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CLASS OF ’90

Cancer: A Spouse’s Candid View

Kirsten Shank C’90 and Brendan Halpin C’90 with daughter Rowen.

“It has been, to put it mildly, a real bitch of a week,” writes Brendan Halpin C’90 in one entry of a candid memoir about his wife Kirsten Shank’s (C’90) ordeal with breast cancer. When the high-school English teacher got the bad news, he began to put his range of feelings—by turns angry, giddy, bawdy, and anguished—down on paper. The resulting book, It Takes a Worried Man, has been published by Villard. Brendan and Kirsten, who met in the Modern Language House at Penn and now live in Boston, recently spoke to the Gazette about publishing, as well as coping with one’s own—and a partner’s—illness:

Brendan, when and why did you start writing this book?

Brendan: I started writing it about a month after Kirsten was diagnosed, in October 2000. Normally I would bug her when I’m stressing out about something, but she sort of had her own problems. [Writing the book] gave me the illusion of having some control over it. I was able to tell the story the way I wanted to tell it.

It actually sold when I had written about 80 pages. I knew what was good about it was my letting it all hang out. I felt like it was very therapeutic to get all that stuff out, all my annoyances and fears that might have been glossed over if I were trying to write “Chicken Soup for the Soul of Cancer Patients.”

Did the two of you have different ways of coping with Kirsten’s cancer diagnosis?

Kirsten: You read about the stages of grief. I really didn’t go through them in any sequence. It would be anger one day, denial one day. At some point it just kind of mellowed out. It was not so much something I was thinking about all the time. It just sort of becomes who you are and that’s also really weird. That’s an adjustment.

Brendan: It’s pretty much in the book. That is how I dealt with it, by writing this stuff down. It was really sad to me at first. Now I think we’re comfortably back in denial. At least I am. It was just really sad to me. Then you get to a point when she’s in the hospital, and you’re in crisis mode, and in some respects it’s easier, because you just have to get up every day and do your thing.

In your book you talk about the couple from your church who routinely cleaned out your toilets as well as a doctor who rather insensitively gave Kirsten some bad news about her bloodwork results in a quick passing on the street. What would you say have been the high and low points in dealing with other people during this experience?

Brendan: For me [the worst] was the radiologist, who was an incredibly gloomy Gus. His assessment of Kirsten’s case was very negative. There was no human element to what he was saying. It was his way of saying, “Well, this car is totaled.” Though, Kirsten, you may have felt worse about the guy who yanked the hose out of your chest. (They both laugh.)

Kirsten: He came on my case after my mastectomy and reiterated that the car was totaled.

Brendan: The people from church who came over to clean every day, that was pretty spectacular.

Kirsten: And there were three people from church who said, completely unprompted, “Call me anytime at all, even if it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and you need a ride to the hospital.” And they were very sincere about it. That’s the kind of thing that allows you to relax.

What do you wish that health-care professionals knew about interacting with patients who have serious illnesses?

Kirsten: I wish they weren’t so afraid of being positive and giving hope. It seems they are very constrained. Most professionals I’ve dealt with have been pretty sensitive. But I always complain. I want a doctor who tells me the truth and is realistic, but I also want a doctor who walks in the door and says, “You look great! You’re going to live to be 80.” And they will not do it.

Brendan: I felt like they hand you this information that has this huge impact on your life and you just sort of have to go away and make sense of it yourself. I hardly ever felt like there was a real appreciation for what a life-changing event it was for us.

Kirsten: It’s just sort of understood you need a medical doctor to get through this. I almost feel like you should be assigned a social worker or a therapist. If you walked in the door and they said, “Here’s your radiologist, here’s your oncologist, here’s your therapist …”

Brendan: “Here’s your keg ...”

Humor seems to be a large part of how both of you have dealt with this crisis. I recall one scene in the book, where the doctor brings out a container of iodine with a red-handled sponge and Kirsten asks, “Hey, are you going to spread Cheez Whiz with that?” How much did you find it creeping in during moments that on the surface, certainly, would not seem to be funny?

Brendan: I wasn’t really surprised we were making jokes the whole time.

Kirsten: [When painkillers were discussed], I was always asking doctors and nurses, “Can I get the heroin?” [They would give her strange looks.]

Kirsten, how are you doing now?

Kirsten: I’m doing okay. I had a setback. The bone-marrow transplant didn’t really take. I somehow absorbed from [the doctors] that I could expect a few years of going along okay and not having treatments. So that was sad news. I [only] got six months’ remission. The good news is that though I’m in treatment again, it’s not bad treatment. I can still work [at a non-profit, training immigrants and refugees to get jobs in the service industry]. I have my hair again.

The doctors now are talking to me using this analogy of diabetes. It’s a serious health problem that requires constant monitoring and treatment, but it’s not going to take me out right now. None of my organs is compromised.

Copyright 2002 The Pennsylvania Gazette Last modified 4/28/02