After finishing chemo in May 2007, I had a follow-up CATscan, then a meeting with my gynecologic oncologist.

“It all looks good,” he told me as he entered the examining room.

“What’s my CA-125?” I asked, referring to the tumor marker that isn’t always accurate, but to which my body was sensitive.

“Let me check,” he replied, wheeling his three-legged stool over to the monitor and tunelessly whistling between his teeth as he accessed my records.

“Ten.”

This was good news. Normal is 35 and under; my initial number had been 96.

“You know you won’t get your strength back all at once,” he cautioned me. “If anything goes wrong, you will call me. Otherwise, I’ll see you in three months.”

“But what do I do?” I was scared to be out of his sight, away from my nurses, for that long.

He settled in for a chat, as if he had all the time in the world, one of the reasons (along with that saving my life thing) that I love him. “The first time someone asked me that question, I didn’t understand it,” he told me. “Live your life. Go out to eat with your friends. Have a glass of wine.” (He knew I didn’t have family nearby, but not that I didn’t drink.) “It’s probably a good idea to stay away from chemical cleaning products. And we’d all be better off not eating processed food.”

He stood up and put out his hand. I didn’t have the nerve to hug him. When he walked out, I began to cry, just a little, because I owed him so much and would never find the right words to thank him. I went outside with my chemo nurse and another nurse took our picture, me wearing my favorite hat, her with the mega-watt smile.

During chemo, a friend of mine had advised, “Don’t get used to this, because it will end.” This referred to all the attention and care I was getting. Once I adjusted and stopped saying I was fine and could handle everything on my own—a tendency I call “single woman syndrome”—the help was precious to me.

I got used to having to check in with my priest after every chemo or surgery. “You or one of your agents will call me,” she demanded. She liked it best when I called, so she could hear my voice and judge my state from how I sounded. “Just like a mom,” another friend said. “She is a mom,” I answered, knowing her sons.

But after I was released, I felt as if I’d just gotten to the end of a scene I was reading in a Shakespeare play. Exeunt omnes, the stage directions said, and everyone walked off, stage left. My friends didn’t desert me, but they—like my doctor and nurses—weren’t around all the time. People stopped worrying so much; I’d made it through the worst of it, was going to be all right.

A friend of a friend advised that six weeks after chemo I’d start feeling like myself again. So I began walking a little as I waited, to build my strength; walking had been part of my life for more than a decade. I finally went to a dermatologist to deal with my cradle cap, and was given yet more steroids, which allowed my scalp to heal. It was summer, and warm; my hair came back gradually, little bits of fuzz. As is often the case, I got curls when my hair grew in. My stylist said it would be a year to 18 months before “my” hair came back. I hated my curls, though other people loved them. Every time I looked in the mirror, the curls reminded me that I’d taken in chemicals that had changed me.

People talked about finding a new normal. To do so, I first went into therapy. My counselor was another ovarian cancer survivor, only a few months ahead of me in the process. I needed someone who understood, in her body, what I had been through.

We liked each other, and I found it comforting to be able to speak the words I didn’t let myself use with my friends. One afternoon I talked about what I considered a real possibility—dying.

“If I die now,” she said matter-of-factly, “it won’t be a tragedy. I’ve raised my children; I’ve had a career. It will be sad, but it won’t be tragic. When a young woman dies of cancer, that’s tragic. My death will just be sad, and people will get over it.”

We were about the same age. I didn’t have children, but I’d written a book, had some articles and poems in print, made and kept some marvelous friends, earned advanced degrees. I’d done what I wanted to do. My death wouldn’t be a tragedy, either.

To keep some kind of therapy going after my insurance company deemed me better, I also joined two support groups—one for women cancer survivors, one specifically for ovarian cancer survivors. The latter group led me to Survivors Teaching Students, a program that allows us to share our stories with students in medical and nursing schools. It’s a great way to give back and to try to save lives by increasing awareness of the subtle symptoms.

My second step was to start looking for natural cleaning products—Better Basics for the Home, written by Annie Berthold-Bond, whose allergies made cancer look almost easy, offered a collection of recipes for making not only my own soap or shampoo, but also almost everything else, including paint and Play-dough. Sidebars contained warnings about all sorts of substances I’d never thought about—sulfates, parabens, phlates—that were in nearly every product I put on my body. I began reading labels for my body care products.

More research online led me to Safe Cosmetics database, http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/. Trust me, you won’t find many of the major brands—from either drugstores or fancy department store makeup counters—listed there as being safe. And please don’t believe that every product that claims to be natural or contain botanicals is safe. The European Union regulates the use of chemicals in beauty products. The United States does not; cosmetic companies do not have to list every ingredient, claiming proprietary formulae. Think about what must be in lipstick advertising it stays on through a kiss.

