Lunch Ticket
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Issues Archive
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Genre Archive
      • Creative Nonfiction
      • Essays
      • Fiction
      • Flash Prose
      • Interviews
      • Lunch Specials
      • Poetry
      • Translation
      • Visual Art
      • Writing for Young People
  • About
    • Mission Statement
    • Lunch Ticket Staff
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Achievements
    • Community
    • Contact
  • Weekly Content
    • Friday Lunch Blog
    • Midnight Snack
    • Amuse-Bouche
    • School Lunch
  • Contests
    • Diana Woods Award in CNF
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
    • Gabo Prize in Translation
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
    • Twitter Poetry Contest
      • 2021 Winners
      • 2020 Winners
      • 2019 Winners
  • Submissions
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Where/When

May 20, 2022/ Gillian Shure

November 2020. I’m forty-one and my daughter is thirteen months. When breastfeeding, I feel my breasts to see which has more milk. Grab my boobs like udders. Check my supplies. On the underside of my left breast, about six o’clock as the doctors and technicians would eventually refer to the location, I find a lump.

I’d heard about the infamous lump women are supposed to check for in showers and self-exams. I used to wonder how to know that one lump is different from all the others. I had lumpy dense breasts. What’s one more lump? Yet this lump was hard and foreign. Like a wadded piece of Bazooka gum.

Strong and healthy, I ate all the right things. Worked out. Walked. I had deep connections. A loving marriage. A bundle of joy. My cleaning products were so natural they barely cleaned a countertop. I blended celery juice in the mornings! I read Bruce Lipton! I was sure (SURE) that the lump would be a clogged milk duct.

Before photo Gillian Shure mother / daughter

Within three weeks I was driving home along Forest Lawn Drive when I got The Call. Breast cancer. Small, my gynecologist said. Probably will be a simple lumpectomy, he said. (What’s a lumpectomy?) Looking back I’m grateful it was dark and I hadn’t realized that I’d been driving past a cemetery, as I am a person that looks for meaning.

After I got married, I remember the first medical history form I filled out. I checked the box Married instead of Single. A momentous life shift, forty years one thing, and then not. Now three years later, there’s a new box: Cancer. I used to breeze by the section that lists present and past history of diseases. With bravado (and yes, pride!) I’d take my pen and make a line through all of the No’s. Asthma? No. Cancer? No. Ulcers? No.

Some events you have to experience to truly understand. I would assume winning an Olympic medal is one. Childbirth. Marriage. Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. You can understand similar feelings to these big experiences but until you’ve swam with sharks (I have), taken a company public (I haven’t), won Top Chef (I haven’t), worked on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean (I haven’t), lost a parent (I have), or gotten The Call (I have), you’re not in those clubs. I call them Where/Whens, because when you think of them, you know exactly where they happened and exactly when. Good or bad, Where/Whens fundamentally change you. Getting a cancer diagnosis is like driving down a road and in an instant getting shoved onto a different road. The landscape is different. The asphalt goes from tar to rough dirt. You lose cell service.

A few days later, I breastfed my baby in a breast cancer surgeon’s office while he told me about my diagnosis. The breast center at Cedars Sinai had been redone to look like the inside of a futuristic spa. Each room was a pod fit for a spaceship with cool modular pocket doors and huge wall art that mimicked rock gradations in digital prints. The pink robes (did they have to be so on the nose?) were butter soft. The lighting wasn’t bad.

“There are four types, A, B, C, and D,” the doctor explained. Already telling me something I didn’t know. “You want A,” he said casually, like he was deciding what to have for brunch. “You have D.”

  1. The kind you least want. Or I think that was what he said, because I heard a sound like Waaa Waaaa Waaaaaa Waaa Waaa Waaa, as if I’d taken a hit of Nitrous Oxide.

Type D was Triple Negative breast cancer, the one medical professionals know the least about and the one that kills the most. In a nutshell.

