Aug 4, 2025by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

MAINTAINING DISTANCE – Janice Anne Wheeler

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SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE is a diary of the challenges of doing just that combined with the life-changing decision to save a complicated piece of wooden maritime history. We’ve come a long way with a ways to go… Your support is essential. Thank you. J

If you’ve just joined our engaging little community, please read SPARS & SPARRING, my introductory piece.…. ~J

MAINTAINING DISTANCE

And Letting People In

Janice Anne Wheeler

Aug 3

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Eight years ago I found myself in bed wearing only a soft, striped, stolen hospital gown. I wore that garment, just barely and very carefully, for a full week after discharge. My writing journey began as I healed when, unexpectedly, a story flowed from fingers to keyboard.

Max was an excellent companion during my recovery.

A friend of mine, who has been known to unknowingly impersonate my mother, read the draft, made a lot (not alot) of corrections, and told me, “YOU ARE A WRITER” at a point in my life when I was bottling a (delicious, defunct) spice blend.

That first-ever story is my story, and, even though it is a remarkably personal one, I documented it in black and white because I had no idea how the choices I had made would feel on a multitude of levels.

I also hadn’t delved into what being a writer meant or understand how you have to follow your heart because the pay is, well, awful; I thought that if I wrote something worthwhile it would be discovered and sell. That is simply not the case, but there are other rewards.

Consider for a moment the distance that people wait to bridge, uncomfortably sometimes, before we greet another person. If you didn’t wait you’d have to raise your voice a little, perhaps introducing misinterpretation, so instead we wait, hesitating, smiling a little, glancing this way, glancing that way, awaiting the appropriate interval. It’s a dance, of sorts.

Last week, I was SPARRING with a steaming STEADFAST project at the boatyard when I spotted my landlord walking toward me. On this particular afternoon he and I were further apart than the aforementioned social distance (which admittedly varies due to an assortment of factors) and he didn’t wait. “My mother loved your book,” he said, meeting my eyes. I absorbed these rare, author-thrilling words and asked silently, eyebrows raised, ‘which book?’ The many connections between us flooded back, grabbed my attention, and sent my heart racing; I don’t know his mom, but understood that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, something that is all-too-familiar to me. Only a select few people here know the subject of my first memoir, the intimate details and decisions I made out of pure, unadulterated terror and how that all worked out. With the exception of my self-affirming writer’s group, this community has not been brought into the fold. Double mastectomies don’t come up in polite where-are-you-from chats and rarely even after that, when we delve deeper.

His Mom’s surgery was deemed successful and then the doctors changed their minds and ordered further treatment, a tough surprise for all involved. I’m certain she wanted to be done. Now they’re testing for the ominous gene that my brother and I carry, BRCA2, which, in my case, indicates an 87% chance of breast cancer; it’s not something we want as baggage; it’s not something anyone wants.

My Mom was diagnosed not long after metastatic breast cancer took her older sister’s life. Her surgeon performed a simple lumpectomy, failed to obtain a clean border, went back and took the entire breast. She didn’t require additional treatments, just a check-up every six months. And then, five years later, one of those showed another of Mother Nature’s nastiest creations, a separate primary cancer, Peritoneal, that took her life just twenty days after diagnosis. Her brother, too, my uncle, also succumbed to breast cancer. We photographed her petite body before her battle, as I would do, two decades later, while I was still intact; celebrating our original parts before they were forever modified by scalpels and fear. Subtitle: One woman’s drastic measures, grim choices to fight cancer before a diagnosis.

Title: The New Girls, as that is what I call my intramuscular, manufactured, silicone breasts. They’re not perfect, but for me, far, far better than the risk. They will never really feel like they belong, although I’ve saved some bank on the uncomfortable restraint devices that US society mandates. Even when it was ‘inappropriate’ and mine jiggled like the fleshy mammaries they were, I tended to disregard that norm on occasion; I know you’re not surprised. And now, they most certainly don’t jiggle.

Similarly jangly memories and sensations flashed through my mind as the man and his beautiful young family continued their evening stroll. This quick conversation served the purpose that it should have. I realized, once again, that I have little to complain about. “There’s something there,” another breast cancer survivor disclosed just days ago, referring to her solo unscarred appendage. “They just don’t know what it is.” I could feel her dread, visualize the bracing of oneself against such a diagnosis and all that may come next. SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE, indeed.

I was maintaining my distance here on Substack, and now, I’ve let you in…Everybody Has a Story is the name of my website, because we do. It could be “Everybody Has A Cancer Story,” because it seems like that’s true, too. If you can relate, just click that little heart and appreciate the strengths in all of us.

I don’t know anyone else who made the preventive choice I made, I only know the strong women who, facing the same conundrum, asked me for council and found it through FORCE Facing Our Risk Of Cancer, Empowered, where I counseled peers, listened to their stories, and told my own.

Care to share yours? Sometimes there’s joy in that, too. ~J