That Time Again

About a week ago, I was showering when I felt a bump near my armpit.

“It’s back.”

That was all I could think as I scrambled to the mirror to take a closer look at the lump.

It was an insect bite.*

Not really a funny story, I know, except it is. Kind of like the adage about seeing an animal with cloven hoofs running toward you and immediately assuming it’s a zebra instead of a horse.

It doesn’t make any sense. Unless you live in Africa and have seen zebras running in the wild.

Well, the last time I found a lump, it was cancer. So though I’d swear to you the possibility of its return is never uppermost in my mind, it is — and always will be — a possibility.

Not something I think about every day, but buried deep in the back of my mind where it belongs.

And since my yearly mammogram and oncologist appointment is coming up, I’ve been running through the scenarios, which pushes the thought a bit more forward than usual.

“This time, I won’t stay home as much. I’ll keep working, I’ll …”

I work through the details in my head — how to make it easier on everyone if it happens again.

For now, these scenarios remain theoretical, and I’m well aware of how blessed that makes me. For so many others, this kind of planning is a daily reality.
“How can I get to chemo and still get my kids to choir practice on time?”
“Is it possible to shop for my aging parents when I’m so tired I can barely stand?”
“What kind of employee am I?  I don’t know from one day to the next if I’ll feel up to doing my job.”

There are other dilemmas, I’m sure, beyond my imagination that others deal with every day.

It should go without saying, but I’m saying it anyway. If you know someone in treatment for cancer or any other ailment, find a way to support them. Even if it’s just dropping by with supper or sending a card.

This disease — like many others — can happen to anyone, at any time. I think survivors are exponentially more aware of that, which makes our call to duty is even higher. Not because it could be us next time or we owe to people from the last time, but because it’s the right thing to do.

As for me, I remain happy to be here, happy to have hair. And the second part is optional.

*I haven’t completely lost perspective. Since going through treatment, I’ve become a magnet for every kind of biting bug, and many bites affect me more than in the past — swelling to the point that it requires no stretch of the imagination at all to take it for another cancerous lump. 

Life After Cancer

Seven years ago, March 18 was a sunny, but cold Friday, and while many people were sleeping off their St. Patrick’s Day hangovers, I was driving to the hospital where I knew I would be told my breast biopsy showed cancer cells.

Why else the surgeon would have wanted to see me immediately? That day. Before she went on vacation for a week.

She took time off; I took a major detour.

So this is my cancerversary, a day I note each March in quiet gratitude I’m here to mark another year’s passage.

My life now is quite different from what it was on that chilly Friday.

No longer a full-time library manager, I am instead a retired librarian and part-time grocery associate at a local store.

When I realized I was looking upon my writing career as yet another thing I had to do, I stopped writing romance. I have only so many moments left in my life, and reasoned if I wasn’t making money at the endeavor and no longer enjoying it, the time had come to stop. Instead, I focused on making sure all my Cancer Lessons were re-written and posted on this blog.

Then, I started another one.

I also began working again on my family tree, I share here the first lesson in genealogy: It’s an endless pursuit because for every person you identify, there are two more to work on — their parents. I’m back five generations and still going.

Darling Daughter — who guarded me as I recovered from surgery by carefully timing my visitors — is a college graduate with a full-time supervisory position at a library (at 23!). She’s built an adult life and peopled it with friends, a book club, and a soccer team. It seems I’ve passed on not only my career field, but my shin guards too. And I’m only half-joking when I say she’s Kym 2.0.

Partly to fill the void she left, The Engineer and I started beekeeping (hence, the name of my new blog). It would be a good hobby to share, we thought, a new activity we could do together, one that would force us to learn something new.

It’s been that and more.

To answer your unspoken question, yes, the bees are still alive (so far). And no, we didn’t get any honey last year. For more, you’ll have to read The Byrd and the Bees.

People I don’t see very often still ask (in that oh-so-meaningful tone of voice), “How are you?”

The answer is “Just fine and hoping to stay that way.”

Physically, I’m much the same as before cancer. There are a few exceptions.

• My hair, eyebrows, and lashes seem thinner.
• If I stretch very hard, I feel my scars pull.
• I still wear a lymph sleeve when exercising or flying.
• I’m a little weaker, especially in my arms (for this, I can only blame me — for not being morally strong enough to force my lazy self to do push ups).

On a spiritual level, I’m better at remembering what’s important — family, friends, trying to stay healthy. If I occasionally lose focus of this, it’s not for long.

