It Was An Emotional Day

It was an emotional day.  (What?  You don't think I have those?)  I had a 10am visit scheduled with my surgeon where she would either have some or all or none of the pathology reports from Friday's surgery. These reports would give us more details about the cancer they removed - how quickly it spreads, how quickly it returns, how invasive it is, whether any more was found, whether the margins were clear.  And from this and more we would know what stage cancer I have and what treatments might follow - chemo, radiation, tamoxifen.  So, I was a little emotional.

To add to the fun, I have had a drain tube coming out of my chest since Friday.  Should I take a minute to accurately describe this for you? It is a clear plastic tube that goes from me to a cylinder and collects my blood. It's pretty f--ing horrendous to look at and also pretty f--ing difficult to hide from your friends who come to visit. I have to empty it three times a day to see how much blood is draining from what was once my boob and when it measures under 30ml in one day I can call my doctor and say "Get this fucking thing out of me." But it gets better. The tube is not just delicately collecting in one spot at the base of my surgery. It is waaaaay up and aaaaalll around the surgery site, with little holes in it like a garden hose collecting eeeeeverywhere.   (Go ahead and throw up.  I'll wait). Also, even though I hate its guts, I have to carry it around like a new born baby because the very last thing you want your drain tube to do is free fall.

So I have aged about 47 years in the past few days because I am hunched over, wearing large over-sized alpaca sweaters, clutching a blood drain to my chest, walking assisted, going to the bathroom assisted, getting dressed assisted, and taking assisted sponge baths.  Somebody shoot me.

Luckily, today was the day to remove the tube.  Unluckily, I had to be present.

At 10am, Mom, Michael, and I arrive at the Cancer Center to sit down with the breast surgeon and get pathology results.  I had been crying all morning.  I cried eating my banana.  I cried putting on my shoes.  I cried waiting for the nurse to call my name.  So I did not see the funny when the she kept calling Laura Fikaly for my appointment time because she had the wrong name and the wrong file and the wrong EVERYTHING!!  (cry, cry, cry).  And this was pretty much the state I was in when I finally went back to the exam room.  The nurse took my vitals and I cried and she asked me if I was okay.  "What the fuck is wrong with you people?!  You work in a Cancer Center.  Why are you asking me if I am okay?  Why are you confused that I am crying?!?!  Do you think it might be because I have CANCER!?!?!?!?!"

Ahem.

Enter Doc:  She has heard that I am emotional.  She asks me if I am taking my pain medication and I say I am not in pain anymore, so no I am not, and she says I should probably still take my Valium.

Me: "Point taken.  Now tell me what's going to happen to me next before I rip this room apart."

Pathology results: Cancer cells traveled to only one sentinel node.  This makes it Stage 2.  Cancer cells were also found in two lymph nodes near the tumors, but we don't know if the cancer traveled there or if those nodes were innocent bystanders.  The rest of the breast tissue was clear.  Margins were clear.  And there are three tests for estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 which I don't have a full understanding of yet, but I do remember Doc saying I got the best outcome on those three.  The next step is finding an oncologist who will look at all of the results and recommend treatment, including ordering an Onctoype DX test that will tell us the genetic makeup of my cancer, how likely it is to recur, and whether it will respond to chemo or radiation or other drugs.

Exit Doc.

Enter Social Worker.  "Hello, my name is Sweet Hippy Crazy Hair and I've been called down from the tenth floor because I heard you were having a nervous breakdown in here and I want to let you know that's perfectly normal and having cancer sucks.  Any questions?"

And...scene.

We get the name of an oncologist whose office is twenty steps away and I walk over to make an appointment and her assistant says "She can see you May 20th, is that ok?" 

Me:  "Where am I?  Is this Per Se?  Am I waiting for tickets to the Daily Show?  What makes you think I am going to wait an entire month to see a doctor who is supposed to help me start cancer treatment?  Are you smoking crack?!"

Husband:  "Sweetheart, let's go get you some Valium."


Mom, who was waiting for us in the lobby, couldn't understand what was taking so long so she counted out my Valium pills to determine whether I would notice if one were missing.  Michael started to explain the pathology report to Mom while I fished around in her bag for my drugs.  I popped a little pink pill, sat back and waited for a bit of nirvana to kick in.

