In which she learns that cancer is like an annoying friend she can't shake...

I saw my Oncologist a few weeks ago for my regular check-in/check-up. He said I'm doing well enough to come in every six months, instead of every three. It's a kind of graduation.

I talked to him about hot flashes caused by the Tamoxifen. I've been taking Tamoxifen for over two years. Amazing to think I've been having these hot attacks so long. He suggested I change to the post-menopausal hormone-blocking meds. I asked him about side effects, and he said "You're at higher risk for osteoporosis. Let's do a bone density scan."

The scan results show I have osteopenia, the red-headed stepchild of osteoporosis. 

Great.

At what point do symptoms stop being a result of cancer and treatment and start becoming a result of aging?

Cancer sucks

Yesterday I ran into a coworker who I haven't seen for a while. I had heard that her husband had cancer and was stopping treatment. He died a few weeks ago.

As I was talking with her, I thought "This is what a new widow looks like." She looked okay. She was struggling, but she looked okay. She said someone gave her a pin that says "Cancer Sucks", and that truer words were never spoken.

Four months ago a friend and former lover stopped treatment for cancer and died. I'm just now accepting that this larger than life person is gone.

Another coworker's cancer is back. Those of us at work who've been out with our cancer all know about her situation, and the effect of the cancer returning rippled through this small but tight-knit group.

A good and old friend who had cancer 22 years ago called a few days ago to tell me it's back, in her stomach and metastasized to her lungs and liver. She's in the midst of diagnosis and is in shock.

Cancer sucks.

It's a wrap

It's been a while since I last said "Fu-u-u-u-ck" in response to my continuing treatment for cancer, and/or treatment for the treatment for cancer. I said it yesterday, when I saw what my arm looked like "wrapped".

About a month ago, my left arm began to swell, as if someone had inserted an air hose and pumped in about 20 psi.

I went to a physical therapist who pronounced it lymphedema, and had me order a kit of bandages. I am going to have to wear these wraps for a while, until the swelling went down, after which I'll be measured for a permanent sleeve that I'll have to wear as needed.

Tomorrow, the spouse goes with me to learn how to wrap my arm, because I can't do it on my own. It looks like I'll be wearing this hideous thing for a month or two.

Yesterday at work, of course, my coworkers wanted to know what happened.

I was too stunned to do anything other than tell them exactly why I look the way I do, which is too long and dry a story. I need a snappy comeback. Suggestions welcome.

Circumstantially, I also saw my oncologist yesterday. I've been wondering what triggered the lymphedema. Exercise? Massage? He says it was the radiation therapy, which was pointed at my breast and underarm lymph nodes.

Fu-u-u-u-uck.

To Have and Have Not

I was told by the RN who was at Monday's biopsy that the results would be known in three-to-four days. She said she'd call with the results.

I stayed home from work on Tuesday. I was feeling battered and bruised. I slept a lot of the day away.

Tuesday evening I got an email from someone I'd never communicated with before at my health care provider that said "The pathology result from your breast biopsy came back showing 'Benign fibrocystic changes associated with microcalcifications'. This is benign. Good news."

No shit it's good news!!!

On Wednesday I received an email from my oncologist. He wrote "I know you already heard but great news breast biopsy is benigh. Since there was calcifications within the benigh tissue, we have good evidence that these calcifications are not tumor associated."

Yeah. What he said.

On Thursday, I got a phone call from the RN, telling me pretty much the same thing all over again.

Funny, I didn't get multiple emails and phone calls when they told me I had cancer. Perhaps they don't get the opportunity to share good news often enough, so they all want in on it.

*****

Today I've been thinking about the verb "to have", as in "I have cancer" or "I had cancer". I've decided that isn't the right verb to use with this disease. It implies congenial possession, like "I had good friends over for dinner" or "I have the urge to dance until dawn" or "I have an itch I can't scratch."

Plus, I don't believe that "I" had cancer. My body did, but not me.

Perhaps, a better way to express "having" this disease is:

• My body is/was cancerous, or
• My breast is enduring/endured cancer, or
• My body is experiencing/has experienced cancer, or
• My breast is/was occupied by cancer.

I'm giving away free tissue samples; at least that's what it feels like

The stereoscopic needle core biopsy wasn't as bad as I expected. Certainly, it wasn't as bad as last time. Perhaps it was more tolerable because of the meds, perhaps because of the extra lidocaine given up front, perhaps because I knew what to expect, perhaps because they had a "best of" Chopin CD playing.

It was lengthy, but not painful. I'm now familiar with the stinging shot of lidocaine. I didn't feel it when the MD put the needle core in to get samples. I heard, but didn't feel the samples taken.

What a relief.

They mopped me up (the MD said there wasn't much blood and the RN said there was), put bandages on my, stuck a big-ass bag of ice in my bra over the wound, and sent me home.

I came home, ate some lunch, and napped for four hours.

Prior to the procedure I asked what would happen if it was negative and this spot keeps showing up on my mammograms. Surely they're not going to want to do a biopsy each time it comes up. She said that unless it changes, they note that it's calcification that's already been biopsied.

I should have the results in three to four days. If it's positive, they'll schedule a visit with a surgeon when they call.

Oh, good. I was worried that my worries were over.

I'm pro-choice and I'm choosing...

One year ago, I was recovering from a "generous lumpectomy" and removal of 17 lymph nodes from under my arm. And the week after Thanksgiving, I started chemotherapy.