When I reflect on these changes, I wonder how many are the result of having had cancer, and how many are just because I’ve gotten older.

I don’t know.

I do know having cancer as a part of my past keeps me aware of how I spend time in the present. And remembering the friends I’ve lost to the disease reminds me I am fortunate to be here to ask that question.

I’m pretty sure they’d tell me not to waste my time worrying about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cancer Lesson #20: Leave Your Modesty at the Door

Cancer Lesson #20: Leave your modesty at the door.

By the time I met my plastic surgeon (and, yes, it still feels weird to be able to use that phrase), I’d realized a lot (and I mean a lot) of people would be looking at (and probably touching) my boobs in the next year or so.

Thus, when Dr. K2 asked if he could take photos to document his work, I unhesitatingly took off my shirt, stood in front of a blue cloth and allowed my breasts to be photographed for posterity. (A little over a year later, we repeated the process for the “after” shots.)

And that was just the beginning. When I was in the hospital after my surgery, it sometimes felt like I was hosting a parade of interns, each of them interested in one thing – my newly reconstructed right breast.

I’m not exaggerating. My breast surgeon had at least two interns checking in on me, and my plastic surgeon had four or five, all making the daily rounds. Plus there were regular checks (hourly at first) by the nursing staff.

So, if you’re beginning breast cancer treatment and possess even a shred of modesty, I’d suggest you leave it at the door.

More recently, my oncologist has mentioned several times how a TRAM reconstruction tends to age more naturally (read: Your TRAM boob will sag just like your non-TRAM one). He mentioned seeing pictures at conferences that demonstrate this.

It crossed my mind that photos of my breasts have probably been displayed at plastic surgery conferences.

I find this kind of funny. Who would have thought I’d be a pinup girl after all these years? And after all my breasts have been through, they deserve a little extra attention, especially if it helps plastic surgeons do an equally good job on someone else in the future.

Lyndon Johnson shows his surgery scars. Photo from Briscoe Center for American History (if you can’t read the overlay!)

Cancer Lesson #10: It’s OK to Share Your Story on Social Media

Cancer Lesson #10: It’s okay to share your story on social media (if you want to). 

It’s a surprisingly effective means of sharing the news of your diagnosis and updates about treatment.

God knows, I never thought I’d break such horrible news to most of my friends via Facebook.

I mean, be serious. How freaking impersonal would that be?

Not very impersonal at all, as it turned out.

You see, I didn’t want anyone to think they were being underhanded if they shared my news. My getting cancer didn’t seem to warrant that kind of secrecy, and by broadcasting it on Facebook, I was sent the message that it was okay to tell people who might want to know.

So, after I told my family, my closest friends, and most of my co-workers, I put the news out there on good ole’ FB, and it worked out pretty darned well.

By the time I went into surgery, I think I was on every prayer chain in a two hundred mile radius. I know I had the support of everyone I knew.

Laugh if you will. I know my speedy recovery was due in part to those prayers, healing thoughts and good karma

Soon afterwards, I began blogging about the experience in what eventually became the cancer lessons you’re now reading.

But this type of public sharing isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay too. One thing I learned again and again is cancer is different for everyone.

 

Cancer Lesson #6: All Shall Be Well and All Shall Be Well. All Manner of Things Shall Be Well

Cancer Lesson #6: “All shall be well and all shall be well. All manner of things shall be well.” — Julian of Norwich

Also, John Lennon: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

I believed it then and still do. One way or another.

Cancer Lesson #5: Everyone Reacts Differently

Cancer Lesson #5: Everyone reacts differently.

The doctor’s office called early on Friday, March 18 2011. She wanted to see me as soon as possible, early that morning if I could manage it.

Better to face bad news sooner rather than later, I thought, and agreed I’d come as soon as I got dressed. From the timing of the call and the urgency in the secretary’s voice, I knew my diagnosis was cancer. The only surprise was one of my lumps — sorry, masses — was nothing. The one I’d found was cancerous, and the third was an engaged lymph node (not good news).

I didn’t cry — not then and not much later — focusing instead on what would happen next.

It’s so weird to find out you have cancer, to learn that your body is harboring something that, if left unchecked, will kill you, especially when, like me, you have no symptoms. You feel as if you’ve slipped into an alternate reality, kind of like the suspension of disbelief you experience when watching a movie or reading a book.

