Laura Roppé - Rocking the Pink: Finding Myself on the Other Side of Cancer

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Book:
Rocking the Pink: Finding Myself on the Other Side of Cancer
Author:
Laura Ropp
Publisher:
Basic Books
Genre:
Books / Detective and thriller
Year:
2012
Rating:
4 / 5
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Rocking the Pink: Finding Myself on the Other Side of Cancer: summary, description and annotation

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In 2008, just as Laura Ropp was poised to burst onto the music scene, her doctor called her with news that left her spinningshe had been diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of breast cancer. Just days earlier, she had signed a dream-come-true contract with a record label; now, she wasnt even sure how much longer she had to live.

Never one to back down to a challenge, however, Ropp gathered her courage, took stock of her priorities, and made a decision: Cancer may take my hair, she told herself, but thats all its getting. More than a cancer journey, Rocking the Pink is a quirky, charming, and poignant ode to love, friendship, and music. Ropp is unflinchingly honest and unfailingly funny as she tells the story of her odyssey: from childhood dreamer and giddy valet parker to the Hollywood stars to disillusioned lawyer, wife, and mother; from budding songwriter and late-blooming recording artist to determined cancer survivor.

Full of raw emotion and humor that will make you laugh through your tears, Rocking the Pink is a chronicle of discovering one's true self through lifes difficult circumstancesand a testament to the hang-in-tough, take-no-prisoners attitude it takes to kick cancers butt.

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Table of Contents

For Brad, my love.
For Sophie, my compass.
For Chloe, my future coconspirator.

Throughout the telling of this story, Laura Ropp references several of her self-penned songs, either as a plot point or as a lyrical window into her thoughts in a particular situation. To find out how to download some of Lauras music for free, go to www.rockingthepink.com.

Chapter 1

On a sunny morning in mid-October 2008, a whiplash-inducing phone call from my surgeon hijacked my life to the hinterlands of hell. It was a startling reversal of fortune: That very day, the Los Angeles Daily Journal had featured a two-page article about me entitled In the Long Run, San Diego Lawyer Decides to Face the Music, and I was squealing with delight as I devoured every complimentary word. The article detailed how Id been inspired to follow my midlife musical dreams after running my first full marathon.

Id had an implausible stretch of good luck since Id released my album two months earliermy new record label was about to fly me to England to shoot a music video!and now here was my elated face, smack on the front page of a respected newspaper. The photo was flattering, thankfullymy Jay Leno chin was barely noticeable as my body leaned over the impressive control panel in the recording studio. I reached for the phone, bursting at the seams to share this triumph with my husband, Brad.

Just as I was about to dial, my surgeon called.

Oh, yeah, that whole thing.

Three days earlier, mostly to placate Brad, Id gone in for a biopsy of an almost certainly benign lump in my left breast. I wasnt alarmed. I knew I didnt have cancer. Even uttering the C-word sounded melodramatic, like an attention-seeking stunt. I was only thirty-seven, and there was no history of the disease in my family. Plus, Id just run a marathon, for Petes sake.

Oh, hi, Doc, I greeted him. How are you? I paused, expecting to hear his relieved chuckle.

Laura, the doctor began. He wasnt chuckling. My stomach lurched unexpectedly as he cleared his throat. Ive got some bad news...

I didnt recognize my own voice as I let out a rasping wail. My legs gave way, and I collapsed onto the couch.

The doctor was still talking. His words came to me in fragments, as if he had bad cell phone reception:... down to my office right away... treatment plan... so sorry...

My brain was melting down. Had he just used the word cancer? About me?

Brad. That was all I could think, over and over again. I struggled to remember his phone number at work, a number Id called a million times. I finally got through and heard his familiar, unsuspecting voice.

Brad, I gasped. My voice sounded garbled and foreign to me.

Babe, can I call you right back? Ive got to

Its cancer, Buddy. Come home! I was bawling. Come home. Right now! I was shrieking.

Im on my way, he said, panic raging underneath his controlled voice.

