Let me tell you: there’s nothing quite like discussing organized crime with your plastic surgeon while lying topless in an exam chair as she fills a very large syringe with saline and injects it directly into your tissue expander.
Sometimes I still wonder how this became normal.
This appointment was back in late February, and I honestly don’t remember how we got onto the topic of “why does Alli have cancer?” but at some point my plastic surgeon, Dr. Hammer, started asking what theories I’d come across.
“Microplastics!” I shouted immediately, again, lying topless in her chair staring at the ceiling while my best friend—who had accompanied me to my appointments that day—giggled from across the room.
We all agreed this might be true but there isn’t clear science to prove it.
“Possible,” Dr. Hammer said. “And another?”
“I dunno,” I said.
“The Covid vaccine,” she said.
“Cool,” I replied. “So I could either have cancer or have died from Covid.”
I’m not particularly interested in entertaining that one.
Then she asked:
“You’re from here, right? Virginia?”
“I was born in Virginia but mostly grew up in Maryland,” I said.
“Where in Maryland?” she asked, “Along the Bay?”
“No,” I said, “But I did live in Annapolis for a year. Why?”
And then she tells me this:
Apparently there’s been an uptick in cancer diagnoses among people living along parts of the Chesapeake Bay. Not just isolated cases either. Entire families. One person gets cancer, then another, then the dog, then the chickens.
Look.
The second best thing to discuss with your plastic surgeon—again, while topless, while she injects saline into your fake boob—is, apparently, chicken cancer.
Chicken cancer!
OK.
So, seriously: why are people along the Bay getting cancer?
The Italian Mafia.
Seriously.
The theory goes something like this: organized crime has long been involved in waste management around New York. And if you are, hypothetically, both powerful and “ethically flexible,” why go through all the expensive regulatory processes for disposing toxic waste properly when you could allegedly just… drive it south and dump it near waterways feeding into the Chesapeake Bay?
And then all of that contamination flows downstream into the Bay.
And then the people and the dogs and the chickens and, apparently, I get cancer.
You think I’m joking.
But let me tell you the actual best part:
At my next expander fill appointment, I asked follow-up questions about this theory—my step mom was as nerdily interested as I was, so I had to learn more—and before I left, Dr. Hammer handed me printed articles about environmental contaminants in the Chesapeake watershed.
This is very important business, after all.
I told you I have the best team ever.
If you’re interested in reading more, here are the articles she gave me:
- Researchers find cancer-causing metals in a Chesapeake Bay tributary adjacent to a coal ash landfill
- Bay scientists turn attention to ecological impacts of “forever chemicals”
My takeaway: maybe I should have eaten less blue crab?
Never.
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