Work, career, and cancer

The following is my article, "Rosanne", which was published in Wildfire Magazine's

Work and Career issue (August / September 2024).

Work is important to me — possibly too important; however, it was my lifeline during my chemotherapy and radiation treatments. At a time when my life was chaotic, going to work as a Business Systems Analyst (BSA) meant I had a constant in my life that was not tied to cancer. It gave me the opportunity to feel productive. It gave me a small piece of normalcy at a time when everything was abnormal. While this is not the approach that many women choose, it was the right choice for me.

My Appearance

Prosthetic Breast

Returning to work with only one breast was a little too casual for a business-casual dress code. Since I was told that I couldn’t get my “final” fake boob until about six months after my radiation treatments ended, and I was only at the chemo stage, I had to find a workaround. I didn’t want anyone looking at me funny unless it was for my wonderful sense of humor. The solution came from the cancer society. They give me some kind of “Welcome to the Breast Cancer World” bag of goodies. One of the items was some kind of football-shaped thing that I guessed was an interim prosthetic breast. It had batting inside, like you would see in a quilt, and I was told I could remove some of the batting to adjust the size. While grateful, I didn’t really know what to do with it. It didn’t come with any kind of instructions. I didn’t even know which side was supposed to be up. However, living in the cancer world, I had to adjust.

When I inserted this fake boob into a bra, I tried to get it to align with my real one. I would just get things even, and then suddenly, the fake one would move up to my collarbone, which wasn’t a good look. This unwanted result gave me a whole new appreciation for the weight of my breast. While I thought about how to fix the problem, I glanced at the dining room table, and I saw rolls of coins just waiting to be taken. While they were supposed to go to the bank, I decided to take them. I put them in a sock and inserted them into this football-shaped thing. It took about twenty dollars of coins (mostly quarters), but I was finally able to find the balance between my fake and real breast. Indirectly, I had also found a way to always have enough change to grab something from the vending machine at work.

Hair/Wig

While I was successfully completing my work, I was not doing a good job when it came to my appearance. With my focus on work, I lost sight of how quickly I was losing my hair. I was reminded when someone offered to pick the hair off my shoulders. Later, I went to the bathroom and looked in the sink, and there was even more hair. I had to address my hair loss quickly before I became completely bald at work. At lunch, I went with a co-worker to a nearby cancer support center, where we picked out a wig, and I wore it back to work. We must have made a wise choice because I got more compliments on my wig than I have ever received about my real hair. I stopped telling people that it was a wig. I just accepted the compliments and wondered if I should ever go back to my real hair again.

When I got home from work and finished modeling my wig, I went upstairs to the bathroom, removed

my wig, and pulled out the rest of my remaining hair. Unfortunately, it seems that the chemo did not affect the hair follicles of my gray hair. I couldn’t pull it out. I had to shave it off. Ironically, when my hair started to grow back, I struggled with deciding when I would stop wearing my wig at work. I was so nervous about taking this step that I went to work not wearing my wig, but I packed it in my lunch bag just in case I had to put it back on.

My Work

Hours of Work

My employer was accommodating. I was allowed to work extra hours and bank them when I felt well and use those banked hours when I needed time to recover from treatment. I had my chemo treatments on Fridays, and Monday would be the day I called in sick if needed. While potentially missing work on both Friday and Monday might sound like a lot of missed work, it wasn’t every week, and I ended up banking more hours than I needed.

Risk Mitigation

I was working on a project, and for the first time in my career, I was listed as a risk. If I couldn’t complete my work, then the deadline for completing the project was at risk. To mitigate the risk, my employer hired someone to replace me while I was recovering from surgery, and he was supposed to support me

when I returned. Unfortunately, he didn’t help, and I spent much of my time correcting his work. I asked my employer to trust that I could do what they needed to have done without any assistance. They took a big risk and trusted me. The end result was a success.

My Lost Employment

There is an unexpected twist to my story. I finished my cancer treatments at the beginning of November, and I lost my job at the end of January. The company had decided to downsize, and even after working seven years for the company, I had the lowest seniority of the people who performed the same job. They didn’t consider my performance. They didn’t take into consideration that I had worked for them during my cancer treatments. In the end, it was just a matter of numbers.

I was in the first of many waves of employees who were let go over the next few months. To support those people who were now jobless, the company hired an outside company to help people develop the skills needed to find another job. My contact was Rosanne. She was the one who would lead me out of the building. Ironically, just as I was heading for the meeting door, Rosanne said, “Losing a job is like having a major illness.” I was stunned. I told her not to go there and told her about my cancer treatments. In an interesting twist of fate, she told me about her recent cancer treatments, and our roles changed to one of being friends. Ultimately, her cancer returned, and she passed away.

My only regret about working through my cancer treatments and losing my job was not getting to see Rosanne one last time. Since then, I have had multiple jobs, but there was only one Rosanne. I continue to miss her.

#wildfiremagazine #WeAreWildfire

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