Tag: fuckcancer

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The “little c” chronicles . . . let’s start calling them PARTS instead of Weeks, shall we? Part 4

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

It occurs to me these days that life rarely goes according to plan, and since the last “week’s” update was damn near TWO weeks’ worth of stuff, I’m going to dispense with my plan to update by “week” and start updating updating by “part,” since those can be big or small (tee hee).

So, Part 4 begins with some (not so good) news from Part 3. By the time I got this news, I was 75% of the way through the Part 3 update, so I decided that rather than re-jigger the Part 3 opening updates to include this, I’d add it to the to the TL;DR intro for Part 4, and here we are, so . . .

The most recent big news

It turns out that, contrary to what we originally thought—that the cancer was localized to the left breast—it is, in fact, also in a lymph node (at this point, it’s looking like just one, but I’m no longer making declarative announcements, because it turns out that’s a lot like making plans). The MRI (which occurred just a few days before I started chemo) showed a suspicious node just below my left armpit, so during my first chemo appointment, I was told I needed to come back in two days for an ultrasound, and a possible (which turned into a definite) biopsy of the rogue node. That biopsy showed malignancy.

What this means:

  • While there will be no change to the chemo/immunotherapy treatment plan at all, this news will change the eventual surgery, because now the surgeon will want to remove lymph nodes as well. (I’m already checking out cool compression sleeves, so I can be ready to rock a fake tattoo sleeve when the time comes.)
  • From what I can tell, this moves the staging of my cancer from 2A to 2B.

Staging is determined using three primary factors:

T: The size of the tumor
N: The involvement of nearby lymph nodes
M: Whether or not it has metastasized to distant organs

My cancer was initially clinically staged at 2A, because although the tumor was a decent size (~4 cm), there was no spread to nearby lymph nodes (or so we thought), and no metastasis (or so we THINK . . . see next bullet). Now, the size of my tumor AND the involvement of the naughty node move it into stage 2B, again, with the assumption that it’s just the one node, and the assumption that it hasn’t spread anywhere else—but in order to determine THAT . . .

  • I have now been required to undergo CT and bone scans to check for metastasis to other parts of my body—so far, no results yet from those (but by the time I get 75% of the way through THIS update, who knows?).

So here’s what’s been going down since we last talked: 

Cast of Characters

Jovial Jim and Welcoming Winnie—the other patients I met during chemo round #2 (my elder son has proposed a sitcom called Friends at Chemo; I initially laughed and blew it off, but now I'm starting to think he's onto something).

Stinky Sally—a woman with very bad perfume, whom I encountered in a hospital waiting area.

Dr. Cool-and-Calm—my oncologist.

Love Tank—my husband.

Monday, bloody Monday

So, when I went in for my #1 chemo treatment, I learned that each week, they’ll need to take a blood draw for labs before the treatment can begin. (This was not necessary for the first treatment, because I’d had labs a few days prior, and since I hadn’t started treatment, it could be assumed that there hadn’t been significant enough changes to my health in the interim as to alter those results.) I was told that I had the choice of coming in the day before treatment each week for a blood draw, or doing the blood draw the day of treatment.

The primary benefit of doing the day-before draw is to save time; because the treatment can’t begin until the labs come back, doing a day-of draw would mean twiddling my thumbs for 1-2 hours, waiting for lab results before getting hooked up with the chemo (and no, I wouldn’t be allowed to leave and go get some pancakes or something during that time).

The primary benefits of doing the day-of draw are:

  • To save gas and a middle-of-the-workday dash to the hospital and back (this point is somewhat negligible, since the hospital is only about a 15-minute, mostly-highway drive from my house, which means less than 45 minutes out of my day, and probably only a couple bucks’ worth of gas—or less, if I take my motorcycle (but unlike Love Tank, I AM NOT ready to drive that thing on the highway, so I’d have to take a longer route, although it would be much more fun—but I digress), and
  • To save myself a needle poke, because for day-of draws, they’re able to use my port to get the blood, but for day-before draws, they go traditional and jam a needle into my arm.

While you’d think that second point alone would be enough to convince my needle-phobic ass to do the day-of draw, I chose the day-before option, mostly because the nurse who discussed it with me was REALLY pushing that as the way to go, promising a quick, “get in, get out” procedure. And so far, she’s true to her word: I arrived about 5 minutes before my 3 p.m. appointment on Monday, and was walking out the door by 3:02. So I suppose I’ll stick with this method going forward, as long as that kinda speedy service stays consistent. And as long as I keep getting THEEEEE most amazing nurse, who has now drawn my blood TWICE, and I BARELY felt anything either time! I may need to marry her. Will keep you posted.

Treatment #2sday

So unlike treatment #1, treatment #2 kicked off (as, I’m given to understand, will all treatments henceforth) with a visit with Dr. Cool-and-Calm. For this visit, he mostly just asked about my symptoms following the first treatment, and talked a little about the results of my labs from the day before.

As far as the symptoms went, I only had a few to report:

  • Vague nausea (never bad enough, IMO, to take the prescription pills I’ve been given to combat it)
  • Moderate achiness/stiffness in my neck, shoulders, and upper arms (bad enough to guzzle ibuprofen a couple of nights, and to try sleeping with my neck on a heating pad for one of them)
  • Mild fatigue (typically following an attempt to do some mundane thing—walking the little one to school, my lunchtime cleaning spree, etc.—at my “normal” level of functioning (i.e., walking at my typical fast pace once I ditch the shorty-legged kid at school, shoving big-ass furniture around to clean beneath and behind, etc.) rather than my current slightly-puny level of functioning).
  • A weird feeling that I can only describe as “feeling my heartbeat”—an occasional experience of . . . not pain, but just . . . being acutely aware of my heart glub-glubbing in my chest, which sensation is typically reserved for those times when that sucker is beating demonstrably faster than usual (like when I’m (a) running after a dog who’s hell-bent on dashing out onto a major street; (b) about to get sideswiped by the Culligan Man on the highway; or (c) getting an eyeful of Love Tank cruising Cool-Rider style down our street as he returns from work on his motorcycle)—only in this case, it’s beating at normal speed.

As for my lab results, they raised a couple of areas of mild concern:

  • Anemia. “That’s only going to get worse,” Dr. Cool-and-Calm cautioned (and, he mentioned, could be what’s causing the weird heartbeat thing), so per his advice, guess who’s now taking iron supplements (and—TMI WARNING—experiencing the concomitant black poo)?
  • Low potassium. This time, Dr. CaC advised handling that by way of my diet, but I went ahead and got some postassium supplements as well, so I don’t burn out on bananas.