A few weeks ago I had a mammogram. It was the first since I was diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer.

I was nervous about getting the results. I contacted my oncologist and asked him to call me with them, thinking he'd contact me sooner than the usual method. I was not thinking that the results would be anything other than negative. I wanted that happy news as soon as possible.

Regardless, I got a voice mail on my cell phone from mammography, asking me to call back. I did, and whoever answered the phone stumbled around, saying, "The mammogram on your right breast was normal...  let me read through this...  on your left breast....  hmmm...  there appears to be something that they want to take a closer look at...."

She was killing me. She was fumbling around. She was not following through on the information delivery method I thought I'd orchestrated.

She got the RN who'd left the message for me to call me back, and she was much better. No nonsense. "There appears to be an area of calcification near the surgery site."

I know what that means. I learned all about calcification last year. It means it could be early cancer and the only way to find out is by doing a biopsy.

A few days later, the spouse and I saw my oncologist. He said he thinks it's scar tissue, and that I had choices in how to proceed. I could have a biopsy, I could have an MRI or I could wait six months and have another mammogram.

I asked him what he would do. He said "I think for you, rather than worrying about it, you may want to have an ultrasound-guided biopsy." He showed us the mammogram images, and sure enough, there was a little solid white dot. He said an MRI wouldn't do much more than confirm that there was something there.

I thought about waiting six months and having another mammogram. I thought about how surprised I was last year to learn that not only did I have breast cancer, but it had spread to my lymph nodes. I thought that if that little dot is cancer, I didn't want to give the little shit the opportunity to spread, so I told my oncologist I wanted to do a biopsy.

I chose.

He wrote the orders for the procedure.

Later, when another RN called to prep me about the ultrasound-guided biopsy procedure, in the middle of our conversation she stopped herself and said "Hold on. The radiologist's recommendation is different from what your oncologist ordered." Apparently the radiologist had ordered a stereoscopic biopsy, a procedure invented in the middle ages and not improved upon since then. She said she'd call me back. When she did, she informed me that I needed the stereoscopic procedure, which involves laying on a cold stainless steel table with a hole in it for my breast to dangle into. Under the table, a mammogram machine and radiologist lay in wait. The torture begins, it goes on and on, and it's so uncomfortable that it should be banned.

But apparently it's the only way they can see and get at such a small little globule of misfortune.

There must be something in my chart that says I'm anxious, because she recommended that I take 1/2 a Lorazepam right before the procedure. She said it would help me tolerate the discomfort.

A year ago, I would have clung to her saying that like Kate Winslet clung to her whatever she was hanging onto in the freezing water at the end of Titanic.

I now know that when medical professionals say "discomfort" or "uncomfortable" it will indeed be everything those words imply.

I had been prescribed Lorazepam when I was getting chemotherapy. Chemo causes nausea, so they'd load me up with steroids to counteract the nausea. The steroids kept me awake, so they gave me the "beddy-by" Lorazepam to counteract the side effects from the medication that was counteracting side effects. As she was recommending this, I told her I still had some left, and wondered to myself, like a junkie, if two pills would be better than 1/2 of one. I want to keep my suffering to a minimum.

Last week I saw my naturopath. She was distressed to hear my news, and gave me some recommendations for supplements. One in particular I found interesting. She said that during a biopsy like the one I'm having, it's possible to drag cancer cells through healthy tissue as they're extracting the thingy that grabs the tissue samples. The supplement she recommended is supposed to stop that from happening. Magical thinking, perhaps, but I'm game.

I told her about the Lorazepam conversation and she said "I'd take two."

That's what I like about her.

Unhunkering up, as opposed to hunkering down

 

If you'd like to start at the beginning of this blog, it's here.)

Last Monday was my last radiation therapy treatment. Since then, I've been trying to be happy about treatment being over. I don't know if it's my innate personality or the degree to which I have been hunkered down this past nine months, but I'm not naturally unhunkering.

I have made efforts to unhunker. On Wednesday, I asked my coworkers who have been especially supportive of me to go out to lunch with me at the Tamarind Tree. I was impressed that 27 responded "yep", including the CEO and my former Director.

I spent most of my time making sure everyone got the meals they ordered, and when I finally sat down to eat, I wasn't very hungry. Typical of me, but how could I have done it differently and had it turn out so nice?

*******

About 30 years ago I had a motorcycle accident. I was merging onto I-5 in Bellingham when a car rear-ended me. I went flying and I thought "Oh, shit!" Then I thought "My last words are going to be 'oh shit!'"

Obviously they weren't my last words, but for the six months following that accident, I was unusually happy. Strictly speaking, I was high because I was alive.

*******

That hasn't happened with cancer. There's been no remission high, so far.

*******

We had family and friends over yesterday to celebrate with us. It was a very nice crowd and they brought some great food. Their assignment was to bring finger food that begins with "C".

One of the funnier finger foods was salsa from my cousin Charlotte. She apparently thinks that since it came from Costco, it began with a "C".

*******

This is my last post. I'm ready to move on, and relearn what life is life without cancer and its treatment.

I'll be taking hormone-blocking pills for a number of years, go in for frequent exams to make sure that the nasty disease hasn't reappeared, and watch impatiently as my hair grows back in.

In my opinion, none of these are blog-worthy.

Thanks for reading,

Rebecca Roush