When it did, we headed out to see the plastic surgeon to have Baby Tube removed.  I was thankful to be ever so slightly sedated when it came out because it wasn't pleasant (understatement), it hurt, and I didn't care that I said "Fuck" and "Shit." a few times.  I. Did. Not. Care.

And that is Valium.  Nice, huh?  Guess who's about to take another one right now?

Just Showing Up

The best advice came at the eleventh hour. My Aunt Andrea and my friend Joanne both got wind of my anxiety and sent me messages:

"All you have to do is show up."

My therapist essentially gave me this advice on Tuesday as well when she said, "You know, it's not your job to know how anesthesiology works."

Someone should make a bumper sticker.

It didn't keep me from being nervous but eventually I reasoned I couldn't be the only Nervous Nelly showing up for surgery at 6 in the morning. Everyone gets nervous, it's normal, so it's ok. I'm like everyone else and everyone else is like me! (How comforting). When I looked around the waiting room no one looked particularly nervous, however, and I seemed to be the only one doing any clutching - clutching my husband's arm, my bag, my head, my face. There was a young redheaded woman who was going in for something but she was just chatting away with her sister and didn't seemed phased by anything at all. I envied her completely. She was at peace. She saw it for what it was - a surgery that happened every day, many times a day, all across the country and in other countries and there was no reason to think that anything fateful would happen. I was so heartened by her. I was bolstered by her confidence. My eyes followed her, to take her in. I watched her as she walked to the nurses' station to answer questions, including her birth year, 1988, and my world shattered. She was not at peace, she was just in her twenties. Dingbat.

Michael and I were finally called from the waiting room to go into the waiting room. The second waiting room was slightly larger than a crib, with two chairs and a computer. I was given a purple robe in a purple bag and told to refer to the purple chart on the wall for how to put the robe on. I was given a cup to pee in. "Why isn't this purple?" I asked. But no one had any idea what I was talking about.

Nurse #2 came in and asked me the same list of questions I have been asked for two months. The list is extensive and I could probably answer them in my sleep, but it begins with "Do you have any metal in your body?" and ends with "Any removable teeth?"

The plastic surgeon's assistant came in, the plastic surgeon came in, the breast surgeon came in and marked Lefty with an arrow, and finally the anesthesiologist arrived. I told him I was nervous. He told me that was normal and that when we got to the operating room he would give me a little something to take the edge off. I was going to ask if we could do that presently, why wait, but my friend Joanne warned me about being an interactive patient so I held my tongue.

Finally it was time to "go through," as they say in Downton Abbey. Though they mean something entirely different, it's still nice to pretend. I kissed Michael goodbye and as the nurse walked me down the long corridors, we talked about where she lived in Queens because I know absolutely nothing about Queens so I thought that would make for a good lively and distracting conversation.

Then the doors opened to the operating room and I almost pissed myself. The room was HUGE and BRIGHT and WHITE and there was a table for me to lie on in the middle of twenty people in scrubs and masks and two huge lamps hanging overhead and wires and machines and trays and I tried to breathe. And I tried to meditate. And I tried to think of a joke but nothing at all was funny. I tried to pretend I was a patient in a play. I tried to pretend I was having breast cancer in a Nora Ephron movie. None of those things worked so I moved onto ignoring things the way my children do. But an operating room is simply too hard to ignore.

Then the funny happened. When one of the nurses discovered I still had my underwear on, the room came to a halt. Complete and utter silence. No one knew what to do. They all just looked at each other. So I asked "Do I have to take my underwear off when you are operating above my belly button?" And no one knew what to say. "Would you like me to take them off?" I asked. The men were beginning to leave the room and I felt bad so I said "You don't have to leave. I'm in theater. I can take my clothes off anywhere." Silence again. But at least I knew that I was in the hands of professionals.

Once the black bikini thong was in a sterile plastic bag, the IV went in my hand, something went through my veins, and Mr. Anesthesiologist asked me if I was feeling anything yet. I said "No," woke up, and someone handed me a popsicle.

Radiate Me

The challenge, as though I were on Survivor, which some might argue I am, is to remember the past three days of my life at the same time that I am trying to forget them. I have not yet found the part of my brain that will let me process things as they are currently happening to me, so you'll have to settle for a slight delay on this blog. Since today is Monday, let's talk about Thursday.

