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This time last year . . .

4 Aug

This time last year I was just about to have my first surgery, a bi-lateral mastectomy. It seems so, so long ago. And, somehow, at the same time it is like it was yesterday. I can so vividly remember taking that last shower before surgery, washing my body with a special blue antiseptic soap that my surgeon asked me to use to help prevent infection. I will never forget that last shower, watching the bright blue soap run down my body and wash down the drain and thinking “this is the last time I will shower in this body.” I remember sobbing uncontrollably in the shower and even thinking of it now brings those tears right back. And I remember never feeling more alone in my life.

I remember knowing ahead of time that I would cry in the shower. Weird. I played it through my head before hand, like it was part of a movie script or something. But, as much as I had imagined it . . . when I took that shower . . . I was completely overcome with feelings I had not imagined, feelings of grief and sorrow and yes, some self pity and fear, but, mostly, just sorrow. I had imagined crying, but, I had not imagined how I would feel.

When I picture that time I am overcome again . . . here I am typing and crying . . . it has a way of sneaking up on you sometimes. 🙂 Usually, it is when I am alone. But, sometimes it will hit me when I am not alone, maybe I am a passenger in a car – not alone – yet, alone in my thoughts for a bit . . . and I am struck with it and then the trick is to disguise it in some way.

I guess it is good to cry about it once in a while. After all, I think there has just been a numbness about it for this past year. And, there is/was/is the need to just be okay for everyone. That has been a big part of being numb, not letting myself go “there” . . . where ever there is . . .

I guess I could call it the big fake out . . . 🙂 But, it is that fake out that has probably made it possible for me to get to where I am . . . so . . . that is good then. Still, it sneaks up on me sometimes.

I am okay though. But, it is hard now as I approach this next surgery. If I knew then what I know now, I am not sure I would be doing this. I guess it will all turn out. But, I am still not used to this new body and I wonder if I every really will be. I worry about taking the muscle out the right side of my back . . . not that I have a choice in the matter. But, I worry about it, about losing more feeling than I have already lost. It is surreal to willingly go through these things . . . for what, I wonder?

No one ever proposes the idea that maybe you don’t want to have reconstruction. Everyone, every doctor, surgeon etc., just assumes that it is what you, and what all women, want . . . to have replacement breasts. I just don’t know about that. If I could do it without losing physical agility, strength, then I probably would have no hesitation. But, I have not regained my pre-surgery use of my arms or strength.

I hear it takes a year or more for the tightness from this kind of surgery to go away. So, I guess I need to give it time. But, patience has not been one of my virtues lately. It was good, I think, to be very impatient with cancer. But, maybe not so good to be so impatient with this part of things.

Well, enough complaining. I have to get back to work!

Love and peace,

Lisa

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One year ago . . .

6 Mar

Last year, on Friday, March 6th, I received the phone call from my doctor, at 4:00 pm, confirming that I had cancer. He couldn’t tell me anything about my cancer – wasn’t allowed to since he was not an oncologist. I remember shaking as I wrote down his fax number so that I could fax my written permission for him to fax me the “results” of my biopsy.

I sat in my office and waited for the fax line to ring. And there it was in black in white – a bunch of numbers – none of which (to me) looked good. I remembered just enough from my attempt at majoring in biology to know that words like “mitotic” index had to do with cell division, growth. The numbers were high and I spent the weekend thinking, this is it, I’m done. Three months? Six? How many?

I knew it somehow in my soul, mind, heart (I don’t know really where or how) before the 6th. I knew it weeks earlier. Not sure how, but, I just knew that I had cancer. But, it wasn’t until the biopsy results came back on March 6th, 2009, that there was actual proof. It was one of the hardest days of my life – and far worse for my parents and family.

My parents drove to meet me at my office immediately. A friend was already there and stayed with me until my parents arrived. I told a friend down the hall whose sister had been through her own breast cancer ordeal.

That night my brother Paul and my sister-in-law Marcella came over. My parents stayed with me I think the whole weekend. My brother Steve drove up the next morning with his kids. My niece Julia Anne (who is named for my Aunt Anne who died of breast cancer) came to my door alone – brother and nephew waiting in the car – so that Jujubee (that’s been my nickname for her since she was a baby) could see me alone first.

She grabbed hold of me so tight and began sobbing. We stood there in my door way holding each other and I promised her that I would be fine, that I was going to be here long enough to be a great aunt to her children someday. That seemed to work.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much a blur. Other than a private walk with my brother Steve at the park across from my home. Breaking down in the kitchen and trying to hide that from my family, my brother Paul telling me it was okay to cry. The t.v. on (thankfully way too loud) with one of the “Harry Potter” movies blaring and my 8 year old nephew seemingly engrossed in it – but keenly aware that something was very wrong.

Words like chemotherapy and radiation were tossed about. Surviving, eating cancer fighting foods, etc.

It was a weekend of my loved ones being near me, all of us at some point or another crying and me reassuring everyone that I was going to be fine.

But, that weekend, last year, in my head I thought I was the walking dead.