Immediately following my short visit with Dr. CaC, I headed on out to the chair. Unlike last time (when a specific chair was reserved for me because, as a newbie, I needed to be in the line of sight of the nurses’ station), I got to choose which area (of three) and chair I wanted, so I chose a chair by the window, in the area closest to the bathrooms (recalling the ungodly number of times I peed during the first treatment).

I found instant camaraderie with the two other people in the Bathroom Bay. One, an athletic-looking middle-aged man who still had hair (and who was getting some sort of infusion via IV rather than a port) declared jovially, “This is the VIP section!” and the other, a slightly older woman with no hair (who was chatting amiably with the friend (sister? wife?) who sat, knitting, in a chair next to her recliner), called out happily, “Welcome!”

We didn’t talk much after that, but Jovial Jim got a lunchtime visit from his wife, who was equally jovial, and Welcoming Winnie did strike up a bit of conversation with me towards the end of my visit. I can’t remember how the conversation started, but she asked about what medications I was receiving, and warned me that the Taxol would make my hair fall out. From there, we discussed:

  • The scalp pain she experienced prior to her hair falling out (I was glad to hear there might be some sort of warning sign for me, because I’ve been getting weekly blowouts lately, and I’m always paranoid that my stylist is going to wind up with a fistful of my hair and freak tf out, so I’ve been waiting for some indication of when I should start warning them in advance).
  • How what’s even more difficult than the baldness is the loss of eyebrows and eyelashes (“I mean, they define your whole face,” Winnie astutely pointed out).
  • How we’re both choosing to eschew wigs, because they tend to look so . . . “wiggy.” And although more than one person has told me there are some wigs out there that look really good, I think about all the “bad wig” moments in big-budget movies and TV shows, and I figure that even though Love Tank and I make a pretty comfortable living, my comparatively meager wig budget is still likely to have me looking like this:

But I digress.

Sadly, I’ll only see Winnie every three weeks, as she’s on a 21-day chemo cycle (SEVEN HOURS each time, blecch). But she did give me a lead on a local shop with good head coverings (she said the bamboo ones, like the one she had on, are the softest), so by the next time I see her, maybe she and I will be sporting matchies.

At any rate, overall, the second round of chemo was FAST (only three hours this time, since I didn’t get the Keytruda (the immunotherapy drug) this round), far less pee-ful (fewer drugs mean fewer saline flushes in between), and a little less sleepy; I still got the Benadryl, but only napped for about 40 minutes or so on it, as opposed to the HOURS I conked out the first time. I was still a little tired when I got home afterwards, but overall, it didn’t seem to knock me on my ass for THE REST OF THE DAAAAAYYYY, so I was able to whip up dinner that evening (“Really?” my family looked at me, surprised (and, in the case of my elder kid, disappointed, since he’d been hoping we’d order Indian food) as I began browning pork chops) and enjoy it with my sweet little fam.

Procedurepalooza, Part 2: half a day of dye-ing and scanning

On Friday, I arrived at the hospital at 7:30 a.m., ready to be stuffed through some tubes. Although I had experience with MRIs previous to this, I’d never had a CT or bone scan, but I’m not claustrophobic, so I anticipated—or at least hoped—that they’d be equally satisfying experiences.

I was wrong.

GAH, they were awful. Well, OK, the scans themselves were not too bad, but all the stuff that has to be in your body for them to work would not even be worth the price of admission for an MRI (which, as you may recall, I LOVE).

Upon arrival, I was given contrast dye to drink for the CT scan. It appeared to be a big jug of red wine, but alas, held none of the fun. It tasted like pure ass (a man who sat nearby with his own jug of ersatz hooch to drink pointed out that at least this time it had some flavoring; apparently last time he’d done this, there had been no attempt to make it the least bit palatable), and it didn’t even get me to a state of wanting to kiss everyone (like a few glasses of wine will); instead, it skipped me straight through to the next-morning nausea, because the more of it I tasted at the back of my throat, and the more of it I felt sloshing around in my empty stomach, the more I thought I might hurl.

The last straw was when a (probably kind and compassionate) woman, who’d accompanied a patient to his medical appointment, sat down in the chair next to me (as I deep-breathed and silently pep-talked myself into taking one more, and then another sip of that swill)—and her perfume was so strong, and so horrid-smelling that I knew I’d yurp my gut fulla contrast dye straight onto her lap if I didn’t get the hell away from her STAT . . . so the second she and her cloud-o-fumes sat down, I picked up my purse, my jug, and the little styrofoam cup I’d been given along with it, and noped all the way over to the other side of the room. (I spoke in a long-ago blog post about how I’d reached the age of giving no fucks, but in this moment, I hit a new low in fucks to give, because I was legit ready to hurt every single one of an innocent woman’s feelings by telling her she smelled like Satan’s unwashed ass if she dared to call me out on moving away from her (which, I mean, why even would she, since 100% of her focus was probably on the health of the man she’d brought to the doctor—but still, I WAS READY); I wished a mufuggah WOULD.)

The good news, if I have to find some, about this whole scene was that I was provided two breaks from choking down the contrast dye:

  1. A couple of styrofoam cups in, a handsome young fella in scrubs came and fetched me for the insertion of an IV to inject me full of radioactivity for the bone scan (and I hate to admit it, but yes, the injection of radioactivity into my body was a welcome reprieve from drinking that stuff). I warned him, as I do anyone who’s about to jab me with a needle, that I HATE needles. For the most part, I’m sure it does nothing except make them afraid that I’ll start screaming or kicking or something, but I like to think it makes them try to be a little gentler with the stick of doom. This time, however, he asked (having already determined via a series of earlier questions that I have cancer) if I happened to have a chemo port. When I answered YES, he asked if I’d like him to just use the port to inject the nuclear goo (OK, that’s not what he called it) rather than inserting an IV. As a bonus, he told me the CT scan folks would be able to use the port as well, for the injection of THEIR goo. I was thrilled. He accessed my port, injected a couple of small vials of atomic serum, left the access tube in place for the CT people, and sent me back to the waiting room (where Stinky Sally no longer sat, but I could still smell her perfume).
  2. A short time later, a young woman with a killer nail polish color came to fetch me for the CT scan. I’d been told, when I was given the jug of Hell Juice, that I’d have about an hour to finish it before the scan, and here I was only 40 minutes in, with a good 12-15 ounces left to drink! I looked at her in panic, thinking she’d start chanting, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” and I’d have to finish it all at once (I glanced at her shoes to see if they were puke proof)—but instead, she looked at my jug and said, “You drank plenty—they gave you a LOT—so you’re good.” Then she took what was left in my jug, and my little cup, and tossed them into a nearby trash bin. And at that point, I DID actually want to kiss her. But mostly, I still wanted to throw up, so I didn’t take that chance.