We had our big meeting with our main Oncologist on Christmas Eve day. In a cold office she explained to us in detail what my options were (chemo and then more chemo). How deadly my cancer was (very). How quickly I needed to act (fast). Instead of breastfeeding my baby until an uncomfortable age, as I had planned, I now had to wean her in less than twelve days. Saying no to my daughter when she was opening and closing her little fist, the sign for milk, was the first trial I had to survive. I would have rather stepped into a pit of lava. It broke me, but maybe also strengthened me. As Glenon Doyle said, I could do hard things.

Triple negative is the most aggressive kind of breast cancer with the highest death rates. From the beginning I dealt with my diagnosis and the fear of death with denial. I didn’t face death. I didn’t think of how my family would do without me. I did not consider the real possibility that I could die. In Kelly Turner’s Book, Radical Remission, she researched the different behaviors of people that had radical remissions. There were predictable behaviors like supplements, diet and exercise. I was surprised that denial made the list, a proven means of survival. Denial is what I had spent a majority of my many years in therapy trying to dissolve. Denial was how I survived my childhood. Denial messed up a good deal of my life (Sorry twenties!). But here was my old enemy, showing up now as my friend.

The next couple months were filled with chemo and tests and fasting and supplements and high dose Vitamin C IVs. As someone who barely takes Tylenol or antibiotics, believing almost anything can be fixed at home with large amounts of garlic and oregano oil, chemo was scarier to me than cancer. I was scheduled to do five months of chemotherapy and then surgery, where they would discover whether the cancer had spread to any lymph nodes. I chose to have a partial mastectomy, saving my right breast to feed a future child.

The reality my denial couldn’t ignore was that I couldn’t go through cancer alone. I’m uncomfortable letting people help me. Don’t try to carry my bags. My codependency reads like a how-to-guide to being a martyr; no room for being the one that is taken care of. When I watch my now two-year-old daughter shout with delight about almost anything she manages on her own–“I can dood it alllll by myself!”–I wonder if codependency is like an ultra-contagious stomach flu, or whether celebrating her personal independence is healthy and normal. There are so many ways to be a bad parent, having cancer is one of them.

So many people helped me. When I first got sick, breast cancer survivors made themselves available, as I now make myself available. If you talk to twenty different women you’ll get twenty different stories. Breast cancer stories and the details of recovery are like snowflakes. Not knowing what to ask, I’d stumble through conversations and wait for an opening to ask the one question I needed to know. How much help would I need? I was terrified because I believed that my husband and daughter’s love for me was conditional on what I did for them. How could they love me if I got too sick? Panic set in. Looking back it seems selfish. I was more scared of abandonment (them leaving me) than death (me leaving them). My mind clamored to figure out how to go through the next few months leaving as small a footprint as possible. But that’s not how getting sick works. I didn’t need less, I needed more.

Gillian Shure hospita image

My husband, knowing how scared I was on the first morning of chemo, had somehow contacted my family and everyone I knew who was privy to my diagnosis (I kept my cancer pretty quiet) and told them to text me at the same time. At 9 a.m. on January 19th, I had thirty messages of love pour in from all over the country. Text after text, I wouldn’t have thought I needed. But as the texts started rolling in, the tears started rolling down: {buzz} I Love You, {buzz} You Can Do This!, {buzz} You’re an Amazon warrior!, {buzz} We Love You! {buzz} You’re strong!, {buzz} I love you! Each vibration was a puff of air blowing up a lifeboat. I realized getting healthy was not something I could do on my own.

I was very lucky. Or I did everything right. Or it’s some combination of both. I was what they call NED (No Evidence of Disease) after my first three months of chemo. My surgery went perfectly. When they biopsied the lymph nodes, no cancer had traveled outside the initial tumor.

People always want to know what LESSONS I learned from having cancer. Much like any one that has taken ayahuasca will tell you, each person needs something different. For me, changing my concept of independence to interdependence is what was required. I learned that even if I can do it all on my own, I shouldn’t. Life is better without the burden of being the burden.