The Thursday afternoon injection of the radioactive isotope rocked my world and was, surprisingly, the most pain I had experienced throughout my own breast cancer awareness months. Also, when my life as a patient ends, I may just volunteer at the hospital writing new scripts for nurses and doctors for when they are forced interact with normal people, such as their patients. For example, instead of my nurse casually mentioning that the injection will burn a little, she could have said "Honey, this is going to hurt. Have you ever had your hand chopped off with a machete? It will feel a little bit better than that. Now hold on to this metal pipe and feel free to rip it out of the wall."

As I lay on the table wondering what kind of "burning" I was in for and looking for something to grab, I listened to the nurse from Queens and the doctor from China (like yesterday from China), argue about who had told what to whom and who didn't. I prayed they weren't taking about me and that someone was paying attention enough to inject me with the right burn.

The doctor asked me, in his thick Chinese accent, if I had a scar on my breast. Deduce, deduce quickly, Lauren. He wants to inject on a scar? I lift my head up and point to my core biopsy scar. He says "Oh, ok. So that's at about 2 o'clock on your breast would you say? 3 o'clock? I'll write down between 2 o'clock and 3 o'clock. " I told him it looked like 2:45 and they both laughed out loud indicating to me that their jobs are generally pretty dull.

Finally, I couldn't take the anticipation anymore and I asked the nurse if I could hold her hand. Then the doctor injected me, I squeezed the shit out of the nurse's hand, and when I was just about to break it I eased up a bit. Then I screamed a little and let out a few curse words and they said "Ok, you're done." And I laid there on the table like I'd been shot in a drive-by and I couldn't move. And I kept saying sorry. Sorry for squeezing your hand. Sorry for screaming. Sorry for cursing. Sorry for lying on this table and not getting up. The nurse told me I had a surprising grip but I knew what she really wanted to say was "You're stronger than you look, skinny girl."

Nurse put a bandage on the area of the injection. By the amount of gauze she used, I wondered for a moment if I had already had my mastectomy. Or maybe she was playing it safe. Should I experience a knife wound on my way out of the hospital on 33rd and 1st, I wouldn't have to go all the way up to the second floor again. But the hospital had clearly run out of Gentle Booby Tape for sensitive areas like BREASTS!!!!!! and so the nurse was forced to used duct tape normally reserved for packaging hazardous waste. Well, that would have to do. (Removing that tape later in the evening would be the second most painful experience of breast cancer, ranking well above a mammogram and just below a radioactive injection, for those of you keeping track).

When the orderly came in to clean the room, it became clear I was not going to be able to lie there and take a nap as I had planned. I finally pulled my shit together and got dressed. I roamed the hall for a bathroom and was warned by four or five people to only use the bathroom designate for radioactive people. Radioactive pee pee? Radioactive hand washing? Radioactive soap? What would it all do to you if you were exposed to it? I was about to see my husband and interact with the rest of New York City. Was this safe? My new mantra rose up out of nowhere: Fuck it.

Michael pulled Super Dad duty that day doing "Mystery Reader" for Willa's Pre-K class and then booked it up to the hospital in a cab. He pulled up and I jumped (ok, wormed) in and we drove down to the W Hotel in Union Square. We ate a snack at the bar, went upstairs to our room to watch an episode of Downton Abbey from Season 3, and went back down to dinner to eat some more. It was not at all possible to act normal in these pending hours. But Michael was able to guess what I would order off the menu at Olives: kale salad and salmon with quinoa and vegetables. I looked at the people eating French fries and thought they looked like aliens from another planet.

After that exciting meal, we watched one more episode of Downton Abbey, which, while enjoyable, is really just a way to pass are large amount of time without crying about anything meaningful. Then we set about pretending to sleep, which neither of us did. 5:30am seemed like a world away. And, quite frankly, so did the rest of the world.

Lauren

Hi, it's Michael, so this will be short and not witty.

Lauren's surgery was successful and there were no concerns with the surrounding tissue. However, the first lymph node tested positive for cancer cells, and a few more were removed as a precaution and for testing. The positive test means there may be further follow up treatments, but we won't know until the full pathology of all the removed tissue is done, which is a week or so away.

More to come, but we are happy with the outcome of the surgery. Lauren is wiped out as you can imagine. She has been moved by all of your love and support and asks for your understanding that she will be out of touch for a few days.

Thank you for all your help and support.