In any case, I doubt that any regulatory agency has enough personnel to successfully monitor what goes into my lipstick. (There’s the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011 out there to update the existing 1938 regulations, but it hasn’t passed Congress yet. Some makeup still contains lead or formaldehyde. The bill would give the FDA jurisdiction over personal care products—that would be the same FDA that doesn’t have enough funding to fully test drugs before they enter the market.)

I tossed out my makeup, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, and soap. I gathered bottles and jars but ultimately was unwilling to make my own products; I went to health food stores, Trader Joe’s, or a Whole Foods an hour away to replace them. It costs more to keep the chemicals out. But if I couldn’t pronounce the ingredients or didn’t know what they were, I didn’t buy. I quit buying perfume as well—who knew what I was spraying on my skin?

No more chemicals for me—I’d had enough in chemo, which meant I also gave up coloring my hair. I’d been coloring it since those dreadful frosting kits of my twenties— for a fashion statement at first, then to cover gray. I knew there would come a day when I’d stop coloring, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon, or because of cancer. In poor lighting, I can convince myself I’m still a woman with brown hair. Under the fluorescent lights at the hairdresser’s, I cannot escape the reality of all the gray-turning-to-white. I look at the cut hair lying on the cape and say, “It looks like rabbit fur,” a blend of shades, none especially attractive. My stylist laughs and agrees. I tell him he forgot to take the tinsel out. I look washed-out now, old, my true age—no more artifice.

The third piece of finding a new normal involved changing what I ate. My therapist sent me to a nutritionist who studies the link between cancer and food. He had a draconian list of what not to eat: no gluten, no poultry, no bananas, kiwi, avocado, nuts or nut butters, seeds, chips, trail mix, or granola. I was to eat fresh, organic, local, in season fruits and vegetables. “Eat like it’s 1950,” he said. “I’d be happier if we went back to 1900, but I’ll take 1950.” Cook with olive oil, butter, or lard. Take a ton of supplements, because we’ve lost nutrients in food that’s grown with chemicals. Especially take lots of fish oil because of omega-3 deficiencies. Our bodies are out of balance; nearly everything we eat has some form of corn in it, so we have too much omega-6, he explained.

I’ve never cared for kiwi or avocado (I have a thing about green fruit—I even like my grapes red or black), but giving up gluten was a problem. I loved it in every form and also loved the convenience of sandwiches and pasta. Now I sometimes dream about eating gluten.

“I know I don’t have celiac,” I told the nutrition guru on a follow-up visit. “Give me the blood test and I’ll prove it. It’s too hard to give up gluten if I’m not sensitive to wheat. I won’t do it.”

The blood test showed that I have both genes indicating celiac, an autoimmune disease in which the body views gluten as the enemy and begins to destroy the small intestines. If untreated, celiac can lead to colon cancer, to which, I later learned, I was already more prone because of having ovarian cancer. I didn’t get violently ill when I ate gluten, as many people with celiac do, but I was concerned about the cancer. Still, I spent a year fighting the diagnosis, even after the blood work, and cheating often.

I bought gluten-free home-baked goods at the farmer’s market the next spring, made by a zealot who had gotten dreadfully ill with celiac. “If we wore our intestines on our outsides instead of our insides, and you could see what you are doing when you cheat, you’d never cheat again,” she assured me. The prospect was not appealing. I knew when I ate gluten, even accidentally, because my left wrist swelled (acute inflammation, the doctor called it). I began to imagine what might be happening to my intestines if my wrist were swelling. I have a vivid imagination, so I began to adapt my life to cornbread, rice, quinoa, and potatoes.

Once I’d read enough labels, giving up gluten simplified grocery shopping. If an item is located in the middle of the store, I probably can’t eat it. My diet is now based on a little fish and meat, a little dairy, fruits and vegetables, and whole grains other than wheat, rye, and barley. Not only can I not buy most packaged baked goods, but I’ve also learned that nearly everything—even soy sauce and canned soup—has wheat in it.

It wasn’t fair that I should have celiac on top of cancer, but life isn’t fair. One of the sources I read said celiac in adults often requires a “trigger event.” Included in the list of such possible triggers was chemotherapy. Along with the mild hearing loss, tintinnitus, and neuropathy, I now had one more thing I could blame on chemo.

            It’s impossible to know if any of these major life changes have been the key to my remaining free of the dangerous cancer. Taking these three steps, however, gave me something to DO, when the medical world stopped doing for (or to) me. I began to live in three-month increments, between check-ups. The appointments stretched to four months, then to six. Most of the time now, I feel normal, whatever that means.