Part 18: “I hope your cancer comes back and you die miserable and alone”

I had hoped to have a triumphant end to this story. Ideally, I would have survived the treatment and met a wonderful guy who didn’t care about my history or scars. Instead, a co-worker used my cancer experience to ill-wish me.

We had never gotten along. She wanted me to run my program the same way the rest of the agency runs. I was hired to develop a different program, and that is what I did. Her ideas didn’t work for me, or for our licensing body, OMH, and she resented me for not doing as she said. For a college dropout with no credentials and a Rottweiler’s demeanor, she’d been given a lot of authority in the agency, and she tried to use it to harass me.

My first week back after radiation therapy, I asked her not to demand so much from me. “I’m still not feeling 100% after the radiation,” I said.

“Yeah, you bring that up a lot,” she grumbled. “I have my own shit, but I don’t bring it to work.”

Doesn’t seem like she brings it to a therapist, either. Ultimately, I filed a bullying complaint and got her kicked out of my program, which apparently she resented so much that she resigned.

On her final day, she came to my office and said, “I want you to know that I wish you the worst of everything, including the medical.”

“You want my cancer to come back?” I asked, startled. I knew she was a horrible person, but who would say something like that to a cancer survivor?

“Uh-huh!” she chortled, batting fake eyelashes thick as the sludge in the Gowanus Canal. “And I hope you deal with it miserable and alone, like you write about on LinkedIn.”

I must have looked even more surprised.

“Yeah, I see your articles!” she sneered.

I shook my head. Page views are page views, but I hadn’t expected to have my pain used against me like this. Then again, I hadn’t expected to have a person with no clinical training demand a role in how I provided treatment, and I had overruled some of her most cherished hopes. Like many a bully, she appreciates programs that assert control; she wanted me to impose Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) on clients that I didn’t think needed that level of discipline.

I can’t call it a level of care. Basically, AOT is a legal agreement that makes it easier to hospitalize patients who could be dangerous if they stop taking their medication. It requires court hearings and a lot of clinical evidence. This authoritarian little … employee thought she could impose diagnoses and evaluations with absolutely no clinical education or training. For no other reason than protecting my license, I would never give her the last word.

“When all is said and done, Karen,” I said, “you are just a stupid little bitch with no boundaries and no license.” And I paid no attention to her amused response. Eventually she walked away, and I anticipated the days, months, and years of work without her shrill voice, aggressive demeanor, and utter ignorance of psychiatric treatment. But when I got that bad pap smear, I wondered. Was it something she said?

This seems as good a place as any to end this saga. I don’t think I learned or grew from undergoing cancer treatment, although I did enjoy writing about it. Many people made it an extremely painful experience, although only one did so deliberately, and she’s apparently so obsessed with me that she’s cyberstalking me. But every page view counts when you’re building a brand. Keep reading, bitch. Even if you got your wish.

I will post an update from the next mammogram/ultrasound to let you know if the complicated cyst has made my right breast any more dangerous, or if cancer has sprouted elsewhere inside me. My pelvic ultrasound had to be postponed after my rebellious uterus decided to shed its lining for the first time in more than four months. Ultimately that is probably a good sign, since finding endometrial cells in the pap smear of a person who still menstruates is not a red flag for uterine cancer, but it means having to wait still longer for the certainty that it’s probably just the fibroids. As I said before, trauma has turned my reproductive organs into lethal double agents, and they haven’t decided whether they want to burn me.

#breastcancer #breastcancerawareness #breastcancercare #breastcancersurvivor #breastcancersupport #breastcancertreatment #breastcancerfighter #breastcancerwarrior #breastcancerresearch #1in8 #mammogram #biopsy #breasthealth #cancersurvivor #cancer #humor #humorous #hilarious #coping #copingskill #laughteristhebestmedicine

If you're enjoying these articles, please share!