The four movies that got me through my big health scare

This is how I process.

September is not my month. Summer is my favourite season, and I hate to see it go. September is also too early to really be spooky season, and even further away from the other late-year things I love, such as my birthday, and Thanksgiving. September just feels like the end of something and the beginning of nothing besides my seasonal depression. And, as of last year, September is now the anniversary of my biggest health scare to date.

At the beginning of the month, I told my primary care physician that my appetite had been off the whole summer. Specifically, I was getting full faster than usual, and not able to finish my meals. After asking a few diagnostic questions, she told me she was scheduling me for a pelvic ultrasound, because “my first thought is ovarian cancer. And I want to rule that out right away.”

I am endlessly grateful to my PCP for bucking the trend and taking my symptoms seriously. As a Black woman in this country, I don’t take that for granted at all. But damn, sis—could you have maybe led with your second thought?

I spent the next several months physically incapable of processing what I was going through. I told a handful of dear ones what was happening, but couldn’t engage with how they were feeling about it, because I couldn’t even engage with how I was feeling about it. I’m not usually an emotionally avoidant person—I love a good wallow—but something kicked in and didn’t switch off until I was in the clear, health-wise.

Still, being me, I did manage to engage with movies during this time. Four movies in particular stand as milestones of this odd but wildly common little journey of mine. And, being me, I want to use these movies to talk about it.

Spoilers ensue. But you already knew.

Alien³

I got my ultrasound within a fortnight of my appointment with my PCP, and beyond having to fill my bladder beyond a reasonable amount, it was painless. After that, all I had to do was wait on the results that would rule out cancer. Consciously, I wasn’t feeling any specific stress. Unconsciously, I was fixated on death, but not my own, which tends to happen when I’m depressed. And I was waking up at 2:00am and staying up for two to three hours. The 2:00am before I got my ultrasound results, I woke up and decided to put on David Fincher’s Alien³. I have it tagged as a Depression Watch in my Letterboxd diary. When I’m in a depressive state, sometimes I look for a pick-me-up. But more often, I seek out movies that reflect my current state of mind back to me. That could be something outrageously cynical, like The Death of Stalin; or something perversely empowering, like Midsommar or the 2017 Suspiria remake. On this particular night, I figured that Fincher’s poignant nihilism would reflect me perfectly. Alas, the reflection was a little too perfect, thanks to the cat scan scene I had entirely forgotten was in the movie:

“I think you’ve got one inside of you.”
“That’s not possible…What does it look like?”
“…horrible.”

In which we learn that Ripley, hero/longtime survivor/cat lady of the franchise, finally had a xenomorph embryo nestled inside her. At which point, all I could do was laugh at the fact that my subconscious was about as subtle as Leo’s in Inception.

Less than 12 hours later, my doctor called to let me know that my ultrasound had turned up a “worrying” mass in my uterus that they couldn’t identify. I would need to schedule a biopsy to determine whether this was a polyp, a fibroid, or “something more challenging.”

Something more challenging.

I was in D.C. for work, and specifically had to attend a work function that night. So not only was I away from my wife and my home, but I had to shine it on for my bosses, colleagues, and clients while holding this doom-laden news in my head. All of my tried and true Eldest Daughter of Immigrants coping mechanisms locked into place. Conceal, don’t feel, etc etc. Despite six years of excellent (and ongoing) therapy, muscle memory is a hell of a thing. And it’s a survival tactic for a reason: as avoidant as it accidentally was, this emotional detachment really carried me through the ensuing ambiguity.

Howl’s Moving Castle

After that night’s work function, I decided my obsessively morbid subconscious needed some countervailing forces. I needed a tender, hopeful, loving pick-me-up rather than another “the only way out is throwing myself into a lava pit in front of intergalactic corporate goons” flick. Enter, my favourite Hayao Miyazaki picture.

I’m pretty new to Studio Ghibli movies, having only started watching them when they became available on HBO (I’m deadnaming, Zaslav can eat me). The best I’ve seen, I think, is Spirited Away. Ponyo has a scene so visually stunning and emotionally familiar that I burst into tears the first time I watched it (Alison Willmore calls this “the spectacle cry”). The one I feel the strongest kinship with is Porco Rosso (an antifascist Italian fighter pilot whose survivor guilt turned him into a pig—finally I am represented onscreen!). But my favourite is the sweepingly romantic Howl’s Moving Castle. I’m a sucker for a good waltz, and Joe Hisaishi wrote an all-timer here. I love every character to pieces. And I love the Miyazaki principle that there’s no antagonist we can’t win over and add to our makeshift family, bound together by love, forgiveness, and the coziest looking breakfast ever animated. This movie is a balm for my soul, and I’m very glad I watched it exactly when I did. I couldn’t have needed it more.

