Interference Read Online Free PDF Page A

Antiperspirants/deodorants cause breast cancer.
    MYTH: Breast implants cause breast cancer.
    MYTH: Bruising the breast causes breast cancer.
    MYTH: Men don’t get breast cancer.
    MYTH: Cell-phone use causes breast cancer.
    MYTH: Radiation by mammography causes breast cancer.
    MYTH: Thermography is an effective breast-screening tool.
    MYTH: Wearing an underwire bra causes breast cancer.
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2
    There was a time when Claire didn’t have cancer. A time she woke up in the morning and didn’t think about the day ahead, about her life ahead, about that thing inside of her that is growing and mutating, that alien monster, and instead thought only about coffee and cereal. There was also a time when she had friends who would call and ask her to do things, call to check up on her. Now no one calls. They are afraid of her — as if cancer is contagious — afraid of what they should say and what they shouldn’t say and what they want to say and what they don’t want to say. Besides, Claire’s not fun anymore. She’s a freak. Who wants to be around someone who has cancer?
    Claire understands this. Just two years ago, when Lise was sick, she felt the same way. Claire dropped off a bunch of flowers on Lise’s front porch and scurried down the street as if Lise had the plague. Once she called her. Once she saw her in the grocery store and smiled and waved and tried to look rushed. Once she said, “How are you?” but realized she shouldn’t have asked that, that it was a stupid, stupid question, and besides, she didn’t want to hear the answer.
    Lise is okay now. In fact, Lise moved so Claire isn’t really sure if she’s okay or if she just moved away from here. Scrambled into the country, like an animal hit by a car — off into the bushes to die. Or to live. Claire isn’t sure.
    Death.
    Claire is walking death.
    But we’re all walking death, Claire thinks. In fact, any one of her friends could easily die before she does. Car accident. Heart attack. Tripping down the stairs. Anything could happen. An airplane could fall out of the sky onto a house. It’s happened before. No one knows. No one thinks about that. Claire, though, with this huge C looming over her head, thinks about it all the time. She thinks about the grim reaper, about heaven and hell and god and nothingness and decay. She thinks about it until she can’t breathe and then she turns her mind to something useful, like laundry or groceries or just sleeping. Claire sleeps a lot. Depression, she thinks. And radiation. The radiation exhausts her. Especially after the chemo and, before that, the operation. Her body has taken a beating and now it needs to rest.
    Before Claire had cancer she worried all the time about getting it. In fact, the cancer diagnosis was almost a relief. “Well,” she thought. “I can finally stop worrying about getting it.” Not really a relief, but Claire tries to think of the positive as much as she can. There has to be two sides to everything. Even cancer?
    It’s the loneliness that bothers her the most. Even when she is surrounded by people — in the mall, at the hospital, with nervous friends, with her husband, Ralph, or her kids — even then, she is lonely. All on her own. You come into this world alone, and you leave the same way. This thought terrifies her. What, then, is the point of anything?
    The cancer defines her now. Claire used to think of herself as a wife, a mother, a school teacher. But now she’s walking, talking cancer. People at the hospital tell her that she’s new to this game, they tell her that she’ll get used to it, that the anger, the sadness, the fear, will go away. But Claire can’t imagine getting used to this all-encompassing disease. She can’t imagine going about her day lightly again — ever again. She can’t imagine the small snake at the back of her mind, the one hissing,