I couldnt remember who Id been before I loved Brad. I had to go way backto memories of losing a tooth or hanging Duran Duran posters on my bedroom wallsto conjure a firm recollection of my pre-Brad self. Id met him twenty-three years earlier, at a summer party when I was fourteen years old, though Id lied and said I was fifteen. Not the best way to start off ones relationship with a future spouse, but who knew I was meeting my future husband at fourteen years old? And, in my defense, I was just two months shy of my birthday, so I was practically fifteen.

Brad was sixteen years old, and in the prime of health and fitness, when I first laid eyes on him. He had just competed in a triathlon, and he had the eight-pack abs to prove it. He stood six feet, four inches tall and had blond hair and blue eyesa classic California surfer boy. He would have caught any girls eye. Except mine. No, I didnt notice Brad at first, because I had my eye on an age-inappropriate lifeguard at the party (who, to his credit, wasnt the least bit interested in a fourteen-year-old child). While my boy-crazy eye was trained on that curly-haired lifeguard, Brad approached and invited me to walk on the beach. I figured, why not?

As we ambled along the waterline, I noticed his wildly patterned, electric blue, baggy pants.

I like your pants, I said in earnest.

Thanks. My grandma made em for me.

Well, that was adorable. And sort of... rogue, in a perverse way. And, coincidentally, that very night, I was sporting bright yellow shorts dotted with pineapples, paired with a mismatched Hawaiian shirtmy own way of railing against the ubiquitous preppy look of the day. We looked good together, in a Jackson Pollock sort of way.

Brad was a year ahead of me in school. Hed been class president. And he loved to surf and spearfish. Spearfish? Like Christopher Atkins in The Blue Lagoon? He told me my brown eyes were hypnotizing him. I blushed.

Are your parents married? I asked, changing the subject.

Divorced. When I was nine. I live with my dad and brother.

Mine, too. When I was seven. I live with my mom and sister. Our symmetry was obvious. We just fit.

Out of sheer glee, I spontaneously rolled down a sand dune on the beach, just for the fun of it. He thought that was funny, and he let out a silly, high-pitched laugh that cracked me up. And then he kissed me, and the resulting tingles shot all the way down to my toes. An hour of talking and kissing later, Brad asked, Can I give you a lift home in my Vette?

Sounds great.

When we had reached Brads car, a short distance away, I was surprised to find a worn-out, steel gray Chevy Chevette sitting in front of me. Nice Vette, I giggled. This was not the sparkling Corvette I had envisioned. And that suited me just fine. Considerably charmed, I got into the car.

After Brad had dropped me off at home, I crawled into bed, exhausted but floating on cloud nine. Five minutes later, before I could even drift off to sleep, my phone rang. It was Brad, calling to say good night, a romantic gesture in the age before cell phones.

Can I see you tomorrow? Brad wanted to know.

Of course. I smiled into the phone. Good night.

Who on earth has her actual, handwritten diary from the day she met her future husband, at age fourteen? Well, I do. I must be one of, like, seven people in the history of the world. At any rate, my diary entry from August 20, 1985, states:

I have met someone who [sic] I really like.... Brad is the most wonderful, thoughtful, sincere, loveable, sensitive, cute person Ive ever met.... Hes so wonderful, Im positive you ll be hearing about him for a long time to come.

Supernatural psychic? Probably not. Despite my apparent gift for prophesy at age fourteen, I had no idea what a long time to come meant. One week was an eternity for me. I could not have predicted that eight years later, Brad and I would vow to love, honor, and cherish each other, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. I had no idea that ten years after that first night, Brad and I would toss our law school graduation caps into the airor that I would later ditch my successful but unfulfilling legal career in a late-blooming effort to become a rock star. And, especially inconceivable to me on that first, magical night in 1985, at the tender age of fourteen, was the fact that, twenty-three years and two months later, I would clutch Brad for dear life, sobbing into his arms, having heard the doctor say breast cancer and aggressive and chemotherapy. No, I didnt know any of those things on that first night. All I knew then, deep in my bones, was that I loved that boy.

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