and appointment recaps to family and friends? Why the forced bright side?

The pit went from a slow shimmy to a triple-time polka, and by the time we turned into the parking garage, to something out of Stomp the Yard. If everything is really going to be okay, why did you cry in the car after the mammogram? Why did you stop planning your trip to Italy—because you did simply just stop.

People say actions speak louder than words. I was minutes from finding out whether this was true.

It’s a blur, but I’m certain Steve hugged me before I left him in the waiting room. It’s something he would do. I wasn’t alone per se, but it was still only me walking into that exam room, baring my flesh, perching my ass on the edge of the exam table, waiting. The dancing pit kicked its way into my throat and turned to stone, and I held it there, hard and tight.

I couldn’t imagine having cancer, couldn’t imagine adding that word to my daily vocabulary—Hi, I’m Dena Cancer, er, Taylor; Hello, I’ll have a grande nonfat cancer, I mean, latte. It was a mouthful of marbles and peanut butter and shock. I couldn’t imagine going so severely off course. And if I couldn’t imagine it, it couldn’t be real.

What I could imagine was Dr. Perry (whom I’ve nicknamed here for her uncanny resemblance to Journey’s original lead singer, Steve Perry) entering the room with a smile and delivering good, noncancerous-fifty-percent news. Really?! I would reply. She would nod and I would hug her in gratitude. The stone in my throat would dissolve. Steve and I would bound to the Mexican restaurant across the street for margaritas. I don’t even like margaritas but I’d drink one because that’s what people in Austin do, and I’d be grateful to be there and not in an exam room, crying. I’d call my family and friends on the way home, and once there, I’d resume making plans for Italy, where I would turn forty and have nothing more to contend with than an inflated Visa bill and a hangover.

There was a quick knock on the door and turning of the handle. Dr. Perry entered the room with my chart, which seemed heavy in her hands. She offered a feeble hello and wan smile. I countered with a bright if wobbly hello, dragging out the o and punctuating it with a question mark. Her manner was different than in our previous two appointments, quieter and more doctorly. She placed my chart on the counter, turned her back to me, and opened it. After looking at the contents one last time, either to remind herself of the pathologist’s findings or to choose her words, she turned back around.

You have invasive breast cancer, she said.

Oh God.

Given your family history, the benign abnormality you had in 2003, and the fact that you’re only thirty-nine and we’d like you to see fifty, she continued, I recommend a bilateral mastectomy.

She had me at cancer. It roared through my head, forcing the rest of her words—the ones about living to see fifty and cutting off my breasts—to scatter and embed like shrapnel—malignant shrapnel, small and sharp. My stomach, the hinges of my jaw, and the backs of my eyes began to quiver with shock. The stone in my throat throbbed, making it nearly impossible to swallow. I wasn’t in the noncancerous fifty percent. Everything wasn’t okay.

She said something about a lumpectomy and radiation but said she thought the more aggressive bilateral mastectomy was more appropriate; if you removed all the breast tissue there wouldn’t be anything for the cancer to come back to. There would be no room at the inn because there would be no inn.

While you’re under, we’ll test a lymph node to make sure the cancer hasn’t spread.

More roaring. More shrapnel. The stone dislodged, and lava-like tears welled in my eyes—hot, thick, and slow. Gravity pulled them down, along with the sinking feeling that comes when you realize that something really bad might actually get worse. I had cancer and it might have spread. I might die before my parents did. I might die having never been married. I might die.

I thought about the coffee shop I had visited that morning. How ridiculously I had behaved—chatting it up with the barista, smiling at handsome men, awkwardly inserting myself into the normalcy of a morning routine. I had strained to stay positive to prevent a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now that the truth was out, I could stop wasting the energy. My diagnosis was irrefutable. I was free to be consumed by shock.

If the cancer has spread, we’ll go back in later and remove any affected nodes. And I know chemotherapy will be recommended.

Dr. Perry was going too fast; she was so far ahead of me, seeding a vision of my future self—bald, pale, and nauseated, a plastic tube stuck in my vein, an ugly pink ribbon stuck in my lapel. I lagged behind, grappling with cancer. Fighting it, treating it, whatever they called it, whatever she was talking about, was beyond my comprehension. My hands were full with disbelief.

I had every right to tell her to stop, to give me a minute to wrap my head around the disease in my breast, to collapse in a heap of disposable exam cape, crinkly table tissue, and grief, but I found myself trying to keep up instead—or at least look like it. The person I had presented to her thus far was proactive and strong. During my consultation the week before, I had even made her laugh. A breakdown was imminent but it wouldn’t happen in front of her. She could see my now-steady stream of tears and red, drippy nose, but there was no way she was going to see me lose my shit. I’d wait until she was gone.

