“The experience of illness in all of its complexity”: \nbreast cancer, healthy-mindedness, and new momism movements at work in the illness narratives of Rosalind MacPhee and Kathlyn Conway

Picasso's Woman: A Breast Cancer Story (1994) and Ordinary Life: A Memoir of Illness (1997) tell of the breast cancer experiences of Rosalind MacPhee and Kathlyn Conway, respectively.This thesis examines how three particular social movements-the breast cancer, healthy-mindedness, and "new momism" movements, all described in Chapter One-affect how MacPhee and Conway experience breast cancer and then write about it in the 1990s.Chapter Two examines the language of war that MacPhee and Conway adopt to describe illness and how such language leads them to examine the possibility proposed by the healthy-mindedness movement: that they are personally responsible for bringing a "determined killer" (Conway 125) into their lives.Chapter Three studies their active patient behaviours, as advocated by the breast cancer movement, as well as their more passive ones.I consider the relation between these active and passive behaviours in light of the severe nature of mastectomies and the presentation of postsurgical options.Chapter Four investigates how MacPhee and Conway struggle to maintain their roles as supermoms, busily attending to responsibilities at home and work, while simultaneously managing their recoveries.In each Chapter, the influence of the social movements named above becomes apparent as MacPhee and Conway attempt to move themselves and others out of the breast cancer experience and back into "a sense of normality" (MacPhee 106).publishing world (Couser 38).Like other breast cancer memoirs, Picasso's Woman and Ordinary Life are organized around the following events, in this order: "discovery…of a suspicious lump in her breast; diagnosis of cancer; the assessment of treatment options; some form of surgical treatment, lumpectomy or mastectomy; some form of adjuvant treatment-radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, or a combination of these; recovery and resolution in the form of favorable reports and restoration of (relative) peace of mind" (Couser 42).MacPhee begins by recalling her discovery of a lump in the shower, and how her family doctor and surgeon believe the lump a cyst until a biopsy reveals cancerous cells.She writes, next, of the medical examinations and decisions that follow her diagnosis: her ultrasound, liver scan, chest X-ray, bone scan; her decision to have a modified radical mastectomy and to forego reconstruction and chemotherapy; her daily post-operation exercises, physiotherapy, and checkups.She tells how another lump is found, biopsied, diagnosed as hyperplasia, 1 and removed.And in between these cancer-specific details are those about work shifts, school tests, visits with good friends, family dynamics, and walks with the dog.Conway begins her memoir by explaining how a mammogram detected a lump in her left breast many years after her bout with Hodgkins Disease. 2 She recalls her referral to a specialist, tests (an EKG and chest X-rays), a biopsy, and the diagnosis of cancer.Initially it is supposed that she should have a lumpectomy and radiation; later, she undergoes a mastectomy, chemotherapy, and breast reconstruction.Conway records her regular appointments with the cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Breckman, to have her breast expander inflated and with her oncologist, 1 Dr. Harris explains that the cells of this second lump were "in the process of changing" (215) but not yet malignant and he calls this state "hyperplasia."Dr. Susan Love defines "hyperplasia" as, simply, an "excessive growth of cells" (606) while Stedman's Medical Dictionary defines it as "an increase in the number of normal cells in a tissue or organ, excluding tumor formation, whereby the bulk of the part or organ may be increased."2 In her mid-twenties, Conway was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, a malignant lymphoma that most commonly affects individuals between fifteen and thirty-five years old ("Hodgkin's").She refers to experiences of this first cancer in many passages throughout Ordinary Life.Dr. Moore, to have twelve rounds of chemotherapy.In fact, the latter half of her memoir focuses mainly on the events surrounding her chemotherapy treatments, such as her symptoms (including hair loss and nausea), wig-shopping, and associated feelings of despair and frustration.Also included intermittently are details regarding her work (she sees her patients steadily throughout her entire cancer experience), friends, family, and travel.Overall, both memoirs end "'happily,' with some significant recovery" (Couser 39), and in this way these narratives are consistent with most other illness narratives.In the Afterword that follows Picasso's Woman, activist Judy Caldwell reflects on the severity of breast cancer.Caldwell begins: "Imagine yourself picking up the newspaper one Saturday morning to find a front-page headline screaming, '747 crashes.All 415 passengers killed.Onlookers shocked and horrified'. ..This year, 5400 Canadian women will die of breast cancer-the same number as would perish in . . .thirteen imaginary crashes" (263).She later writes that neither women nor men are "safe" (264) from the disease, and that MacPhee will always be at risk-her restoration may only be temporary.(MacPhee notes, too, that "there might be challenges ahead" [262].)Caldwell continues with further statistics, research news, and advice about breast cancer.G. Thomas Couser notes that this "call for mobilization" (38), to supplement MacPhee's story, is another common characteristic of the breast cancer narrative.Picasso's Woman and Ordinary Life are primarily restitution narratives.In The Wounded Storyteller (1995), sociologist Arthur Frank identifies three types of the illness story-restitution, chaos, and quest narratives-but notes how "no actual telling conforms exclusively to any of the three narratives.Actual tellings combine all three, each perpetually interrupting the other two" (76).The restitution narrative focuses on the restoration and expectation of health, emphasizing repair, remedy, and cure; "the teller of the restitution story wants the body's former predictability back again" (85), writes Frank.The chaos story, on the contrary, speaks to the lived experience of

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