ILLNESS
My First Chemo to Battle Breast Cancer
April 2018
I was all set to enter the Peace Corps. My departure date of April Fool’s Day was only a few months away. I had just had my fingerprints taken and applied for a new passport. I was worried about someone adopting my dogs and working on getting a renter for the farm while I was away. My health wasn’t even on the radar. The physical was routine, the recruiter and I were primarily concerned with my age and using a squat toilet for two years while I served in Agriculture in Nepal.
The mammogram technician, said my left film was blurry and asked me to stay for another shot. This was a first. I’d had the same technician in the past but this time she seemed a little on edge. Barely a blip on the radar for me.
There was all sorts of confusion in the following days, the auto service kept calling me to schedule a mammogram, and the breast center was calling but when I told them I’d had a mammogram they canceled the follow-up. Finally my doctor called and said something was wrong. I had a sterostatic biopsy, where they drill core samples from areas of concern. It took 3 hours, laying facedown with my left breast through a hole in the table. They inject novocaine and it numbs the area but the nerves they hit register pain as the radiate outside of the numbed area. This procedure left me with a huge amount of bruising, and bleeding from my nipple.
You have two choices to make when you have breast cancer - lumpectomy or mastectomy; and reconstruction during surgery, afterward or not at all. I had neither of those choices. The surgeon’s first words to me, and the only words I heard the day of my diagnosis were these — there are three areas od cancer and the area is diffuse so I don’t think I can get clear margins, I’ll need to do a mastectomy.
I asked for a double mastectomy. I didn’t want to do this again down the road. I wanted the cancer gone.
From there everything is a blur.
You have a team, they guide you through the process. Initially, except in your head, it’s not a big deal. You have surgery, you recover. I had no symptoms, and now I had no breasts. It’s a new reality.
Then chemo, that redefines things. Luckily, at my first chemo appointment a veteran cancer patient (2 time breast cancer and 1 time liver cancer survivor) told me that my chemo was baby chemo - not a lot of side effects.
I held onto that going through the process. Somehow I had Cancer Lite. It helped. When I sat in a room having my baby chemo pumped into my arm, I relaxed a bit and felt like I’d be okay. I was surrounded by people in all states of recovery and decline and that could be terrifying, I felt like I’d dodged a bullet. Later, my oncologist got mad at me for downplaying the strength of my drug combo, telling me it was as likely to kill me, as anyone else’s blend. Damn. Luckily, I was finished with infusions by the time he stripped me of my superhero cape.
My friends and neighbors were awesome, absolutely amazing. I couldn’t have asked for more love and support.
As at the end of Catholic Confession - the doctors, like the priest, send you off with the request to go, and sin no more.
And the appointments stop.
And the care team focuses elsewhere.
Your friends return to their lives
And the routine of your own life comes back to you.
And somehow, everything is different.
