Does an apple a day keeps the doctor away, or? I understand all about the benefits of antioxidants interacting with  free radicals. Sort of. But I still want to know how fruits and vegetables are encouraged by health professionals and nutrition experts without any mention of pesticides and carcinogens. It needs to get as much attention as fat, sugar, salt, and calories. More perhaps.

Apples, for example, are the second-most contaminated  fruit on the “Dirty Dozen List” (most contaminated were peaches. ) More than 82% of apples tested had been contaminated with at least two pesticides. Some samples contained  nine different pesticides. All in all, 50 different pesticides were found in the apple sampled.

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/environment/green-living/articles/44303.aspx#ixzz0SshYUVQT

Other fruits and vegetables with too much pesticide residue listed on top of the “Dirty Dozen List”  are spinach, lettuce, green beans,  winter squashes,  peaches, pears, grapes, and cherries. All items the food pyramid shows that I should consume 4-5 servings of each day.

Clearly, there are enormous health benefits that comes from eating fruit and vegetables. Some of the pesticide residue may be reduced by washing and peeling them. But we need to arm ourselves with more facts and less fiction about what it is good for us. We need to be  better informed in order to make healthy choices about what  type of fruit and vegetables we digest and how they need to be prepared.

Do I think apples caused my breast cancer? No, I don’t.

But I now believe it is as important to count  carcinogens as it is to count  calories. You never know when and where all those pesticides digested during a life time will come back to haunt you.

The day I have worried about, fought for, and pushed for, is finally here. Last time I had surgery, 26 years ago,  two healthy full-term babies, a boy and a girl, were removed from my body. This time the surgeon will remove a specimen of malignant neoplastic tissue, surrounded, I suppose, by normal grizzle and fat. (My niece, a medical student, says the inside of a woman’s breast looks like it is filled with spaghetti-Os.)

My cancer cells have been hiding inside me for years, secretly dividing themselves, feeding and growing through angiogenesis until they reached a palpable lump, the size and shape of a hazelnut. Nobody can tell me how this excessive cell division got started. Too much consumption of hormone treated meat and dairy? DDT? Chest X-Rays? Just a DNA roulette?

Nothing to eat or drink after midnight, I am told.  No latte. No orange juice. Not even water. Also, no make up is allowed. They want to see the normal pallor of your skin and be able to tell if your lips turn blue. Normal morning routine takes an hour, including ten minutes for the New York Times. Now  I am showered, dressed, and ready to go in less than 20 minutes.

Summer traffic is sparse and traffic lights line up green, practically all the way. Accompanied by my husband, I arrive way ahead of schedule. We valet park and before I know it, I am back in the outpatient surgery waiting room where I waited an hour only two days earlier. Now, at 7 A.M., the place is filled with couples, one patient and one a “responsible party”  and designated driver. This time I don’t wait.

I am ushered into the inner sanctum almost immediately and shown to a gurney behind some drapes in one of the pre-op units. Over a loud speaker I hear a female voice: Dr. Guru, Dr. Guru, OR 4. OR 4. Holy smoke, my doctor is doing another surgical procedure before mine. How many after me? How does he manage it? How many coffee breaks does he get? None?

It feels strange to arrive  feeling perfectly healthy and normal.   I am weighed in like a prize cow, stripped of my clothes and donned the hideous gown that is supposed to be “one size fits all” but appears to fit no one. My vitals are checked and approved. Within minutes, I have a plastic ID band around my wrist, an IV in my arm, and a  warm blanket around my legs.

I feel like the perfect nursing home specimen as I take a couple of shuffling steps. I  try to  keep my gown closed in the back and the blanket from falling off.  The IV pole rattles and the tube tangles. My whole sorry appearance highlighted by unforgiving sharp ceiling lights. I sink back on my gurney.

On the other side of the curtain, a wife (I assume) and a nurse, both try to talk sense into some confused male. It is hard to tell if he was waking up from anesthesia, or if he is this confused already before his procedure. They shout at him, explain to him, cajole him. But he remains recalcitrant. “No why? No, I don’t want to,” he keeps saying. It is unclear what he doesn’t want to do.

Suddenly my husband is allowed into pre-op and shortly after that comes Dan, my friend Elise’s husband, the anesthesiologist, on his day off! He is dressed in scrubs although his colleague is the one who will put me under. He showed up just for me although he does not really know me. I am Elise’s friend. Why am I not surprised that my dear Elise has such a wonderful husband?

But I cannot socialize for long.  A nurse leads me away. I shuffle behind her, my IV pole swaying, to another waiting room. I am about to recieve the mysterious wires. Before I can ask the nurse exactly what “the wire” means, she is gone. I am alone in a tiny waiting room with three other women, and a young girl.

Sunday dinner with extended family: Sister- and brother-in-law celebrating the return of a lost son. He is now home after two years in Japan, teaching and one year in Vietnam, doing what? We are about to find out. Luke is sensitive, intelligent, and well-informed, I can’t wait to hear about his Asian adventures. Yet on the 10-minute car ride over to their house I feel restless and “antsy.”  My mind is pre-occupied with cancer.

After dinner, we linger around the long dining room table and contemplate Luke’s travel stories while we watch the candles burn down and  sip the last of the wine. I glance at Ellen’s enamel painting of the fruit blossoms, and wonder if the enamel- and paint fumes were what brought on the breast cancer that killed her. She left behind a middle school child and a high school student. I, if it comes to that, will leave behind three college educated, adult children, all gainfully employed with their own health-insurance, cars, and homes.

Still, I feel I have to tell everyone. It would be too awkward to call around the next day, or, God forbid, send a group email. I assume, my cancer announcement will no longer ruin the evening.

Every one reacts calmly and appropriately. They show concern, but don’t seem spooked. Nobody tries to gloss over or dismiss it. Even the family member who seems to most enjoy  “organ recitals” does not share her archive of maladies, not even those with favorable outcomes.

Yet, that night I feel anxious. I sleep poorly in a mix of sugar high from the dessert and the angst of what my diagnosis, now four days old, really means. I am awake at 2.30 A.M; I listen to the steam whistle blow as the train rumbles through the city of Smyrna, or was the train down in Vinings?  I am awake at 3.30 A.M, then again at 4.30 A.M. The alarm goes off at 5.30 A.M. and rescues me from my insomnia, but I am so exhausted I can barely toss the covers aside to climb out of bed.