Nowish: A Life Out of Time

Two hundred and sixty thousand women in America have breast cancer. Another one million have it, but don't know it yet. Every woman's story is unique. Alice Mead was a vibrant art teacher, mom and human rights activist. At 42 she began to drop things, walk slowly, and fall down. The odds were one in a million that it was an autoimmune reaction, caused by a tumor. The doctors ignored her symptoms for 8 years. The invasive lobular cancer didn't show up on X-Rays, CT scans, or MRI's. Not wanting to be a caretaker, her husband became emotionally abusive and left. Her mother died from Alzheimer's while Alice was in the middle of radiation treatments. She lost her home, insurance, and family all at once. After chemo, she began to stabilize, but suddenly the neurological problems came back ten times worse. Violent spasms, suffocating episodes, broken bones. She found herself in an Assisted Living center at 54 and spent the next few years deteriorating, lonely, and struggling to find alternative housing. In 2009, just six years after breast cancer surgery, her voice and vision started rapidly deteriorating. How had her life come to this? Finally doctors are more openly expressing the life-long continuation of breast cancer and its possible destructive effects on women and their families. Alice reflects poignantly on her experience with the fractured medical system, increasing isolation, and the kindness of the friends who are seeing her through.

Alice Mead (James) is the author of many books for young readers, as well as a painter and human rights advocate. Though confined to a wheelchair, she lives independently in Maine.