There is a very funny episode of Larry David’s show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, where they give more weight to a friend’s advice that had stage four cancer. Stage one cancer patients weren’t really worth listening to. Thank God, I was stage one. (While there are different types of cancer there are also different stages and grades, there are an infinite number of ways to be diagnosed.) What the show was saying was people who were in stage four had looked death in the eye, they had come to terms with their maker, they had seen the world from an astronauts point of view and, by virtue of the depth of their dilemma, could bestow onto mere mortals the deeper values and truths of the universe. Is that true? Maybe. Thankfully, I never had to find out.

Gillian Shure Headshot

Gillian Shure is working on her MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. Her work has appeared in The Paragon Press, Carbon Culture Review, On The Bus, The MacGuffin, and Side-Eye on the Apocalypse. She lives in Los Angeles.

Friday Lunch Archive

  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014

Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

QVC-land

May 6, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / D. E. Hardy
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Diana-Hardy_QVC_Feature_Photo.png 533 800 D. E. Hardy https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png D. E. Hardy2022-05-06 23:45:322022-05-06 23:45:32QVC-land

Escape Artists at the End of the World

April 29, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Lisa Levy
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/waldemar-brandt-eIOPDU3Fkwk-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1707 2560 Lisa Levy https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Lisa Levy2022-04-29 23:49:582022-06-13 18:34:12Escape Artists at the End of the World

The House in the Middle

April 15, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/alec-douglas-iuC9fvq63J8-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 2560 1707 Megan Vasquez https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Megan Vasquez2022-04-15 23:45:322022-04-15 23:45:32The House in the Middle

More coming soon!

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every Monday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Eggs, No Basket

June 27, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, CNF / Kelsi Long
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/raiyan-zach-jDkrpWtSkb4-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 2560 1440 Kelsi Long https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Kelsi Long2022-06-27 11:55:552022-06-27 11:55:55Eggs, No Basket

The Revolution Began at Book Club

June 20, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, Fiction / Sari Fordham
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/alexis-brown-omeaHbEFlN4-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1707 2560 Sari Fordham https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Sari Fordham2022-06-20 11:55:162022-06-20 11:55:16The Revolution Began at Book Club

A Letter to the Dead Grandmothers That Raised Us

June 13, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, Poetry / Levi J. Mericle
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/khamkeo-vilaysing-AMQEB4-uG9k-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1829 2560 Levi J. Mericle https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Levi J. Mericle2022-06-13 11:55:132022-06-13 11:55:13A Letter to the Dead Grandmothers That Raised Us

More Amuse-Bouche »

School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SL-Insta-Brendan-Nurczyk-2.png 1500 1500 Brendan Nurczyk https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Brendan Nurczyk2021-05-12 10:18:392022-02-01 13:24:05I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-Insta-Abigail-E.-Calimaran.png 1080 1080 Abigail E. Calimaran https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Abigail E. Calimaran2021-04-14 11:22:062021-04-14 11:22:06Seventeen

More School Lunch »

Word From the Editor

The variety in this issue speaks not only to the eclectic world we inhabit but to the power of the human spirit. We live in an uncertain world. In the U.S., we’re seeing mass shootings daily. Across the world, we’re still very much in a pandemic, some being trapped in their homes for weeks on end, others struggling to stay alive in hospitals. War continues to wage in Ukraine. Iran and North Korea are working diligently to make nuclear weapons. The list goes on. Still, we have artists who are willing and able to be vulnerable with one another, to share stories and art to help us try and make sense of our world.

More from the current editor »
Current Issue »

Connect With Us

lunchticket on facebooklunchticket on instalunchticket on twitter
Submit to Lunch Ticket

A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.

Get Your Ticket

We’ll keep you fed with great new writing, insightful interviews, and thought-provoking art, and promise with all our hearts never to share your info with anyone else.

Newsletter Signup
Copyright © 2021 LunchTicket.org. All Rights Reserved. Web design and development by GoodWebWorks.
Scroll to top