Unfortunately, although the nice CT scan lady had saved me from the torture of the contrast dye, she was also the bearer of bad news: because the CT scan folks were unable to determine whether my port was a “power port” (after my port placement surgery, I was given a card that apparently contained this information, but heck if I had it on me), they could not, in fact, use it to inject their goo. So I had to get a damn IV inserted, anyway, which they used to inject me, during the scan, with what I can only describe as Instant Hot Flash. The nice woman had warned me that I’d start to feel warm, and that it would FEEL like I was peeing myself—but, she assured me, that would not actually be the case. Turns out she underestimated the feeling of warmth; I hadn’t worried too much about it, I mean, I LOVE Bikram yoga (in fact, this past winter, I bought a membership to Hotworx, because it’s the closest approximation to Bikram that’s available in these parts), so how bad could it be?

OH MY GOD, it was like all my internal organs morphed into the earth’s core, and were incinerating me from the inside—which did NOTHING to help my nausea; my only hope was to keep my mouth shut so the magma churning inside me wouldn’t come glurging out and melt my face. What she OVERestimated was the pee-pee sensation. I felt it, but barely, and it came nowhere close to making me believe I’d tinkled on myself. I guess the good news was that neither sensation lasted longer than about 12 seconds.

The other good news is that I only had to keep the IV in for the duration of the CT scan; both it and the access tube still attached to my port were removed immediately following the scan.

But the BEST thing that happened after the CT scan was that I got to EEEEEEEAT. Before the scan, when I was given the dye to drink, I was told that I could use the restroom, but that I was to have nothing to eat or drink from that point until the CT scan was completed. The bone scan came with no such requirements, so in the hour and change I had “free” following the CT scan and before the bone scan . . . well . . . I’d like to say I went and treated myself to a fancy, four-course meal at a place with at least three dollar signs in its Yelp profile, but (a) it was only 9:30 in the morning, and (b) Mama was HONgry, so in reality I whizzed to the nearest Wendy’s drive thru, ordered a #9 breakfast, and started eating it as soon as it was handed out the window to me, so it was GONE by the time I’d driven the two miles back to the hospital. The silver lining THERE is that it went a long way towards alleviating the nausea I’d been feeling all morning (and as a bonus, shoveling the food so quickly down my gullet helped scrub away the red dye stains I noticed on my lips and tongue when I first got into the car and looked in the rearview).

When I arrived back at the designated waiting room for the bone scan, I still had an hour to kill, so I conked out in my little chair for about 45 minutes. Then the handsome dude who’d injected me with the Area 51 brew came back to get me for the bone scan.

About 20 minutes (and a warm blanket) later, I was out of that tube and (at long last) on my way back home (where I crashed for the rest of the day). I’m told I’ll have results Monday or Tuesday. I’ve been checking my patient portal to see if any results have popped up early—and none have—but I’d like to think that this means my scans will come out clear. It seems like every time I get news before I’m expecting it during this process, it’s bad news. So maybe in this case, “on time” news will be good news. Cross your fingers.

This week's BONUS content: Livin' for the weekends.

So the pattern that seems to be emerging, in terms of how I feel with the chemo treatments, goes something like this: 

Tuesday: Treatment day. Feelin' good, but a little sleepy from the Benadryl. 
Wednesday: Feeling fine, maybe a little left of center, but not to a noticeable extent (in other words, if I didn't know I was fulla chemo drugs, I could easily blow off the weirdness I feel). 
Thursday: Feeling a little more pud, but still not too bad. 
Friday: Feeling noticeably gross now, but can still accomplish what I need to. 
Saturday: Starting to ride the upswing.
Sunday: Swinging up even more. 
Monday: Feeling easily 97.4% normal, JUST in time for the next treatment. 

(The thing that makes it challenging to assess how I'm feeling after chemo is that so far, I've been required to undergo additional, unpleasant medical procedures within a couple of days after each treatment—first with the lymph node biopsy (on a Thursday), and then with the CT and bone scans (on a Friday). And on those days, I end up feeling pretty bad, but I can't help thinking that without the added stress and physical effort required for those procedures, I wouldn't end up crashing so hard on those days of the week. But I digress.)

So for the past two weekends, I've actually been able to function relatively normally. The weekend after Treatment #1, Love Tank and I functioned as our "normal" RIDICULOUS selves and drove to Omaha, NE and back (three hours each way) in a single day, because several weeks prior, he'd discovered that a movie theater up there was going to be showing Grease 2 on Sunday, 8/21. And he loved me enough to not only TELL me about it (he could have taken that shit to his grave), but to buy us tickets. So off we went, and it was GLORIOUS. 

(No, no, not GREASE. Grease TWOOOOO, baby, Reproduction, Cool Rider, and Who's That Guy? all the way! The summer I was 13, I came down with a HORRIBLE case of chicken pox while I was in Texas visiting my grandparents, and was stuck inside for a substantial amount of time. During that time, I watched Grease 2 FOURTEEN times on HBO, and Michael Carrington retains a special chunk of my heart (even though he can't sing for shit). THIS time, however, was my first time seeing it on the big screen, and it was (somehow!) even MORE magical! Love Tank (and a larger-than-life Adrian Zmed sliding down a bowling lane on his knees and belting out high falsetto) is the gift that keeps on givin'.) 

This past weekend, we eschewed the ridiculous-variety "normal" in favor of some NORMAL-normal: our older son had a friend sleep over, which has become sadly rare as we've been trying to adjust to life as it is now, and prepare for life to come. He's been a real trooper, and hasn't even really asked to have any sleepovers at our house in forever (he used to ask damn near every weekend). But this weekend, he did, and I was feeling pretty good, so I said "Sure!" And being able to give him that little slice of "normal" in the midst of all this made me feel even better.

As always, if you’re still reading, you’re BANANAS, but I can’t thank you enough for staying on this train. I can’t seem to figure out a way to respond directly to each of your comments on this blog (there used to be one, but it doesn’t seem to work for me anymore?), but I see, read, and love ALL of them . . . and you!