I think having a Calcifer skillet would fix me.

The next day, the OB/GYN schedulers called to let me know that the soonest available biopsy appointment was the Monday before Thanksgiving, a good 9 weeks away. I could deal with the ambiguity as long as I had a clear deadline by which it would end, so I agreed with little fuss.

Arrival

It’s the day after my scheduled biopsy, and I am very fussed. At my appointment, my surgeon came in and very confidently diagnosed me as having polyps—so confidently, in fact, that she said she didn’t need to biopsy me at all. She would just do a standard gynecological exam and send me on my way to await a call from the surgical schedulers. When I pushed back, saying I had come to this appointment (and my sister had flown up, for moral support) specifically expecting a biopsy and therefore some new information, the surgeon scoffed. “You sound so disappointed that I’m not going to torture you twice!” At this point, the combination of confused disappointment and my general panic whenever I’m faced with a menacingly chaotic Black woman who treats me like a child simply collapsed my brain. There didn’t seem to be any choice but to accept that I wouldn’t get answers about what was happening to my body this week. The surgeon wouldn’t even answer my questions about the surgery.

“How soon can we schedule the surgery for, then?”
“Oh, the schedulers will call you and find a time.”
“Ok, let me ask this way: how packed does your schedule look right now?”
“Don’t ask me, I just work here! The schedulers know it all.”

At this point, I went into a furious and embarrassed fugue state, so who knows what else I said to her. I just remember telling my wife and sister, “I know I didn’t get a biopsy, but now I’m too upset to function, so we’re going to do everything that I want.” That “everything” included getting an emergency Cinnabon, catching up on Rap Sh!t, and re-watching Arrival. Because to me, Arrival is perfect, and my wasted heart will love it until I am death process.

Gone too soon, lil homie 🥺

I first watched this movie on a plane, and almost had an asthma attack from crying so hard. The themes of time and memory being non-linear, of seeking connection rather than assuming threat, and of choosing joy knowing that it will inevitably bring pain, all feel like they flew straight from my soul and onto the screen. Just because of her work in this movie, I consider an Oscar to be beneath Amy Adams and her towering talent. And the climactic montage where all the themes come together, and Amy Adams is experiencing every human emotion, and the strings are building and building—all of that finally unlocked the tears that I hadn’t shed since July. The tears I desperately needed. I finally felt close to human again.

Cléo from 5 to 7

I had my surgery about a month after my non-biopsy, right before Christmas. The surgery went perfectly well, according to my surgeon (gotta love¹ that confidence!), and the polyps (phew) were neatly and discreetly removed. I spend the next three days sleeping it off, and the next few weeks letting my body recover slowly from the first major surgery of my life.

During that recovery time, I pulled the classic move of starting a free Criterion Collection trial with the full intention of watching as many movies as possible before cancelling before they started charging me. (In case you’re wondering, I’m nine months into this subscription and I have never, ever been happier.) My first mission was to immerse myself in the French New Wave, and one of the first movies I picked was Cléo from 5 to 7. I didn’t know anything about it beyond that it was directed by Agnès Varda, a pillar of the French New Wave movement; and that it was in real time, from 5:00 to 6:30pm. I especially didn’t know that the 6:30pm that Cléo is moving towards is a doctor’s appointment where she would learn the results of her biopsy and know whether or not she has cancer.

lol. lmao.

Just like with Alien³, my subconscious came storming into the foreground. I turned to my wife, agog, and said “holy shit, hon. I spent three months not knowing if I had cancer.” Truly, the word “cancer” had just barely occurred to me until then. In the weeks leading up to my surgery, I started to feel an unshakable dread. All I could name was that “it feels like something is wrong.” Until I watched this blonde French woman in 1962 processing her feelings about possibly having cancer, I couldn’t even access my full spectrum of emotions.

A week later, I asked my therapist about this delayed reaction. She told me that cinema therapy is, in fact, a thing, like art or music therapy. It can be extremely helpful to see stories play out onscreen, for insight, inspiration, catharsis, or connection. Maybe this is one of my neurospicy symptoms, maybe not. But movies have always helped me make sense of my world. And these were the four that helped me at least feel around the edges of what I was going through.

Grâce à Cléo, et bonne chance!

1. I do not gotta love that confidence.