Michael

Chapter 6: T minus 20 some-odd hours. I’m not in the mood for math.

Decided to part with Lefty and keep my right side.  Since the odds are in my favor, recovery will be easier, and I’ll spend less time under general anesthesia, among other reasons.  I made the mistake of asking one too many clarifying questions of the anesthesiologist and now I know more than I ever wanted to know about how anesthesia works.   As a result, I’m now worrying/trying not to worry about all the things that could go wrong.  Put differently, I’ve pretty much convinced myself that I won’t wake up.  Not because of anything she said.  Or how young she was.  But because I'm a fatalist.  And I’m really glad that sounds stupid as hell, because I would love to be wrong.

And this is when I smoke a little pot.  Not so much that the neighbors can smell it – just a bit under that.  You know it cures cancer, right?  I heard that somewhere, I don’t remember where exactly, I was stoned.  And I didn’t listen closely at all to the part where you would have to smoke all day long every day without stopping for it have any effect.  And anyway you’ve got to have a goal to work towards, that’s what I always say.

Now please don’t worry.  I’m not smoking every day.  I’m not looking to get throat cancer.  Besides, I have to be alert when the doctor says to me “So when we inject this into your veins, it’s going to make you radioactive.  Don’t hug your kids.”

Hubba wha?! (as Willa would say).  Ok, got it.  I will not hug my kids.  I will not go near my kids.  I will check into a hotel.

And that’s what I’m doing today.  I’m getting radioactive and checking into a hotel.  (That’ll make you think the next time you sleep in a hotel bed).

Here are the D’s.  Friday morning I’m having my left breast removed.  Have I said that already?  I’m also having a sentinel lymph node removed so they can double check that the cancer hasn’t spread (which I’m sure it has because that’s how things work when you’re a fatalist).  In order to see the lymph nodes, I have to get radioactive.  (I don’t really get it either, but sometimes I choose ignorance).  The injection is today at 3pm.  The surgery is tomorrow at 7:30am.  Since I won’t be able to hug my kids today, I thought it would be best for all of us if I ducked out a little early.  Grandmom and Aunt Kate are coming up so the kids won’t even remember who I am.  And Michael and I will have our first date night in over a month (two months?  three?!)  And our first ever radioactive date night.  (Apparently you can be around adults because this level of radioactivity does not affect someone for 60 years and I hope that’s close to accurate).

As far as my timeline for Friday, for those of you who are planning to come to my hospital room to put on a show, here is what I know: I have to arrive Friday at the hospital at 6am.  Surgery is scheduled for 7:30am and takes about an hour and a half.  Two hours if I’m a baby about it.  They’ll wake me up (fingers crossed!!) and take me to a recovery room for a few hours where hopefully I won’t say anything stupid or offensive while I’m on drugs.  Then I’ll head to a room.  Then I’ll spend the night in the hospital getting to know the sick person next to me and watching episodes of Louie.  Maybe two nights if I feel like watching reruns and the kids are being annoying.   According to the Purple Pamphlet, I’m allowed to bring my phone to the hospital, so feel free to text me or email me to make sure I woke up from surgery.  If I’m on some really good post-op drugs, you might get some really great replies.  Don’t hold them against me.

 

And thank you for my gifts!  I have my new PJs packed, and some chocolate, and my stuffed animal ice cream sandwich…

Alright, I’m not gonna lie.  Cancer has been a little like Christmas.  The day I got my results back and I told my friend Beth, she put on her Super Mom cape and baked me EXTRA LARGE banana muffins in the shape of roses.  She also, crazy woman, bought me a really heavy and perfect mortar and pestle because I told her at lunch that I was thinking of getting one.  I think she was trying to show off her muscles by carrying it all the way from her apartment to mine while balancing muffins in a tin.  Beth works out.

My friend Bryant sent over a couple of beautiful flower arrangements, and so did my friends over at WNYC, and so did my mother-in-law.  I had to be careful to spread them out around the house because my apartment was starting to look like a funeral home and I cried because I thought I was dead.

My neighbors upstairs sent me chocolate and red wine.  My neighbors downstairs made me chicken soup.  My friend Susan sent me rocks to calm me down, Bryant brought over the stuffed ice cream sandwich, and my friend Antha sent me pajamas that button down the front for…you don’t want to know.