(Special shout out to those of you—you know who you are (and yes, there are more than one of you, which I love)—who’ve been thoughtful enough to ask if I need edibles, and to let me know you can get me the “good ones.” I will keep you on speed dial.)

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The “little c” Chronicles, Week 3 (and then some): Oy, Whatta Week.

OK, technically, it’s been more than a week; my plan was to work on updates over the weekends, and post them on Sunday or Monday—but here it is Wednesday, and I’m just getting started, which means by the time I post this, it’ll be damn near time to make another update, according to my carefully-laid plans. In addition, since I’m behind schedule, I have even more to babble about than usual. So strap in, y’all. Be sure to take a potty break first. This sucker’s gonna be a long one.

BUT! Before I get too far in, here are the nitty-gritty updates for anyone who nerds out on details, or just likes having stuff to Google:

  • I was mistaken about the chemo drug I mentioned in the last post; the day after I posted last, I received a letter from my insurance company that the following drugs had been approved for my treatment, at my physician’s request:
    • Keytruda (immunotherapy drug; all the rest are chemo drugs)
    • Carboplatin
    • Taxol
    • Cytoxan
    • Doxorubicin
  • I was also kind of confused about the frequency of treatments. Initially, I was told (by Dr. Get-It-Done, at my initial post-diagnosis consult) that I’d get treatments every three weeks; then, I was told by Dr. Cool-and-Calm that my treatments would be weekly. Finally, at my “chemo education” meeting with Nurse Practitioner Patience-and-Grace (see box below), I learned that neither of those statements was a lie: for the first 12 weeks of treatment, I’ll go weekly—and for the second 12 weeks, I’ll go every three weeks, and receive a different series of meds. So here’s the (even nittier, grittier) breakdown:
    • First-round meds: Keytruda / Carboplatin / Taxol
    • Second-round meds: Keytruda / Cytoxan / Doxorubicin

And here are the treatment-tastic events (now with jump links!) that have occurred since my last post: 

This Week's New Characters: 

Nurse Practitioner Patience-and-Grace: The NP responsible for sitting with me and my husband to give us the down-and-dirty details about my treatment plan, what to expect, etc. 

Princess Erudite: The genetic counselor. 

Dr. Eagle-Eye: The radiologist on my care team. 

Nurse Poke-n-Prod: The kind and friendly, but ham-handed anesthesiology nurse who unfortunately had to insert my IV for port placement surgery. 

Love Tank: My husband. And OK, he's not new (had him for two decades), but the nickname is.

The Genetics consult
Subtitle: Blood vs. spit: the great internal skeeviness debate

Two Mondays ago, I had a phone consult with a very kind genetics counselor. I’m not sure how heavily she’ll feature in future posts, so I’m not sure if she needs a name or not, but she was able to explain quite a bit about the kinds of factors she considers during a genetic consult, to determine a patient’s likelihood of inheriting a specific health-related gene, so I’ll call her Princess Erudite. At any rate, there are only a couple of key takeaways from that conversation:

  1. Yes, based on the aforementioned factors, I should be tested to determine if I’ve inherited the BRCA gene.
  2. Yes, I am ridiculous, because once she told me about the testing options, I realized that both of them were going to be problematic for me: the first option is a blood draw, and needles (particularly when they’re sucking something out of me as opposed to putting something in) make me cry; the second is spitting into a tube, and saliva makes me puke.

True story: a few years ago, my mom decided to learn more about her heritage with one of those Ancestry kits. I happened to be in her apartment when she was filling the tube with saliva, but she was in a different room, so I was just FIIIIIINE. Until she suddenly and unexpectedly appeared before me, wielding her little tube-o-drool and asking, “Do you think this is enough?”

I puked.

And before you ask, YES, I have taken, and taken my elder son to get, a series of drive-thru COVID tests, and I made it through those incidents without puking, but GAH, it was hard. (And when I had to take my son, I legit stepped OUT of the car and walked around until he’d filled his tube and returned it to the attendant. The struggle is real.)

I was already leaning toward a blood test, because throughout this whole process, I’ve been tolerably poked and prodded enough to think maybe my “needle skeeves” were coming to an end (they are NOT, it turns out—but more on that later); however, when Princess Erudite asked if I had any blood draws coming up (suggesting that they could just slurp out an extra vial for genetic testing while they’re at it), I became determined to orchestrate a two-for-one blood draw. (Meanwhile, my husband was listening to my conversation, shaking his head, and asking, “Why don’t you just do the spit?” But y’all know I own my weirdness.)

The Echocardiogram
Subtitle: Taking the little wins where I can

The echocardiogram procedure was largely uneventful; it went smoothly, and I had the nicest conversation with the tech, who happens to live where I live, and who ALSO has a child starting high school this year. (She’s a little concerned about her kid socially, as 8th grade was apparently really hard—but we had a great chat about how middle school sucks for 92% of us, and high school is where you really hit your stride: find your people, find your fun, make your moves . . . And yes, I did wonder how she was managing to do her job and have such an in-depth conversation with me at the same time, but overall, I trusted her, and actually had kind of a great time talking to her.)

The most important bit of news about the echocardiogram is that it showed I have good heart function—which, if you know my family history, is nothing short of a small miracle. I’ve told easily 70% of the medical professionals to whom I’ve spoken during this whole show so far that for most of my adult life, I’ve been worried about my HEART, not my breasts! I’ve always thought that if I should develop a serious health issue, my heart would be the problem. So my fear was that the echocardiogram results would show an issue that would (a) be . . . well, an ISSUE, aside from all that’s already going on, and (b) prevent me from getting the most effective treatment to kick little c out of my boob.

BUT THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.

And just like when I learned that my cancer was at Stage 2 (rather than at Stage 4 like I feared), this news made me want to kiss all the people.

Procedurepalooza: MRI and port placement surgery
Subtitle: A naptastic day

Thursday was a doozy. As you may recall, my initial MRI was denied by my insurance carrier, and Nurse Navigator Peppy scrambled to get me in for one at an insurance-approved independent facility. Well, the new-location MRI just happened to get scheduled for the morning of the same day when I’d be having port placement surgery in the afternoon. (Honestly, I can’t recall which was scheduled first, but as eager as I was to get this treatment party started, it’s not like I was going to postpone either one.)

