colorectal cancer

This is very difficult for me to deal with, both because I'm not ready to come to terms with it and because I know so little.

My father was recently diagnosed with advanced rectal cancer, a form of colon cancer that (obviously) spreads to the rectum. What this means is over the next ten months, he will undergo a series of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgery, which will leave him weakened and unable to work, due to his physical state, his lack of technical skills, and his age (53). My grandmother and great-grandfather both died of colon cancer, at increasingly younger ages -- my great-grandfather in his 70s, my grandmother in his 60s, and now I'm facing the very real possibility that my father might not even live that long. What this means, since the risk of colon cancer is strongly influenced by family history, is that I need to be extremely careful about my diet and health, which is easier said than done: I've been consciously trying to cut down on red meat but haven't managed to consume more fiber yet, and I want to quit smoking but always tell myself one more pack.

I want to look at this at another angle, though, which is the ways in which family health issues have been retold and reinvented. I only found out a month ago that my grandmother died of colon cancer; I vividly remember my mother telling me that she had died from a heart attack, a memory that has fueled much of my reflection on my relationship with my grandmother. In retrospect, I think she died because her heart was weakened by chemotherapy, a fact I must have forgotten. How much easier and less complicated to disregard those complications when I reimagine my grandmother's death. Having grown up on the other side of the world, I never had a chance to really know my grandmother. Of course I'd heard some things about her and I'd visited her once in Beijing, and she stayed with my family in America for a while, but that was all when I was very young, not quite old enough to understand that many of my friends visited their grandparents every year, every month, every week. So when my mother told me about my grandmother's death--I think a few days before Halloween--how could I understand the significance of that, of a death in the family, when I had only been with her for maybe six months of my entire life?

My father left my family when I was around 8 or 9. In the early years I visited him every summer, but as time went on and he remarried, I began to speak to him less and less frequently. The last time I talked to him, he called me to ask why my mother wasn't answering the phone. That must be when he told her about his diagnosis. She kept it a secret from me, too; I had to learn from my brother, and even then he didn't know what was wrong, just that something was bad. When she finally told me, two or three weeks after the diagnosis, and explained the plan for treatment, I was obviously upset, but also angry that she wouldn't tell me straight up, but instead said, "Don't you want to know what's wrong," as if I had to ask to find out; angry that she didn't think it was her responsibility to tell me but rather that she needed to wait for me to ask her first, even though I had no idea how serious it was or even how to ask. I was angry that she wouldn't tell me anything the first time, and didn't want to tell me this time.

But mostly, I'm angry that I still don't have the courage to call my dad.

white flowers: a personal take on culture and sexual health

Today, while passing by lemon trees and giant aloe plants on my way home from Berkeley Bowl, a patch of white wildflowers growing on a street corner innocently brought me back to 2003, when I was 16 and thought I was pregnant.

My then boyfriend and I decided to start having sex after months of blow jobs and dry humping. Both of us agreed to use a condom consistently and correctly and to have an abortion if it ever came to that. One night, he took a condom out from his wallet, and despite my hesitations, I consented. The next day, during our nightly phone conversations, I nervously pointed out that the condom had been in his wallet, and couldn't there have been tiny tears that would have let sperm pass through. He said something half-assed about checking the condom for leaks. After that, he stopped carrying condoms in his wallet or pocket and we continued to have sex, even though I began to internally panic about being pregnant.

During the two months following that night, I took 6 pregnancy tests, all of which came back negative. However, my period had never skipped two months in a row before. This fact overrode everything I had ever learned, about how condoms were extremely effective when used correctly, that sperm could only live in my body for about a week. I was so anxious that not only did I research Planned Parenthood, but also remedies such as Queen Anne's Lace, which can induce abortion. Queen Anne's Lace is a weed that flowers with a cluster of small white blossoms. Whenever I walked anywhere, I always looked for white flowers.

My parents were pretty obviously absent from this experience. In the end, of course I got my period, but the white flowers always stuck with me because of how messed up it was that I seriously thought about self-inducing an abortion rather than talk to them. Looking back, five years later, I realized my anxiety was not over whether or not I was pregnant—week after week of negative results should have convinced me. Instead, I was terrified of my parents' reaction to me having sex. My parents are middle class Chinese professionals who immigrated here in the 1980s, and retained conservative cultural views towards sex. (However, I am not implying that my experience speaks for everyone with this background.) We rarely talked about any aspect of sexuality. If it ever came up, my mother would vocally send a message along the lines of, “Don't. Or else.” For example, when I told her I had a boyfriend, the first thing she said was that I was not allowed to kiss him or hold his hand, much less anything about sex.

Here, I recognize my lack of judgment and also my immense privileges concerning this situation. I had the money to buy pregnancy tests, my parents would have been able to afford a safe abortion and I would have been physically safe. Regardless of what would or would not have happened, my fears and anxieties were real. However one may feel about this topic, the fact is that some teenagers do have sex; the silence and stigmatization of this issue in our communities does not mean that APA teens magically never have sex until the “appropriate” time. It is extremely hard for many of our parents and families change their beliefs about sex and sexuality overnight. However, it is also crucial to ensure that these beliefs do not bar young women who need health services from receiving them. Starting from a perspective of promoting young women's health and welfare, we need to work together to create culturally appropriate and empowering ways to address sexuality.