The package that arrived two days ago from my brothers and sisters was disguised as a birthday gift.  My birthday was 30 days ago, but I think it was more like a Cancer Arrangement.  A little man all but popped out of it and said “CHILL, girlfriend.  You got cancer because you don't know how to CHILL.”  They gave me two relaxation cds and a yoga dvd and a meditation cd and big foot warming fuzzy vibrating thing from Brookstone.  Some DVDs of Modern Family and Portlandia.  And a brand new pipe!  It’s the size of my head, but Kate says the extra space is for water to cool the smoke and she’s going to teach me how to use it this weekend.  If I wake up.

Okay!  I’m only kidding about not waking up.  I’m not 100% convinced of that.  I'm a little less than 100% convinced of that.  This is just me putting all my neuroses up online in a very public place because that’s what people with blogs do.  Like, maybe if I put them here, then I can leave them here.  And I will be rid of them!  (For more tips on how to embarrass yourself online, please visit Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog at www.goop.com).

OK.  Off I go.  I love you!!  I’ll try to post something while I’m under the influence.  For a good laugh.  We all need one.

Chapter 5: Going for a Double or a Single?

We get some good news.  The scans are clear.  There is no cancer anywhere else in my body.  We hug, we breathe.

We look for a plastic surgeon.

It’s a good day when your cancer appointments takes take you somewhere other than the Cancer Center or the hospital.  I'm not knocking the NYU Cancer Center.  It is lovely.  I always think my of sister (alias Mary Poppins) when I walk in.  She is addicted to caring for people and her favorite color is purple.  She would get plenty of both here.  There are purple pens, purple signs, purple clipboards, and purple plants (not really, but there should be).  My favorite purple touches are the Thank You Cards they hand you after every procedure.  They’re a little weird, and it’s a little weird when I say “You’re so welcome!  It was my absolute pleasure to come up here today!”  But I appreciate the gesture. 

They are, however, seriously lacking in one department.  Kleenex.  Would it kill them to put some tissue boxes in the lobby?  And the waiting rooms?  And generally in every room that a person is going to be in.  I know it would be an added expense, especially if they all had to be purple.  But are they on a tight budget?  Maybe.  It’s not like they’re in a booming business like…. cancer.

Where was I?  Oh right, not The Cancer Center.  I was heading to the spa, which is where you might think you are when you walk into a plastic surgeon’s office.  Bright, calming, relaxing, and…optimistic.  A boob job is optimism incarnate.  It means you are going to be around for a while and you may as well spend your remaining time on earth with some new knockers.  So for someone like me, who missed her growth spurt in the chest area, the day is pretty significant.  I am, as my friend Yael puts it, getting my legitimate boob job. 

For a spot of entertainment on the topic, here is a clip from our show Naked in a Fishbowl, where "Bonnie" and "Sophie" discuss the very topic.  It is disturbingly prophetic.

 

When I meet the surgeon for the first time, he may have been thrown and confused by me since I look like I've already had a mastectomy.  He says to me “Well, this will be great!  You’ll finally have some breasts!”  Though he says he won’t take me above a B.  For fear that I would fall over, I suppose.  He doesn’t offer me any breasts to try on and select.  Instead he tells me we’ll be working together every week to watch my new boobs “grow” and I'll get to decide what size I’d like to be.  And what shape I’d like to be.  He’ll put in “tissue expanders” which we can fill every week until I say stop.  When I do, he’ll take the tissue expanders out and put the implants in.  The long and the short of our visit is that the plastic surgeon can do anything.  He can match my existing breast or he doesn’t have to put implants in at all.  It is all up to me.

But I don’t like it when things are all up to me.  It means I am responsible for my own decision and I can’t blame anyone later.

And speaking of decisions, there is still one more to make: whether or not to have both breasts removed, as a precaution.  Now you would be right if you said, “But your poor right breast has done nothing wrong and you’re going to punish her, too?!”  And I would say to you that, yes, some women choose to have both breast removed to reduce the risk of having to go through this again.  I have spent the past couple of weeks very solidly in both camps, because apparently I am bipolar when it comes to breast cancer.  For a time, I was resolutely focused on keeping at least one natural breast if I could.  A week later I was resolutely focused on making sure I stayed alive for as long as I could.  This week, after another sit-down with Doc, I’m leaning heavily towards saving the right breast again.