The key news that came out of the MRI procedure is that MRIs have not lost their allure for me. I LOVE THEM, yes, I do. They are pure sleepytime magic for me. You know those weird babies who can only be lulled to sleep if their parents put them in their car seats on top of running clothes dryers filled with sneakers and footballs? I would, apparently, have been one of those babies (except for the fact that there WERE no car seats when I was a baby), because I can snooze through an MRI like a Disney princess under a curse. I had doubts about this one, however, because when I told Dr. Get-it-Done at our initial consult how much I love MRIs, she warned me that a breast MRI required weird positioning that may not provide me the sweet slumber I anticipated.

As it turns out, though, Mama got one helluva nap in that bad boy, even like this:

Image credit: Mayo Clinic. I think they got a good likeness of me, don’t you?

After my MRI nap, I headed straight to the hospital for the port placement. The procedure was scheduled for 3 p.m., but I was told to arrive at 1, in order to undergo all the prep. As it turned out, the prep time was condensed, because my port surgery got moved up on the docket (due to another surgery that had to be postponed). So pretty much as soon as I was taken back and gowned up, I was bombarded by people asking questions: the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, a couple of nurses, and a student. There was some confusion about what was happening, because people on the downstream end of the surgery-prep process had been told to come and do their thang—but then they’d arrive behind my little curtain and see that some of the upstream parts of the process still hadn’t been done. So there were a lot of apologies to me about the confusion (and about the fact that Love Tank would no longer have time to come and be with me before the surgery), but honestly, I wasn’t pissed; I was just glad to be able to get the whole thing over with a little sooner.

The only thing I was kinda maddabout—as I hinted at earlier—was that JUUUUUUST when I had begun to think I was getting over my abhorrence of needles (having had a number of blood draws since climbing aboard this train, and an IV insertion earlier that day for the MRI dye) . . . JUST when I’d started to think that dammit, when this was all over, I might just start donating blood . . . I underwent a horrid IV insertion by Nurse Poke-n-Prod who, upon learning about my issues with needles, promised, “If you let me do this, I will give you really good drugs.” I told him he had a deal, again thinking I was getting over this needle thing, anyway, so really, “letting [him] do this” would be a small price to pay.

I was wrong.

He made two prolonged and PAIIIIIIIIINFUL attempts to insert the IV into my right arm, at one point even speaking directly to my vein (“Come ONNNN,” he pleaded, “don’t play me like this!”), then cursing (“Dammit!”) and finally huffing, “It popped!” before withdrawing the needle, scrubbing my right arm rather roughly to wipe up the blood (at least I assume that’s what he was doing—hell if I was going to look) and trying again (successfully, thank Jesus) in my left arm.

For THAT I could have used an apology.

But he did keep his end of the bargain! As I was wheeled down the hall toward the OR for the port placement, I remember Nurse Poke-n-Prod walking alongside me, saying, “You’re going to feel the anesthesia start to kick in . . . ”

And the very last thing I remember was staring up at the ceiling as it whizzed past, and responding, “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I DO feel that . . . ”

Next thing I knew, I was waking up in a room full of snoozing patients, there was vague pain near my right clavicle, and someone was offering me ice chips.

Within about an hour, I was dressed and leaving the hospital with Love Tank. I’d actually planned to attend the Back to School night at my elder kid’s high school that night after arriving home; I’d even asked the anesthesiologist—after she told me that I’d be “legally intoxicated” from the anesthesia for 24 hours following the procedure—if it would be possible, and she said it likely would. However, I woke up from the procedure in enough pain that I accepted the prescription pain pill I was offered before being released . . . and that was all she wrote. I arrived home, apparently said some things to my children that they didn’t understand (all the while convinced I was presenting as logical, articulate and clever) and then shuffled straight up to my bed, where Love Tank brought me some Arby’s chicken fingers (I did not get a Jamocha shake) and then headed off to the high school as a solo parent. (This probably worked in my high school freshman’s favor, given the impression I’d likely have made on the parents of his future friends at that point.)

On Friday morning, I woke bright and early (having passed out at roughly 6 p.m. the night before, the chicken finger trash still next to me in bed), and was having coffee when my elder dude came downstairs.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Better,” I replied, referring primarily to the port location pain.
“You sound a lot better,” he responded—and then, in response to my quizzical look, proceeded to entertain me with a one-man imitation of my homecoming the night before. Apparently, in addition to saying a bunch of things that were not actually words, I was also walking like a drunken, geriatric hunchback with a bad knee.

I spent most of Friday hanging out at home, riding out my 24 hours of legal intoxication, and then went to get my hair blown out in the late afternoon (I mean, as long as I’ve got it, right?). Overall, not a bad way to spend a Friday.

BONUS CONTENT: A surprise weekend trip to the coast!

Although this may sound like some spontaneous, romantic venture, it was not. Well. It WAS spontaneous, but otherwise very stressful and sad. 

On Friday evening, just before dinner, I got a call from a long-distance friend who'd found herself in crisis. And while I am 94.2% sure I'd have done the same thing if my own life were going along "normally" right now, the fact that it's NOT made me take that whole "Do it now, while I can" philosophy to a whole new level. So I booked a hotel a few miles from her house, and booked a red-eye flight for Saturday morning to get there. 

It should be noted at this point that I did ask my friend, when she called, if she wanted me to come out there, and she said NO, that's she'd be OK (for now). So for a hot minute, I cooled my jets and decided not to go. But Love Tank pointed out (correctly) that I might regret it if I didn't do all I could to be there for her, and suggested that I book a hotel, fly out there, and then just text her and say, "I'm here if you need me, but if not, that's fine, too." 

So that was my plan—but then, as my plane was taxiing to the gate in her state, I turned on my phone to let Love Tank know I'd landed safely . . . and my friend called me. 

"I figure it's OK to call you early," she began, "since I know you have kids, so you're probably up early." 

"Ummmm," I replied, preparing for her to tell me to go straight to hell, "I'm up early because I just landed at your airport." 

My plan had been to Uber to my hotel, drop my bags, and maybe get a pedicure or something until check-in time, and THEN text her once I'd gotten settled in my room. Instead, I ended up Ubering from the airport straight to her house, where I got to spend most of the day with her. 

Ultimately, my visit did end up being a little intrusive for her, because she needed time alone to process and be a mess and take care of some stuff on her own—which I totally understood (nobody EVER has to explain to me the need to be alone). And it was really hard for her to look at me with fresh port surgery bandages on my neck without getting even more upset, which I also understood. So aside from that one day, I didn't see her, but honestly, I went there fully prepared to not see her at ALL, so getting to see her face and hug her (after literal YEARS) did my soul some good . . . 

