Informed Consent

She left a copy of INFORMED CONSENT* about breast cancer choices next to the fridge "to destroy my appetite." Then she sat down at the kitchen table with her red vinyl address book and called all of her friends. She used the yellow kitchen wall phone with it's dangling 8 foot rotini phone cord.  "Hi, it's Sonia, I might have cancer!" She was in her glory. She must've called 20 people. Already she had the habit of only eating on weekends when she entertained my father's advertising clients. Only recently did I learn that this extreme dieting and bingeing caused her to have gallstones which then gave her pneumonia and she nearly died in the hospital. I was 15 and this destroyed my appetite.

*Informed Consent  by Jane Cowles, (1976)