Bilateral mastectomies reduce the risk of recurring breast cancer by 90-95%.  Some women who have had both breasts removed do have the cancer return in the surrounding areas of the breast, the chest wall, the tissue under the armpits, and even as low as the abdomen.  So removing both is not a guarantee against recurrence, but it greatly reduces the risk.

But I am not in a high-risk category.  I do not carry the Breast Cancer Genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2), there is no significant history of breast cancer in the family, and the cancer that I currently have is non-invasive.  The chances of cancer occurring in my right breast is 15% over 40 years.  Which, not for nothing, is only 3% higher than your chances, if you are a woman who has never had breast cancer at all.

Also, Doc told me yesterday that the recovery process of having one breast removed, on a scale of 1 to 10, is 1.  For having both breasts removed, the recovery is a 10.  So that is something to consider as well.  And “consider” is what I will do for the next six days, before I go in for surgery.  It's going to be such a fun week!

CHAPTER 4: THE SCANS, plus a little torture

A CT scan is no big deal.  You put on a robe, lay down on a table, a big machine spins around you, and you’re done.  If Doc orders a CT scan “with contrast,” then the party begins and you get it started with a HUGE barium milkshake and a needle in your arm.  As they send the “contrast material” through your veins they will tell you that you might taste something metallic in your mouth, you might feel a hot flash all over your body, and you will feel as if you are peeing yourself, but this is all normal.  And that’s just what you will be thinking: “Yes, this is all perfectly normal.”

 

Then head on over to the Cancer Center for your Breast MRI.  (Did I mention I did this on a Friday night?  Do I know how to party or what?).  Another needle in the arm and they leave it there.  Try not to look at it, try not to touch it, just ignore it and maybe it will get bored and go away on its own.  Soon I’ll be lying flat on a scanner table with my boobs in boob holes and my head in a head rest looking down into oblivion.  The technician comes in:

“Jump up, face down, hurry up, you’re our last patient of the day and it’s Friday night and I have a party to get to.  Here are some headphones, what kind of music do you like?”

“Um, do you mean, you have an entire collection here?”

“It’s Pandora.  Just pick something.”

I was actually prepared for this.  I did my reading.  I did my research.  I spent a good twenty minutes the night before thinking about what “kind” of music would be appropriate for an MRI. 

“Norah Jones?”  I was kind of hoping I would just fall asleep.

“Great.  Put these on.  Hold this in this hand.  Squeeze it in an emergency.”

“Excuse me, what constitutes an emergency?”

“In you go!  See you in half an hour.”

This sucks.

The machine is loud.  War-zone loud.  And it gives a whole new dimension to the torture in your mind.  In fact, it is more or less matching the torture in your mind since the day you found out you had cancer.  With intermittent alarms going off, loud beeps and violent shaking it more or less sounds like the world is ending.  I haven’t actually been in a war zone, but that didn’t keep me from worrying about flash backs.  Of course you can’t hear anything through the headphone except one or two mouse-like wails from Norah and I should have asked for AC/DC.  Half-way through they come in to fill my veins with something.  And I just pray that the 20-something Jersey girl technician picked up the right bottle off the shelf.  I mean really there’s nothing else to do in there but think about all the things that could go wrong.  

When it was all over, I felt a huge sense of relief.  I survived the scans.  I basked in that for a couple of...minutes...and went out to dinner with Michael and ordered a kale salad.  I saw my life ahead of me in that kale salad.  I was a woman with breast cancer now.  So now I would be ordering kale salads for the rest of my life.  I’d better learn to like this shit.

---

Now, since I am a creative type and science was not my best subject in school starting with the day I smelled formaldehyde on a dead frog, I am at a disadvantage when awaiting test results on body scans.  For me, the tingle in my leg means that the cancer in my left breast spread all the way to my right calf in the span of 48 hours.  It’s probably all over my body by now.  I’m definitely going to die  Tomorrow!!  Well, ok, probably not tomorrow but maybe…next week!!  (If you tend to be a little dramatic and you are a fatalist, then you really have no chance at all at common sense.  That’s what cancer has taught me).

And the waiting is the hardest part.  (Did you know Tom Petty was singing about breast cancer?)  My mind went right to the worst.  I woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, completely convinced that I had cancer all over my body.  I sat on the bathroom floor and cried.  Mostly I cried for my kids who would grow up without their mother.  But I also cried for my husband and my parents and my sisters and brothers who would watch me die.  And have to pick up the pieces after I was gone.  In a way, maybe I had the easiest part.  Dying might be preferable to grieving.  What do you think?