 . . . as did my last evening in the hotel, which was an embarrassment of gifts from the universe: DINNER, which I walked to pick up nearby; and the hotel BED, which was where I ate the dinner ALONE, which meant there was nobody there to prevent me from watching the movie TWISTER on the hotel television. 

Turned out I needed that more than I knew. (I think Dusty may very well be my favorite fictional character in the world.)

I can only hope my surprise visit did my friend's soul more good than harm. 

I arrived home on Monday evening, in time to get a decent night's sleep before the beginning of treatment on Tuesday morning.

First chemo treatment
Subtitle: More naptasm and a pee-pee-palooza

On Tuesday, I arrived for my first treatment like I was moving into the place. Love Tank bought me the best bag EVER (I’d hinted about it for Christmas, but he surprised me with it a few days ago):

It sparkles inside, yo.

. . . and I stuffed it with all the goodies I thought might possibly come in handy for a 4.5-hour stint in a recliner:

  • two blankets
  • an iPad, which included a stack of Kindle books
  • a notebook and pen
  • a 32-oz bottle filled with water
  • a PB&J (I’d planned to pick up fancier snacks over the weekend, but instead I skipped town)
  • extra socks
  • a sweater
  • my purse (hey, it’s a big bag), which included my phone
  • chargers for all the things

. . . and most importantly, my laptop, because I had this grand idea that I was going to work on my next blog post during the treatment.

THAAAAAAT didn’t happen. First of all, I slept through most of it, because of the Benadryl they gave me as part of the cocktail of pre-meds before the chemo. Second of all, even through my sweet, sweet Benadryl snooze, I had to visit the loo approximately 7,412 times, due to the combination of that 32 oz. of water I drank and the bags of saline getting pumped through me between medications—and I was required to call a nurse for assistance getting out of the recliner each time, because of the effects of the Benadryl (by the end of the treatment, I felt like I should leave a tip).

So next time, although I’ll probably still bring the bag (because come on—it’s AWESOME), I’m going to just go ahead and plan for the nap and the peeing.

The big news from that visit was that while I was still getting the pre-meds (and before I got the Benadryl, so unfortunately, I know it wasn’t a dream), I got a visit from Nurse Navigator Peppy, to tell me that although the imaging center that had performed my MRI had reported no concerning “spots” anywhere outside the breast tumor we already know and hate, the radiologist on my care team (Dr. Eagle-eye) spotted a suspicious lymph node during the team’s review of the images at my “breast conference” (which I’m sure sounds more fun than it is, but I wasn’t invited, so what do I know?). So I would need to return to the hospital on Thursday (before I got too far into the chemo treatment) for an ultrasound of my left armpit, possibly followed by a biopsy of that lymph node, depending on what the ultrasound showed. None of this, she said, would affect my chemo treatment, but the outcome of these tests could affect what Dr. Get-It-Done would do for the post-chemo surgery, because she might choose to remove that lymph node, if it proved to be problematic.

She told me I had a 10 a.m. ultrasound appointment set for Thursday, and that if, based on the ultrasound, a biopsy was deemed necessary, it would be performed immediately following the ultrasound.

Biopsy #2
Subtitle: Well, shit.

So I’ll cut to the chase (especially since I’ve basically already let loose the spoiler): contrary to my fervent hopes, I ended up having a lymph node biopsy on Thursday. But I kind of had some hints that I would, even during the ultrasound beforehand, because that procedure was being observed by a student, so the ultrasound tech was doing more talking than they typically do, for the purposes of instruction. As the tech began sliding the warm-gelled wand over my armpit, she’d say, “Here’s a normal lymph node . . . another normal one . . . ” and then she reached a point where she stopped saying that. At that point, she expressed some confusion about whether the node in question was a single node, or two snuggled up together, but she spent a LOT of time in that area, and basically let it slip that this was the rogue node. At that point, my hope that I wouldn’t need a biopsy was already fading—but it disappeared altogether when she said, “Doctor’s going to want—” before remembering that there was a patient attached to that armpit, and techs aren’t supposed to share any type of diagnostic info with patients, and correcting herself: “He MAY want to biopsy this one.”

But of course I knew. There was no “may.” I was gettin’ some tissue sucked out.

So I braced for another biopsy, and focused on the positive: it was a single lymph node; the radiologist on my care team is evidently fantastic, since he caught it on the MRI when the imaging place didn’t; and above all, warm blankets. (Honestly, the highlight of all these medical procedures is the availability and generous offering of warm blankets. My advice? Never turn down a warm blanket.)

The biopsy itself was quick, but this time it kinda hurt! Dr. Eagle-Eye numbed the area with local anesthesia, of course (and based on previous experience, I expected that part to hurt), but when he started taking tissue samples (five in all), I discovered I could feel it happening (which was not the case during the previous biopsy on the breast). I spoke up after he took the third sample, and said, “Was I supposed to feel that? Because I did.” The tech assisting him asked if it hurt, and I said no, but unlike last time, I felt . . . something. She said I WOULD feel pressure, but shouldn’t be feeling sharp pain, which I wasn’t. Even with the final two sample extractions becoming increasingly uncomfortable, I reasoned that (a) they didn’t hurt nearly as much as another numbing injection would, and (b) I sure as hell didn’t want to stop the show this close to the end . . . so I endured. Walked out a little sore (and shaky, just like before, BUT thanks to this team of practitioners, who told me that I was being injected with lidocaine and epinephrine to numb the area, I now suspect it’s the epinephrine injection—not my charred and crackling nerves—that’s making me shaky after these procedures), but nothing a little time and Tylenol couldn’t fix.

I was told when I left that I could expect a call with results early next week . . . but in breaking news, I got the call earlier today: the biopsy “showed tumor in that lymph node.”

Obviously not what I was hoping to hear, but right now, I’m clinging to the positives listed above, in addition to the fact that though this news does move the stage of my cancer from 2a to 2b (since there is now a lymph node involved), I’m still within Stage 2.

