Jo-Ann’s Story–Excerpts from my Cancer Journal, “Dancing in the Jaws of the Dragon”

Getting the Call

“I’m afraid it’s not the news you want to hear,” said the surgeon.  He paused, “You have breast cancer.”   He didn’t actually say the word, cancer.  He used precise medical terms, but no Latin word endings could soften the impact of what he was saying.  My brain registered: I have cancer… I could die. I gave my husband the thumbs down sign, and struggled to follow the details of the pathology report being explained to me.  It was hard to breath.  The doctor stopped talking, and I heard myself say that I would come into his office the next day, and that, yes, I would bring someone with me. It was maybe a three-minute call, but time stopped for me that night.  I had been dealt the “Cancer card”, and my life would never be the same.

It was eight o’clock on the evening of Wednesday February 28, 2007 when the call came.  My grown daughters had been waiting for six days for news about my pathology report, and now I had to tell them that it wasn’t good.   I didn’t want to disrupt their happy, young lives. But I had no choice. Life was not giving me, or any of us a choice.  I knew that cancer doesn’t affect one person in a family.  It affects every one in a family.  You board the cancer, roller coaster together not knowing where it will take you and you hang on. I held on to the hope that we would get through this, whatever “this” turned out to be, together.  I phoned. They were supportive, loving, and… hurt.

That night was long, unbelievably long.  Time does that.  It stretches with fear and worry.  In the darkness of my bedroom I was tormented by an overwhelming sense of helplessness and crippling fear.  I tossed and turned, and tossed again.  I had maybe two hours sleep by sunrise.  I tried deep breathing, meditation, and mentally kicking myself in the butt, techniques that usually work for me, but nothing worked that night. I couldn’t relax.  The “what ifs” would not let me go.   I’m someone who likes to feel in control. Cancer stripped me of that comfort, and I felt more bare-naked than I had ever felt in my entire life.  I felt like I’d been tossed into the wind with no idea of where I would land, like a dandelion seed in a storm. I thought the night would never end, but it did.

The Doctor’s Office

You know it’s not good when a doctor calls you into his office and tells you to bring someone with you.  My “someone” is my husband of thirty years.  We have been through many of life’s ups and downs, but nothing quite this terrifying.  We had visited the surgeon together two weeks ago to discuss my biopsy.  I had thought that that was difficult, but I had no idea what challenges lay ahead…

In the dreary February weather of the west coast, we made our way to the surgeon’s office. I hadn’t slept much and felt like I was on auto- pilot.  I kept telling myself to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  I tried not to look at my husband too much.  He looked worried.  Now, how bad could this be?  My sister, thirteen years my senior, has had breast cancer twice, undergone two lumpectomies, chemotherapy and radiation.  She survived it all and was doing well.  “I can do this,” I told myself. “I can do this.”  I may not want to do this, but I can do this.  The fact that my aunt had died of breast cancer, and my friend Marion was dying from the disease were thoughts I kept pushing out of my mind. I was going to win.  I was going to beat it.  I was going to get control.  These were my thoughts as I entered the surgeon’s office.  I was going to be a good patient and everything would turn out all right.

It was 4:15 in the afternoon, and darkness was descending outside.  We shook hands with the doctor and sat across from him in his office.  My surgeon went over my preliminary pathology report, which had been done, on two tissue samples.  I had inter-ductal carcinoma in-situ, often referred to as dcis, which means that the cancer cells were contained inside the ducts.  I also had some invasive cancer, which means that the cancer had spread outside of the ducts and was beginning to invade other tissue.  (Later reports determined that I had lobular cancer as well, which means that the cancer cells had spread into the lobules.)  He explained that my cancer was rated as medium in terms of aggressiveness.  He was very clear in his explanation and I understood what he was saying.  I was still breathing at this point and my inner voice was still cheering, ”You can do this.”

“Breast cancers are not all alike,” he told us.  Then he started drawing a picture of my breast cancer on a note pad.  I leaned in to see the picture clearly.  He explained that I had small sites of cancer, which they refer to as foci spread through the tissue samples that had been taken.  Some of the foci were as large as 4 mm. (later pathology indicated 6, but it doesn’t really matter).  A horrible chill spread through my body as I watched the picture take shape. I sat back.  Looking at the string of lines and circles he had drawn, I realized what lay ahead for me.  I couldn’t look at my husband.  I couldn’t breath, and my inner voice stopped cheering.  The doctor stopped drawing and looked at me. “I see you know what this is leading to.”  All I could do was nod.

He used the metaphor of picking dandelions.  If I had only one dandelion he could pick it out, but I had a field of dandelions.  I signed the papers and was booked for a mastectomy the following Thursday.

The doctor discussed my choices, but really there weren’t any.  Chemotherapy and radiation alone are not recommended for multi-focal breast cancer.  I needed to be aggressive.  I wanted to be aggressive.  I wanted the cancer out of me.  He left me with a ray of hope: that chemotherapy might not be necessary if I went ahead with the surgery.  He didn’t recommend immediate breast reconstruction, because depending on what they found radiation might be necessary.  He said that I was welcome to seek a second opinion, but that he doubted the recommendations would be any different.  He gave us a package of materials, and a pile of lab forms.  We stumbled back into the outside world, which I knew would never be the same for me again.

It was a bleak day when we entered his office and a bleaker one when we left.  I felt broken.  No I felt smashed into a million, painful pieces.

Over the next two years I had two mastectomies, reconstruction and a zillion tests, but I feel lucky to be still alive.

For more excerpts visit Jo-Ann’s blog : www.ooopsonline.com