But like any mother, I quickly remembered that I didn’t have time or energy for self-pity.  I had two kids who would be waking me up at 6 in the morning, excited to go to the library and the Children’s Museum as promised.  I couldn’t spend the night on the bathroom floor crying like a college girl.  I had to pull it together.  I quickly devised a mantra.  I can’t remember exactly what it was.  I think it was something like: “It’s just in your breast, moron.  It’s just in your breast, moron.”  And that got me through.

Chapter 3 – FROM BAD NEWS TO GOOD NEWS THEN ALL OVER AGAIN

I have seen my husband cry twice – once when I told him I had breast cancer and once when that kid from Louisville broke his leg during the playoffs.  I don’t cry much anymore either.  It was one of my favorite past times when I was a kid.  And a teenager.  And a young adult.  But for reasons of self-preservation, I don’t watch television or the news or see movies that aren’t funny or read books where someone dies.  And with the exception of national tragedies, I don’t find myself crying all that much anymore.  Until I considered the possibility of not watching my kids grow up.  Then I allowed myself a good cry.  I cried once with my husband, once with my parents, and once for no good reason but that was two days before my period.

After the seven minutes of crying that I allowed myself, I went in to meet with my new Doc, Breast Cancer Oncologist Specialist Superwoman.  She gave us some “good news” and told us that the ultrasound showed that the lump was only 13mm (Stage 1 goes all the way up to 20mm), and the lump tissue was well to moderately differentiated, which means it’s less likely to spread and invade surrounding tissue.  Plus, it was the “good cancer,” DCIS (“Ductal carcinoma in situ” or “cancer in the duct that hasn’t traveled”).  She examined me, didn’t feel anything in my lymph nodes (did you know that was two words and not one?), and thought that our likely course of action would be to have a lumpectomy, radiate the remaining breast tissue, and having reconstructive breast surgery.  However, to be sure that there were no other cancer parties going on anywhere else in my body, she ordered a CT scan of my chest, abdomen and pelvic area, and a Breast MRI to check out all breast areas.

We all breathed a huge sigh of relief because we could lay some fears to rest.  Nothing appeared to have spread.  And it was small.  And we would get it out.  And we would be done.

A few nights later, during an episode of Downton Abbey, a little fairy in my head  (yes, I deal with fairies these days – Tinkerbell mostly) told me go back and check my breast again.  Wouldn’t you know it, that damn fairy was right.  There was another spot, lower down and to the left, that felt stupidly similar to the other one.  Fantastic.  Can’t wait to try to sleep tonight.

I was in my doctor’s office the next morning.  She sent me upstairs to get a fine needle biopsy done which would only tell us whether or not the cells were cancerous (and not much else) but which could be done without all the rigamarole of a core biopsy.  It wouldn’t tell us the size, differentiation, or whether it was DCIS.  Michael held my hand and a nurse stuck a needle in, wiggled it around with varying degrees of aggressiveness, and then repeated herself four times in the name of my health.  I find it’s very helpful during painful moments like these to picture your 4 –year old doing Naked-Baby-Gangnam-Style, just to take your mind off the issue at hand.  If you stare hard enough at the wall, you can almost see her little butt.  And suddenly you’re not in a Cancer Center anymore.  And there you have the one benefit of an over-active imagination.

She put the tissue on slides right in front of us and took the slides to her office to look at.  We would know in just a few minutes.  Like popcorn.  We went back downstairs to wait for my Oncologist to tell us that I had another spot of cancer, which she did very professionally.  And very quickly we were discussing mastectomy.  Because, quite frankly, two lumps more or less comprise my entire breast.  Doc made no bones about it.  “Well, once we take out both lumps plus the surrounding areas, I’m afraid there would not be much left.”  Additionally, my left breast “could not be trusted.”  It had been compromised, like a dirty CTU agent, and it had to go.  I tried summon my inner Jack Bauer and appear stoic (and sexy at the same time, which has no place in a cancer center) while Doc told me I’d be having a mastectomy on the left side and I could/should/would consider having it done on the right as well.  Hang in there, she says.  Minute by minute.  It will all be ok.  Find yourself a mantra. 

Another one?!?!