On Fear (Kindle Single)

The Family Tooth #2

by Ellis Avery

After three years on a drug called Humira, prescribed for a crippling autoimmune condition, Ellis Avery was diagnosed in 2012 with leiomyosarcoma, a rare uterine cancer, and given a 26% chance of five-year survival. When Avery learned that there was no evidence to show that the radiation and chemo she was offered would save her life, she turned down treatment. But even brave decisions can be suddenly, Avery had to learn how to cope with constant fear – that she had made the wrong choice, that her doctors would call with bad news, that her time was limited. ON FEAR, the second essay in a series on Kindle Singles, tells the story of how Avery learned to live one moment at a time, from meditating to singing in the shower to befriending a black cat named Fumiko. While most readers will never face leiomyosarcoma, all of us sometimes face Avery's essay offers hard-won wisdom, tools, and hope. ON FEAR is the second in a series of essays on grief, illness, and food entitled THE FAMILY TOOTH.Ellis Avery writes from the depths of loss and fear with emotional precision and visceral sensuality. But foremost it’s her ability to attain a graceful, benevolent perspective on it all that makes these essays soar. --Alison Bechdel Ellis Avery uses her novelist's powers to tell the true story of her life in crisis. She faces her mother's death and her own near-death with an artist's intelligence and imagination--and humor. Reading these essays brings tears of grief and laughter. --Maxine Hong Kingston Ellis Avery captures the stillness and the drama of everyday life with elegance and poetry, never shying away from the struggles that make us human. --Michelle Tea About the The only writer ever to have received the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Fiction twice, Ellis Avery is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a book of poetry. Her novels, THE LAST NUDE (Riverhead 2012) and THE TEAHOUSE FIRE (Riverhead 2006) have also received Lambda, Ohioana, and Golden Crown awards, and her work has been translated into six languages. Avery edits an urban observations column for Public Books, works one-on-one with writers as a manuscript consultant, and teaches fiction writing at Columbia University. www.ellisavery.comCover design by Kerry Ellis.

18 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 26, 2015

About the author

The only writer ever to have received the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Fiction twice, Ellis Avery is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a book of poetry. Her novels, The Last Nude (Riverhead 2012) and The Teahouse Fire (Riverhead 2006) have also received Lambda, Ohioana, and Golden Crown awards, and her work has been translated into six languages. She teaches fiction writing at Columbia University and out of her home in the West Village.

Raised in Columbus, Ohio and Princeton, New Jersey, Avery’s first love as a reader was the high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin. In her teenage years, she discovered writers like Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf, whose lush specificity tempted her back to the waking world.

Interested in the overlap between theater, anthropology, and religion, Avery pursued an independent major in Performance Studies at Bryn Mawr College, graduating in 1993. She spent the next few years in San Francisco working for queer youth organizations and earning an MFA in Writing from Goddard College’s low residency program. Drawn back to the seasons and architecture of the East Coast, she settled in New York in 1997, where she met her partner of fifteen years, Sharon Marcus.

After personally witnessing the devastation of September 11th, 2001, and the anti-war response that swept the city in its wake, Avery wrote her first book, a personal account of the attacks and their aftermath entitled The Smoke Week. She spent five years studying Japanese language and tea ceremony, including seven months in Kyoto, in order to write her first novel, The Teahouse Fire. A lifelong love of Paris in the 1920s led Avery to write her second novel, The Last Nude, a love letter to Sylvia Beach, founder of Shakespeare and Company bookshop and publisher of Ulysses; to Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast; and to the sleek Art Deco imagery of Tamara de Lempicka.

Reviews

[The Idle Woman · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. In 2009, Ellis Avery was diagnosed with reactive arthritis, a debilitating condition that left her with inflamed joints and limited movement. She was prescribed Humira, a TNF (tumour necrosis factor) blocker, which was hailed as a wonder drug. She was not, however, made aware of research that shows TNF blockers – which prevent the body turning on itself to break down what it incorrectly believes to be tumours – can allow for the development of real cancerous tumours. Through a tragically coincidental series of extremely slim chances, Avery developed uterine fibroids which turn out to be malignant. She developed the rare cancer leiomyosarcoma (‘I felt my future slam shut, as implacable as a shopkeeper’s gate‘). In this essay, she discusses her emotions as she waited for the first post-treatment scan. Stuck in a nightmarish Schrödingersque situation, not knowing whether the scan would be clear or whether her cancer had metastasised, she finds herself obsessively imagining the worst. Fear, as Avery discovers, is a matter of attitude. Taking inspiration from her placid cat Fumiko, she turns her gaze onto fear itself and challenges herself to overcome it. A frank assessment of hope and human frailty at the rock-face, where all our certainties are undermined...

For a post on The Family Tooth, see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2020/02/24/t...

[Prince · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neat

Short and sweet story on overcoming fear by projecting and thinking positively. It's all in your mind.
Great book for all.

[Michael Bratton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Show us your fear

Ellis has put all of herself into this short in order to take us down the long, dark hall of fear that accompanies the unsuspected diagnosis of cancer. She tells of the lessons she learned facing it as well as the courage it takes to make the final decisions on the treatment methods to use, and those to reject. I learned much. Well done.

[Susan Wirman · Rating 4 out of 5]

IMAGINATION

Imagination can hurt you because it can deflect hope and Hope's associate, Cure. This very personal reflection on her o