So that’s where we are as of right now. If you’re still reading, OMG, you’re NUTS, but I love you for it. I had more I’d planned to talk about for this post, but I have blabbled enough, so I will save it for next time. Before I go, however, I will address a couple of things you may be wondering about:

  1. How am I feeling? Pretty good, actually; it’s Friday night, and the days between Tuesday’s treatment and now have been somewhat of a rollercoaster—but like, a kiddie rollercoaster, so no huge rises or dips. I’ve been feeling slightly left-of-center, which I’ve managed to muddle through by trying to stay hydrated and moving. I’ve been joining Love Tank to walk our littler dude to school each morning, and that kinda wipes me, but getting up and doing little things (dishes, laundry, etc.) during the day (plus indulging in a short nap or two) helps keep the mild fatigue and vague nausea mostly at bay.
  2. Um . . . why “Love Tank”? I suppose you could think of it in a couple of ways, regarding what my husband has been for me over the past month or so: a tank full of love and patience that hasn’t yet run out through the gazillion medical appointments he’s attended (serving as the dutiful note-taker each time, and missing a shit ton of work)—or, the way I see him: as a giant, armored vehicle-o-love, protecting me, a tiny, freaked-out kitten in the road, from all the potential danger coming at me. I can’t express how much safety I feel throughout this whole thing, knowing he’s rolling along beside me with his big gun out (not THAT one—clean your mind). My other advice, besides always accepting the warm blankets, is to get yourself a Love Tank for moments like this.

    As always, y’all are rockstars for riding this train with me.

Posted on

The “little c” Chronicles, Week 2: Shit Gets Real.

Hoo-wee, y’all, A LOT has gone down in the week since I shared my news. So let’s start at the very beginning (a very . . . OK, well, not “a very fine place to start”—how about “a semi-shitty place to start”?)

As promised, before I go down a rabbit hole or two, here’s the pertinent news that came out of this week:

  • I will receive both chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments.
  • The chemo will be administered weekly, in two rounds totaling 12 weeks each (so yep—24 weeks of this business).
    • For the first round, I’ll be given Cabazitaxel (I think).
    • For the second round, I’ll be given a different drug, but which drug I’m given will depend on the results of an echocardiogram to determine the health of my heart toward the end of the first round.
  • The immunotherapy drug, Keytruda, will be administered once every three weeks, throughout both chemo cycles, and will last 27 weeks total.
  • Surgery will not take place until 30 days after the last chemo treatment.
  • I may, in fact, be a candidate for radiation even if I have a mastectomy, because of the size of the tumor (it measured at 4.3 centimeters; the “possible radiation” zone is 4-5 cm, and the “whoa, Nelly, that’s a big’un—we gotta burn that mutha out” zone begins at 5+ cm). The other factor that makes radiation a possibility even with a mastectomy is whether the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes (the biopsy indicated this was NOT the case, but the MRI will tell us more).

And here’s the timeline of treatment-tastic events that I’ve either completed or have scheduled in the upcoming week:

  • Monday, 8/1: First meeting with the oncologist
  • Tuesday, 8/2: Failed MRI attempt / Creatinine blood test
  • Monday, 8/8: Echocardiogram
  • Tuesday, 8/9: Phone consult with genetic counselor
  • Thursday, 8/11: MRI , second try / Port placement

And here’s where the long-story-made-longer begins . . . 

Note: for those of you who've been following along since the last post, I've made some (retroactive) changes; specifically, I've made an attempt to anonymize the professionals on my care team, so as not to put ALLLLLLLLLLLLL of my business out in the wind. SO in an effort to avoid confusion: 

Dr. Get-It-Done = the surgeon I met with initially, who performed my biopsy, gave me my diagnosis, and walked me through it (the stage, etc)—and who will perform my port placement AND my eventual post-chemo surgery.

Peppy McPerks = The nurse navigator assigned to my case, who may in fact be Secret Jesus.

Dr. Cool-and-Calm = The oncologist who's building my treatment regimen.

Monday, 8/1: Onward to the oncologist

I received a call on Monday morning from Peppy McPerks, the nurse navigator assigned to my case. She’d been on a mission trip to Colombia when I first met with Dr. Get-It-Done—a meeting she’d normally have attended—so she was calling to introduce herself and touch base. She asked if I had an MRI scheduled yet (yes), and whether I’d met with an oncologist (no). She said she’d get to work scheduling the oncologist visit and call me back. She asked tentatively if I might be able to meet with the oncologist TODAY (which surprised me, as I thought the oncologist visit wouldn’t happen until there were MRI results), or whether I had something else going on. I told her I didn’t have ANYTHING going on that was more important than THIS, so she should rock on with her bad self (OK, I didn’t actually say that, but I might have said, “do your thang”) and I’d make it work. About 20 minutes later, she called back and said she’d gotten me an appointment with the oncologist, Dr. Cool-and-Calm, for that very afternoon.

My husband and I arrived at my 1 p.m. appointment, and as I sat in the waiting area filling out paperwork, a breathless Peppy McPerks arrived from another floor (where she’d bounced out of a new patient consult with Dr. Get-It-Done) to meet me and accompany me to the meeting with Dr. Cool-and-Calm. Although I liked Dr. Cool-and-Calm, and have been happy overall with the care I’m getting, HOO CHILE. Talk about a ball of confusion (” . . . that’s what the world [was that day] . . . HEY hey . . . “); I was smacked every which way by a TON of information and walked out of that meeting with my head whirling. Luckily, my husband took notes like a bawss (hence my ability to coherently give y’all any useful information in this blog post).

When the doctor had left the room, Peppy McPerks stayed and went over all the “treatment-adjacent” information, like side effects (we should be able to keep the nausea under control, she said, but I would definitely lose my hair—likely ALLLLL of it (if you know what I mean—I joked that it would be like getting a free Brazilian), and I’d likely suffer more and more fatigue as the treatments progressed), and talking to our kids about it (which we’d already done), before carefully outlining the next steps in the treatment plan:

  1. I’d undergo the MRI I already had scheduled for August 2.
  2. I’d meet with a genetic counselor to find out if I’m the lucky winner of the BRCA gene (which would inform the type of surgery that would be recommended for me post-chemo).
  3. Once the chemo regimen had been approved by my insurance, I’d be set up with an appointment for chemo education.
  4. I’d undergo a port placement procedure.
  5. Let the games begin.

Later that afternoon, Peppy McPerks messaged me that I’d been set up for a port placement procedure at 3 p.m. on Thursday, August 11—the hope being that I can begin chemo treatments the week of August 15.

Tuesday, 8/2: Insurance irritation

On Tuesday morning, I walked into the hospital for my MRI appointment, only to learn—at check-in—that my insurance had denied the procedure. The nice lady who delivered the news handed me a sheet of paper with all the pertinent info (physician, procedure codes, etc.) and advised me to get in touch with Dr. Get-It-Done’s office to see if I could get more information about why the claim was denied, and then call the insurance company. After a twirly few minutes looking for my car on the wrong level of the hospital parking garage, I made it back home, and called Dr. Get-It-Done’s office.

