Me & the Big “C”

 by Neoma Quintin 

I sat, unworried in my surgeons office. There was no way that the news was going to be bad “I cant have cancer…I’m simply too young” I wondered where to go for a celebratory dinner once the surgeon told me there was nothing to worry about. She sat across from me & looked me straight in the eye……..”Neoma you have breast cancer” she said. Everything around me went fuzzy, everything seemed to be in slow motion. I didnt sleep at all that night wondering what would become of me & the life I had made with my husband Patrick. My surgeon insisted I come back after office hours the next day so she could sit down with me & explain everything in detail.

My surgeon scheduled an MRI. She did not want me to make any final decisions on the type of surgery I would have until the results came back. I remember lying on the  table thinking about how “surreal” this whole experience was. I found myself thinking “they could still be wrong, right?…this could be a mistake.” It was no mistake.Not only did they find the lump in question but the also found DCIS in the same breast. The MRI also picked up that one of my Lymph nodes was pretty large.I had hemmed & hawed about which surgical route I would take but the MRI made that decision.The surgeon did not want to do a lumpectomy for fear of not getting “clean margins”. That day I decided that I would go ahead & have both breasts removed. I wanted nothing more to do with them.

My surgery was on December 2nd in the afternoon. For the most part I held it together until just before they wheeled me into the OR. The look on my husbands face was that of sheer helplessness. He was terrified & so was I. I knew that I would get through the surgery ok; I was not scared of the physical pain that might come with this surgery. I was afraid of the possibilty that it had already spread. My surgeon held my hand in the OR hallway & said to me “Neoma, this is just a bad bump in the road.  Think of this as  your first step to a healthy future. I woke up with almost no pain & was released from the hospital the next day.I had tissue expanders put in, although I still wasn’t sure I even wanted re-construction.I know alot of women have pain with the tissue expanders but I did not have that problem.

In my opinion the worst part of this whole experience was waiting for the pathology. It was worse than I thought: the lump was 2.5 cm & had spread to 3 of my lymph nodes. The first lymph node measured 3.5 cm (yes bigger than the tumour) & was considered grade 3 “aggressive”. I was found to be ER+/ PR+/HER-. The post-pathology scans to see if the cancer had spread were the worst part of it for me; every ache & pain I experienced at that time made me think it was “the cancer.”

I think it was at this point in my cancer journey where things changed for me. I decided that i was not going to let cancer ruin the life I had made & I was not going to allow it to take me down. I decided to get involved in supportive programs at my local cancer center & tell anyone who would listen about my story. If there is anyone out there that thinks that self exams are not an important part of monitoring for breast cancer I simply tell them ” a self check saved my life…Period!”

I am currently going through my chemo rounds (FEC-D x 6) and will be all finished in May. I am very thankful to be getting through it all with very minor side effects. I will have radiation to follow & probably Tamoxifen. Following that I will have my re-construction finished & possibly have my ovaries removed in the hopes that this might help minimize my possibility of re-occurence (but no guarentees, of course) It’s crazy to think that 6 months ago I had never been in the hospital overnight before, never taken any prescription medicine, or had anything but minor surgery. Life changes so fast.

I refuse to let this thing steal whatever life I have left (whether it’s one year or fifty) My husband & I are going ahead with buying our first home this summer or fall and I am going to live life to the fullest. Don’t tell me about the statistics; I dont care.

I am not a statistic.