Dr. Perry paused, but she wasn’t done. She stepped toward me, began tapping my knees with her knuckles, and explained how chemo could affect fertility and how that was something I might want to think about if I wanted to have children.

Baby shrapnel—but it didn’t hurt that much. I wasn’t bent on having kids.

Doesn’t matter, I said. I can barely find a man I want to have dinner with let alone get naked with. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be pushing a walker down the sidewalk before a stroller.

There’s always a joke. It may not be funny, but it’s always there, ready to distract. It disrupted the tears, gave me a chance to gain some emotional ground, bought me time.

Dr. Perry half-laughed and reminded me that neither a partner nor sex was required to have a baby. She had plenty of friends who had kids on their own. I have those friends, too, I thought, but I don’t want to have a kid by myself. And I don’t want to have to decide right now. And I really don’t want to have fucking cancer.

She went on to recommend reconstruction, the first phase of which could occur immediately following the mastectomy. I could wake up with (budding) (fake) breasts. It’s how it’s done these days.

I can’t believe I’m going to lose my breasts.

I had never been a big fan of my breasts. They were too small, too far apart, too pointy. They veered to the sides like a pair of shoes on the wrong feet. My relationship with them was one of tough love and digs. They looked like candy corn without the dye, profiles of Bob Hope’s nose, piping bags of frosting, elf hats without the curling tip. A way bustier Marit and I often laughed about how when she spilled food it landed on her shirt. When I spilled food it landed in my lap. My breasts were out of proportion with my five-foot-seven-inch frame, wide-spanning hands, broad shoulders, and size ten feet. It was like they were meant for someone else—but they weren’t, they were mine, and now, more than ever, I wanted to keep them around.

And the nipples and areolas will be taken too, she added, because they’re made of tissue and that tissue puts you at risk. But your plastic surgeon can create new ones.

Out of what, I thought. Papier-mâché?

As Dr. Perry checked the incision site on my right breast—the breast where a cancerous tumor was growing, the one she had assaulted through a biopsy just two days before—she suggested I also get genetic testing to find out if I had mutations to the BRCA1 or BRCA2 breast cancer genes. If I did, I might be at increased risk for ovarian cancer.

Ovary shrapnel. Sweet Jesus, when does it end?

In the case of a mutation, removal of my fallopian tubes and ovaries might be recommended via a salpingo-oophorectomy, which sounded like something a Roman Catholic priest would chant while giving last rites. The test would cost thousands. Insurance might or might not cover it. The thought of talking this over with my crotchety, anal-retentive insurance company made me almost as sick to my stomach as my diagnosis did.

Dr. Perry asked if I had any questions. I had one. I wanted to know if everything she had just said was real.

What was it again you said I have? I asked incredulously. Because I had this dream where you told me I didn’t have cancer. You were wearing lip gloss and green eye shadow, and you said I didn’t have cancer.

Sometime after first meeting Dr. Perry, I had fantasized about fixing her up with Marit’s newly single sister, as if finding true love for my doctor might influence my test result. The color of her Crocs shoes—green for her alma mater—and my juvenile association between lip gloss and dressing up for a first date had also worked their way into my dream and, in this surreal moment, out of my mouth. It was a small interruption and final attempt to both grasp the truth and postpone being left alone with my broken breast and new reality. I left out the part about fixing her up with Marit’s sister. I didn’t want to push my luck.

She graciously chuckled and said she didn’t think she had ever worn green eye shadow. Then she softly confirmed that it was cancer that I had. I had no reason not to believe her. Having grown up with a physician father, I had a general reverence for the profession. They knew things I didn’t.

She encouraged me to take some time to absorb the news, write down my questions, and call her to talk. I thanked her. She had delivered the worst news of my thirty-nine years, and I actually said thank you. It was automatic and respectful. She had done her job, blown the whistle on some ill-intentioned cells, and, somewhere in the mess of my emotions, I was glad, because the what-if-ing was over. Plus, as shallow as it sounds, I liked to be liked, especially when it came to someone responsible for removing a deadly tumor from my body. So I thanked her. If Dr. Perry liked me, maybe she’d pay extra special attention in getting every last one of those warped cells out. I wanted her to like me. I wanted her to save me.

You’re welcome, she said, and left.

Alone in the exam room, I stopped controlling and let the shock and fear take over. I cried with inflated gasps for air, like when you have your heart broken for the first time and think you’ll be alone for the rest of your life. If only I had been upset about that. If only my ego had been shattered. A bag of chips, a few glasses of wine, a month, and I’d be fine.

I remembered that Steve was in the waiting room. Then I thought about all the people I had to call, all the appointments I would have to make, the genetic test I had to get, that cancer kills people.

The nurse came in quietly with the BRCA gene testing kit and a purple canvas bag from the local Breast Cancer Resource Center, filled with information for the newly diagnosed. Of course the center’s logo was pink. That fucking pink ribbon had been nipping