I’ve thought about this a lot, and the analogy I keep coming back to is that of a train. You’re on this train, following the same track day after day, when click, you’re switched to a completely different route. All the other trains continue on the main line while you take a detour over some rough but scenic rails. Perhaps you’ll rejoin the fast track again, perhaps not. Nobody knows, but for now at least, this new track is your only way forward.

Everyone reacts differently, not only emotionally but physically too — this is a lesson I’ve learned again and again. The range of possible emotions is so wide — everything from anger to fear to outright disbelief. There is no one right way to feel.

I remember driving home thinking, “I should be crying. Why am I not crying?” but all I could think of was how I would have to ask someone else to captain my soccer team and where and when I could tell my family. I decided to tell my husband that night, but not my daughter. She’d just gotten her driver’s license the night before. That’s such a milestone. I couldn’t ruin it for her so quickly.

It was thoughts of her that brought the only tears to my eyes that day, when Dr. S suggested I be tested for BRCA1 and BRCA2. She recommended this course of action because I was “young” and one of my aunts also got breast cancer early, and then got it again thirty years later.

The idea that I might have passed on such a gene to my only child scared me more than anything else I might have to face.

Cancer Lesson #3: The Odds Are in Your Favor

Cancer Lesson #3: The odds are in your favor.

According to both my OB/GYN, and later my surgeon, there was an 80% chance that my lump would not be cancerous or even pre-cancerous.

Of course, I already knew that. I’m a librarian. Practically the first thing I did after finding my lump was to look up what it could be and what would happen next. The resources I read were pretty unanimous; I’d probably have a mammogram and/or ultrasound, possibly followed by a biopsy, so it was no surprise when my OB/GYN, Dr. K, advised that course of action.

The surprise came when I asked if I could have the tests done that day. My appointment was the first of the day — probably added to the daily rota after I called telling them about the lump — and consequently Dr. K’s secretary had not yet arrived. I was stunned when he commandeered her computer to schedule the mammogram and ultrasound for later that day.  I can’t imagine any of the doctors I’d had in the past making that effort.

Still, it appeared even Dr. K has limitations. He told me a surgeon had to order the biopsy, and he didn’t know how to use the software to set an appointment with the one he recommended. He left that task for his secretary.

Addendum: If you’re in a similar situation, you might want to check out WebMD’s information on what to expect after you find a lump in your breast. 

Cancer Lesson #2: You Should Probably Mention the Lump

Cancer Lesson #2: When you call for your appointment, you should probably mention the lump. 

I found my cancer during one of the nightly boob shifts mentioned in Cancer Lesson #1. Only half-awake, my hand touched on something that can only be described as a lump. I thought, “Hmm, I really do need to call for my appointment,” and promptly fell back asleep.

In the shower the next morning, I did a breast self-examination (BSE) and the lump was still there.

I hadn’t been dreaming.

Still, I didn’t mention what I’d found when I scheduled the appointment through the central booking desk that handles my doctor’s schedule. I kept hoping it was a blocked duct or something that would go away on its own.

The earliest appointment they could offer was three weeks away.

I took it, and spent the next twenty-four hours touching that side of my breast again and again, reconfirming my discovery. If you’d seen me, you’d have thought I was a sexual deviant with an obsession for feeling myself up.

Eventually, I realized I couldn’t make it through three weeks before talking to my doctor; I called the central desk again.

“I made an appointment for my yearly exam,” I told them, “and I probably should have mentioned that I found a lump.”

No more central booking. I was connected straight to Dr. K’s nurse who offered me an appointment the following day.

 

Cancer Lesson #1: Don’t Ignore the Postcard

Cancer Lesson #1: Don’t ignore the postcard.

My postcard came in October 2010 – maybe earlier – reminding me it was time for my annual checkup. And while I didn’t exactly ignore its summons, I certainly didn’t rush out to make an appointment, merely jotted that task on my to-do list, right next to a reminder that I was long-overdue at for a dentist visit too.

Looking back, I can see there were signs even then that cancer was growing in my right breast.

Since starting menopause, my breasts had gotten looser, and sometimes when I slept on that side, I needed to rearrange myself to get comfortable, something I assumed larger-breasted women had been doing all their life.

I didn’t give it a second thought; I was too busy enjoying the fact that I had cleavage for the first time in my life — an exciting development for someone whose bras have never gone beyond the A range.

Only after being diagnosed did I realize that discomfort was almost certainly my cancer.

Would it have made any difference if I’d gone to my OB/GYN as soon as I got the card? My doctors say probably not.