It would not be for some weeks before I would find out that in fact my cancer was caught early enough to be cured. No guarantees of course. But, it was a far cry from what I feared – being told that I didn’t have a chance.

And, since then I have been on my little cancer roller coaster. 🙂 Ups and downs and the ups have been sweet. I have made my way through this past year with the help and prayers of so many and I am so grateful to all of you. I would not be here in the way that I am here, without you.

So, today, one year later, is a much better day, a much better weekend, to say the very least. And I owe that to so many people. My parents first and foremost and there is a long list after that.

I am here and I plan on sticking around.

Thank you for your continued prayers.

Thank you for everything.

Much love,

Lisa

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One year ago today . . .

14 Feb

Last year, on Friday the 13th no less, I received a phone call, instead of a letter, from my doctor’s office about my last mammogram results. When I had the mammogram, my doctor told me that I would either get a letter in a couple of weeks or, if anything showed up, then they would call me. He conducted a physical exam first, told me he didn’t feel anything abnormal in either of my breasts (and neither did I, by the way) and that most likely I would hear in a couple of weeks by mail – meaning nothing to worry about.

Instead, I got a phone call late in the day on Friday, February 13th. I was feverishly grading exams that had to be returned to my students by our final class to be held that Sunday. So, since I didn’t recognize the number, I let it go to voice mail and kept grading.

I checked my voice mail the next day, it was a vague message (naturally), but, I had a pretty good idea of what it meant. The doctor’s assistant actually gave me her cell phone to call her back. So, the next day, on Valentine’s day, I called her. We played phone tag until she finally reached me back (I was on the phone with my brother Steve at the time, telling him that I didn’t get the letter, that instead I got a phone call and that I was worried and so on and then she called). I spoke with her and she told me that the mammogram showed a mass and that I had to have a biopsy.

As much as I hoped that it would be one of those things that turned out benign, I knew that it wouldn’t. I just felt it, I can’t explain it really. I just knew it.

So, I went back to work, finished grading my exams, taught the last class of the course the next day and then on Monday scheduled my biopsy.  They wanted me to do it as soon as possible and so to speed things up, I was told I could pick up the mammogram films and deliver them to the facility where I would have the biopsy.

I of course did this. I remember walking down a long, cold corridor, looking for the room to pick up my films. I remember signing for them. I remember the woman at the counter sealing up the oversize envelope that contained the pictures of my breasts and telling me I was not supposed to look inside, that the information was for the doctor.

I remember walking back through that cold corridor and feeling the weight of the films growing heavier and heavier in my hand, and, as I left the building and walked through the parking lot to my car . . . heavier and heavier still.

I of course opened up the envelope as soon as I got back to my car. I didn’t look at the films, I didn’t want to touch them, as if in doing so, somehow it might spread. I know that sounds weird, but really, I was terrified to even touch or look at the films. But, I did look at the one white piece of paper and I read the typed letters: ” . . . biopsy ordered to confirm malignancy . . . ”

I put the paper back in the envelope, sealed it up and drove it to the facility where I would come back a few days later for a biopsy.

I never shared those words with anyone then. Why should I have? What for? No doctor was going to tell me that it couldn’t be benign. No radiologist, no person, no one was going to take away the hope that I would carry for the next weeks that the biopsy would show that the mass was just a benign cyst. And so I went about my business, albeit in a little bit of a fog, but truly hoping for some miracle. For some OTHER explanation than cancer for why I had been so tired the past many months, nearly a year now – for why I just didn’t seem to rebound the way I used to after a long day or week of work.

I promised myself, whatever the outcome, that next year’s Valentine’s Day would be a better one. And I know it will be. I did not get the news that I wanted last year. But, I have learned a lot about life in the past 12 months. I have learned a lot about myself, about regrets, about not having regrets in the future, and about how to live. I have learned how wonderful and beautiful people can be, how near strangers can become some of your most steadfast supporters and cheerleaders and I have gained so much strength from all of you, my family and friends and . . . I am here.

I watched a movie a couple of days ago called “Crazy, Sexy Cancer” (got it from the library). It was supposed to be an upbeat film/documentary about a woman who was diagnosed with cancer. It was, I enjoyed it. But, here is how it started: “Happy Valentine’s Day, you have cancer.” Apparently that was the day that the woman, whom the documentary was about, found out she had cancer.

My Mom and I were watching it together and I turned to her and said THAT was the day, last year, last Valentine’s Day, when I knew I had cancer. Bizarre. Anyway, it’s been a year now. And, assuming all is going well, I am nearly done with treatment (at least all of the IV type of treatment). There are still some medications to take or at least one to take – but, that is to be worked out still. I will have a bunch of tests in May to see where I am at and will have tests forever I guess (since I plan on being around a very long time).

Well, another ramble during another sleepless night – but the night isn’t quite over yet, so maybe I will go get some sleep now 🙂

Please continue to keep me in your prayers and send positive thoughts my way, I still very much need it. And, Happy Valentine’s Day.

Much love,

L.

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