I’M NOT SORRY I HAD CANCER….
That may sound like a really strange thing to say and before I go on, please let me say that I really don’t ever want anyone else to get it. I’m not glad I went through it, but I’m not sorry either! I say this often and I think my friends are all used to it now, but I probably need to explain myself a little better here.
I had a mammogram in March of 2009 that came back clean. Really I had that test done to accompany my 18 year old daughter. I wanted her to have her first gynecology appointment before she went away to college and I knew she wouldn’t go alone. It had probably been a few years since my last mammogram, which I can’t really explain as I used to get them yearly. Anyway, it came back fine and I went on about my business. But we had a new kitten, which was sleeping with us, and one night in July, he bumped into me. Just this little bump woke me up because it hurt. As I started feeling around, I remember thinking, “Please don’t let my husband wake up, because he sure won’t understand why I’m feeling around my chest like there is no tomorrow.” I felt a really hard lump and thought that was curious because it hurt and I had always heard that breast cancer didn’t hurt. I have four sisters and they have experienced a lot of fibroid cysts so I just assumed that’s what it was. But deep down, I knew better. My daughter was leaving for her freshman year in college in a few weeks and was all excited about sorority rush and well, I just didn’t have time to think or worry about this. So I put it to the back of my mind and decided I’d deal with it after we moved her to Starkville.
I ended up telling my husband around August 15, right after Bid Day at State. That way I knew he would make me go through with the appointment to see Dr. Barbie Sullivan. Also, I couldn’t imagine going to the doctor and then just calling him up and saying, “Oh, by the way, I have breast cancer”. Of course I was very cavalier about it, telling him that I knew it was nothing, but that I should probably get it checked out. He offered to go with me but I told him that I would involve him if it went past this first appointment.
When I went to Dr. Sullivan on Thursday, August 26, she immediately set me up for an ultrasound and a full workup with Dr. Phillip Ley. I left her office and went straight to the Radiology Group for the ultrasound. That was perhaps my first clue that I was in trouble. When the ultrasound technician told me to lay there while she went to get the radiologist, I started really panicking. I thought “Oh no, what if I don’t see my youngest child finish school and see them both graduate from college and get married? What if I’m not here to see my grandkids? This is really serious.” That is really the first time I was worried. When the radiologist came in he told me there was something there they didn’t like and they wanted me to get a full breast evaluation. Now that’s when I involved my husband!! We couldn’t get in to see Dr. Ley until Monday, August 31st and it was the longest weekend of my life. I was sure that I was in trouble, but no one would really tell me that.
That definitely changed Monday morning in Dr. Ley’s office. He walked into our exam room and said, “I just hate it when it’s someone I know.” I had no idea that he knew who we were at that point. Our kids go to the same school but we’ve never really socialized and I didn’t think he would have a clue who we were. Little did I know he would become one of my favorite people in the world.
Once he started the ultrasound he told me that while we would have the definitive results the next day or two from a biopsy, he had been doing this a long time and he was 99% sure that I had breast cancer. I’ll always appreciate that he told me that way because I had a chance to ease into the diagnosis. It wasn’t easy, but it would have been much worse if there had been some false hope that I was ok.
I was diagnosed with Invasive Lobular Carcinoma on September 1, 2009 and had a double mastectomy on Sept 22, 2009. In addition, the cancer was in 3 of the 17 lymph nodes that were removed on my right side. It seems like every time Dr. Ley walked into my hospital room, or called us, the news was getting worse. The tumor ended up being 6 cm x 6 cm and we went from thinking I was Stage 1 during the preliminary biopsy to being Stage 3A after the surgery biopsy.
This was followed with 8 rounds of chemo, 28 rounds of radiation and I’m still waiting to finish up my reconstruction surgery. In addition, after the 1st round of chemo, I came down with C-Diff (clostridium difficile) a really terrible bacteria in my colon that wiped me out for a while. I ended up in the hospital with dehydration and lost 40 pounds (which unfortunately is slowing finding its way home). The worst part of that is that it delayed my chemo a couple of weeks and I didn’t want anything to delay the END of treatment.
That’s the story of my treatment, but now for the part about why I’m not sorry it happened. I really think that going through breast cancer treatment had a profound effect on me and my family. I don’t worry about the insignificant things I can’t control as much anymore. I’m a type A person and I still want to control more than I should, but I can give that over to God now with much more ease. I also see the kindness in people where I may have missed it before. I was amazed by the spirit of the people who cared for me at every facility I used. I really loved the people that treated me at Jackson Oncology in both the chemo and radiation departments and I felt they cared about me. Dr. Ley, Dr. Scott Runnels and Dr. Tammy Young’s offices are full of the nicest people who see this everyday, but still make you feel that you are special. That’s an incredible gift to give someone going through a terrible illness.
I was also overwhelmed by the people from Jackson Academy and the Chapel of the Cross who brought us food all the time. Two or three times a week people showed up with full meals, and we didn’t always know them. That astounded me. It was such a help to my husband who was trying to work, come home during the day to help me shower and make sure I ate something then at night do laundry and care for our teenage son. One weekend he drove to Starkville for an hour because our daughter’s sorority was having a “Mom’s Club” meeting and he didn’t want her to not be represented. Then he drove home.
Mostly it has made me realize that I’m not afraid of all of this anymore. I’m not afraid to get sick and die. Everyone is going to go through their bad times and it’s how you handle it that helps define you. I want to be a person that makes the best of my life and helps others with their rocky patches and I think cancer has helped give me more reason to do that. By proving to myself that I can beat breast cancer and continue to live a happy, healthy life, I know that God has bigger plans for me. How can I argue with that?