But there are other, more aggressive, breast cancers where a month or two could affect treatment options, possibly even the patient’s prognosis.

So, don’t ignore the postcard.

Clip art from Mammographysaveslives.org, where they’ll send you an annual email reminder.

Cancer Lesson #83:Stop Viewing Pinktober Through Rose-Colored Glasses

Cancer Lesson #83: Stop viewing Pinktober through rose-colored glasses.

It’s October 1, and today someone was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Correction: The diagnosis wasn’t handed to one person, but to about 680 in the U.S. alone (calculated using the number of expected diagnoses in 2016 from the statistics at Breastcancer.org).

Over 600 people have just had their lives hijacked — temporarily or permanently — by a disease that a week ago belonged to someone else.

Breast cancer is now theirs, a choice they didn’t make and one in which they had no say. Neither heroes, nor victims, these men and women are just people  — like myself and countless others — who have been handed a diagnosis they probably weren’t expecting and aren’t quite sure how to face.

The same thing will happen tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that — long after the “breast cancer” merchandise, festooned and beribboned in pink, is languishing on the clearance rack.

And guess what — announcing your relationship status or the color of your underwear on Facebook won’t help any of them. Many of the pink articles you see in stores won’t either. They are produced merely to line the pockets of those companies that produce them.

Some argue these activities and merchandise raise awareness of the disease, but I think by now we’re all pretty aware. Don’t you?

Perhaps it’s time to move beyond awareness to actually doing something.

If you happen to find Pinktober a good reminder to support breast cancer research, I thank you. But I would ask that you make sure your contribution makes a difference, that your hard-earned money is going to a charity that actually does something to prevent, treat, or research breast cancer or to support its patients. You can do this by following the simple guidelines at Thinkbeforeyoupink.org. Should you choose to delve further into this website, you’ll see it raises other valid concerns about the commercialization of my disease.

I’m not a curmudgeon about this issue, completely against the “pinking” of breast cancer. In fact, if you follow this blog, you know when I was first diagnosed, my co-workers wore pink ribbons to show their support, a gesture that moved me to tears. So, my relationship with the color is somewhat conflicted. (See “Cancer Lesson #25: The Wearing of the Pink.)

But breast cancer isn’t pretty. No disease is, and all the pink in the world won’t change that. I find as the years pass, I object more and more when companies turn an illness into an opportunity to not only profit, but to sexualize a disease that can kill. (See Psychology Today: “Do Sexy Breast Cancer Campaigns Demean Women?)

I know I am one of the lucky ones. Five years out, I’m still here to write complain about this issue. For this reason, I rarely talk about my scars, about how they sometimes ache when the weather changes, how I can feel them pull when I stretch too hard, how wearing a bra gets uncomfortable after a while.

Then there’s the Anastrozole side-effects: osteoporosis (which my oncologist assures me will remedy itself once I’m off the drug), hot flashes that make it impossible to get a full night’s sleep, the padding of extra pounds I can’t seem to lose, and hair that falls out by the handful (not as extreme as it was with chemo, but disheartening nonetheless).

Because I know I’m lucky, it’s unusual for me to discuss the physical reminders of my experience. I write more about how cancer affected my outlook, my way of thinking about the future and about the realization that we all die.

Still, having cancer changed me both physically and mentally, and though I cannot tell you exactly how it will affect those diagnosed today, I know it will change them too, in ways they can’t foresee.

So, the next time you get a Facebook post that breathlessly asks you to share a “girly” secret status to support breast cancer, think of the 680 people who got the news today and whether that status is going to make a difference to their lives. (And, by the way? We all know men get breast cancer too, right? So, the “girly” idea doesn’t quite fly.)  Before you buy that new lipstick or pair of socks to “support breast cancer,” find out exactly how your purchase is making a difference.

As I said, I’m lucky. I am able to do all the things I did before I got cancer — ride my bike, play soccer as badly as I ever did, go flying with The Engineer. 

On this first day of Pinktober, I’m praying the 680 people getting the diagnosis today are able to share a similar future.

Addendum: In reviewing this post before publication, I must add three things. First, I should say I have joined in the “girly” Facebook games in the past and admit they could be viewed as just having fun. That’s OK, as long as the participants realize they have little to do with supporting breast cancer patients. Second,  this post is my opinion. I would never presume to speak for other breast cancer patients,  former or current. And last and most importantly, this is an issue where the patient gets the final say. So if you want to know how you can best support someone who’s been diagnosed, try asking them.