Molly Ivins, Columnist

Not Dying Yet Again

Published in the October 2006 issue of Austin Monthly magazine

"People keep expecting me to croak," says Molly Ivins. "But, for many of us, breast cancer has become a disease you can live with, like diabetes. You don't necessarily die from it." Ivins is the New York Times best-selling author of Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can she?, Shrub, Bushwhacked, and Who Let The Dogs In?, as well as a three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee famed for hilarious political commentary, and a syndicated columnist published in roughly four-hundred newspapers. When asked about her greatest accomplishment, she says, "I suppose living through cancer would be up there, though I had a lot of help from a lot of people like my oncologist."

Ivins paces past a fountain and the tropical plants that line the atrium of her South Austin abode. She is undergoing treatment for her third bout with inflammatory breast cancer, and auburn hair grows back on her head, like hopeful blades of grass. At six feet tall, Ivins conceals an awkward exhaustion inside a poised persona. Close friend, Marilyn Schultz, a professor at St. Edward's University, says, "Molly is like a redwood tree. She has gotten a disease and beaten it back. She beats it back again. And she stands tall and strong, patient and enduring."

Preparing for her photo shoot, Ivins perches on a stool in her bathroom while a makeup artist applies eyeliner to her blinking lids. Ivins says, "Inflammatory breast cancer looks like a lot of other things. It's not like, 'Oh, whoops, a lump!' It's more like having an infection in your breast. The first thing the doctor gave me was antibiotics. Fortunately, that only cost me one week."

While inflammatory breast cancer is notoriously aggressive, scientists are continually developing new treatments. Ivins says, "When I was diagnosed in 1999, I went and bought all of the latest books on cancer and my odds of survival were only 5 percent. But, by the time I finished my first round of treatment, my odds improved to 70 percent. It's true that my cancer has come back, which is not a happy situation. On the other hand, now they have more things that they can do without harming my heart. It's just remarkable how fast science is advancing."

For most people, a catastrophic illness is cause for self-reflection, resulting in a re-evaluation of how you live your life. Molly reacted by rewarding herself for undergoing treatment. "You get a better sense of priorities in life. So that all those things you've been putting off, like, 'Gosh, I've always wanted to go to see the Grand Canyon,' that's when you say, 'I think I'll do that this year.' I had always wanted to go back to Paris where I studied when I was young. After my first round of cancer, I said, "I think I'll go back to Paris." And I did it right. I rented an apartment for a month on the Ile Saint Louis, the little island in the middle of the river Seine, right across from the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It's the most Parisian of Parisian places in the world.

"At the time I had one tit and a very heavy prosthesis. So I decided not to wear the prosthesis on the airplane, because it's not comfortable, and nobody is going to stare, and screw them if they did! So I decided not to wear it. I arrived in Paris and so did I and one of my suitcases, but the other one did not. And the lost suitcase had nothing important in it, except of course, the fake tit. So I said to myself. 'Paris is one of the greatest cities in the world. Of course I'll be able to find a fake tit here.'"

"But it had been 30 years since I could speak French. And I went to Prisunic, it's like the Wal-Mart of France, the place where they have everything. I went in and asked for 'half of a bosom,' which they didn't understand. And finally I said, 'What I need is that from which the baby sucks, but a false-one of that from which the baby sucks.' Whereupon this guy angles off, very proud, because he knows exactly what I need, and he comes back with a baby bottle. I am so embarrassed that I buy it. But, on my way out the door, this woman pulls me aside and tells me where to go, which is the great store of the apparatus prosthetic.

"So off I go, carrying a baby bottle. Eventually I arrive and find that I am at the Grand Central of the apparatus prosthetic. There are fake arms and fake legs and all kinds of interesting things in a big showroom the size of a football field. They have left legs from sizes 24 to 52, but I still don't know the name of my particular apparatus per say. The salespeople gather at the counter and eye me up and down, but I still have all my legs and arms. So, by the time I get up there this guy, with great pride, presents me with an entire tray full of glass eyeballs."

Eventually Ivins tried reconstructive surgery to negative effect. She developed an infection and had to have both implants removed. "I wish I could tell you that breast reconstruction can have a happy ending, where you have surgery and come back with better tits than ever, but it doesn't always work out."

In-spite of this, Ivins will tell you that the worst part of getting cancer is the loss of vitality during treatment. She says, "You run out of steam and say, 'Oh God, I don't think I'll get out of bed today.'" She says, "I've always had a lot of stamina so I did really well with my first round. I had chemo and radiation and only had to cut back from writing three columns to two columns a week."

Ivins believes that the only way to get through breast cancer is with the help of other survivors. "The first thing to expect is that you are hit with this bewildering tidal wave of information," She says, "And the most valuable knowledge you get is from other women who have had cancer because they've been there."

As for those not diagnosed with cancer, Ivins recommends that all women over age forty get an annual mammogram. She says, "We can all sit around and make up excuses about why we haven't gotten it done it this year, and it's a pain in the butt, and it takes a long time to get an appointment. But, there is no way to make yourself feel lonelier and stupider than sitting in a doctor's office and thinking, 'Gee, when was the last time I had a mammogram done?' Risk is partly hereditary, so if anybody in your family has breast cancer, it's smart to go early and often. I know people who have breast cancer so common in their family that they have preventative mastectomies. They don't even bother to wait for cancer to show up. They just have their breasts removed."

While Ivins is thrilled with all the medical advances in breast cancer treatment, she bears ire at undefined causes of cancer, saying, "Heredity, lifestyle, and poverty cause less than 30 percent of breast cancer, yet relatively no money is put into searching for the environmental causes such as industrial chemicals, air-pollution, or water-pollution. That's something that women really need to raise more hell about."

So how does Molly Ivins raise hell? She raises money for the muck-raking Texas Observer. Ivins says, "I think that small magazines are increasingly important. If you don't keep independent news organizations like The Texas Observer alive, you won't have investigative journalism." In speaking of her upcoming roast on October 8th benefiting the Texas Observer, her hands sweep across the room, "I think I'll call it the, 'Not Dying Yet Again, Molly Ivins Roast.'"