The nice lady THERE told me that my particular insurance agency was notorious for taking awhile to approve procedures. She encouraged me to “call us back in a few days” to see if the procedure had been approved, and said she’d work with me at that point to re-schedule the MRI.

When I hung up, I called trusty Nurse Navigator Peppy, to explain the situation and ask how a delay in getting the MRI would affect the treatment plan she’d laid out for us the day before. She said it wouldn’t affect most of the steps, EXCEPT, of course, for the most important one—the chemo—because they needed the MRI before the start of chemo, to get a baseline assessment from which they’d later be able to determine if the chemo was actually WORKING.

She also said that my insurance agency often declined MRI procedures scheduled at hospitals (as mine was), preferring instead that they be done at independent facilities. The trouble with THAT, she said, was that independent facilities were often booked up for weeks or months, and cancer patients didn’t have the luxury of that kinda time to wait.

BUT! She told me (and here came the glory) I was NOT going to deal with this myself; she was taking over from here. She’d call around to independent imaging facilities and see if she could get me in soon—and if not, we’d file an appeal with the insurance agency and get this business done. I should try not to worry, she said, and she’d get to work and call me back within a day or two with news.

She did not lie. Within half an hour, I received a text from an imaging facility, saying, “Thank you for scheduling an appointment!” I texted Peppy to thank her, and she texted back that she hadn’t had a chance to call me yet, but confirmed that yes, I was set up for an appointment on August 11 for an MRI at an independent joint.

I’ve never had occasion to know this before—FORTUNATELY—but I now understand that nurse navigators are pure magic.

By early afternoon, when that was all over, my stress (and concomitant urge to sleep—y’all know how I do) was elevated, so I went upstairs to crash for a little bit. My nap was cut short, however, by a call from a nice lady at Dr. Cool-and-Calm’s office, who said my insurance company was refusing to approve my chemo regimen until the doctor sent them results from a creatinine blood test. Typically, she said, they’d do this test later in the process, but since my insurance required it in order to approve the treatment, she wondered if I’d be available to come in THAT AFTERNOON to have a blood draw.

So off I went to take care of that. The only interesting thing about that was that it gave me a little taste of the chemo experience. I was led from Dr. Cool-and-Calm’s waiting area to a recliner at one end of a semicircle of recliners, in which were seated a handful of bald women, reading, knitting, and chatting amongst themselves. And even though I still had my hair, and was getting something sucked out of me rather than pumped in, I felt like I was getting a glimpse of My Future People.

After the blood test, I drove to CVS to keep my previously scheduled appointment for my second COVID booster—I was overdue for it, but this situation lit a fire to get it done before I started feeling like crap on a cracker.

As I sat surrounded by displays of fluorescently lit canes, reading glasses, and socks, filling out the intake form, I was stopped cold: for most of my adult life, I’ve been able to quickly and blithely check NO on the extensive list of health issues listed on medical intake forms . . . but as I quickly moved down the list, doing my usual thing (nope! nope! nope! what even is that? nope!), I realized that I now had one big fat YES to check:

Welp. Shit.

Other than that, though, the process went quickly and smoothly, and look at me, needle-phobe extraordinaire, surviving a two-needle afternoon!

Thursday, 8/4: Echocardiogram, Ahoy / Insurance Intrigue

After all the twirliness that occurred on Monday and Tuesday of this past week, it was nice to get a little reprieve for the rest of the week. The only health-related things that happened after Tuesday were two Thursday phone calls: one to inform me I’d been scheduled for an ECG on Monday, August 8, and the other from a lady at my insurance company (I must confess that when I heard who was calling, I thought, “What these mufuggaz about to deny NOW?”), to inform me of my eligibility for a special program offered by the company, whereby my oncologist would have the opportunity to consult 1:1 with oncologists from national cancer centers. She whizzed, in typical salesperson-y fast talk, through a bunch of details I missed—because I was simultaneously trying to log onto a Zoom call for work, and once I realized I wasn’t going to have to jump from my chair and dive through another hoop to get approval on a medical procedure, I tuned out a little—and then she asked, “Does that sound good to you?”

“I . . . uh . . . I’m not sure,” I responded haltingly. I told her I hadn’t been able to catch all the details, and asked if she had information she could email me. She said she did, and would send it immediately. Then, while I futzed with the Zoom settings on the work call to make sure I was muted before speaking with her further (which, OK, is only a click of an icon, but ever since the day I took a meeting lying supine in bed with my laptop on my chest, and accidentally TURNED ON MY CAMERA in an attempt to unmute and say hello—revealing a visage slightly reminiscent of a bullfrog, encircled as it was by about half a dozen each of both pillows and chins—I focus HARD on making sure I’m clicking the right icon), she said something about how when I received the email, I was going to have to click “Accept” to view the information, but would not be signed up for anything until I signed it and clicked “Submit.”

At the time, that little tidbit went in one ear and out the other, but when I received the email in the form of a DocuSign document, it started to make more sense—and make me less comfortable with the whole thing. I mean, by the time I saw the email, I was already feeling skeptical about this “opportunity.” First of all, an insurance company’s primary concern is its own bottom line, right? So would signing up for this insurance-sponsored service mean these physician “consultants” were basically there to convince MY oncologist to go with procedures that would cost the insurance company less money? (And I mean, y’all know me—I love a good discount—but in this case, a clearance sale ain’t what I’m lookin’ fer.) Plus, I wondered, would my oncologist be annoyed by my shoving more cooks into his kitchen (potentially tying his hands or resulting in slower approval of the procedures he recommended, if the “consultant” disagreed) and just be like, “Eff this bitch—let her ass die”?

(OK, that last bit is a little extreme, but again, I make no apologies for being this much of a weirdo.)

So the email still sits unopened in my inbox. I do plan to talk to my care team about it next week, but at this point, I’m not feeling inclined to sign on the dotted line.

And in non-medical (well, medically-adjacent, but not specifically involving doctors) news . . .

Now that things are getting hella real, this has been the week of “do it now, while I can.” This isn’t the morbid “I should have had more Jamocha shakes” moment I experienced the day of the diagnosis; it’s just that since I’m not sure how I’m going to feel once the chemo starts—I only know that I’m gonna be feeling that way for an awfully long time—I’m trying to do ALL THE THINGS NOW. I mean, not like bungee jumping or feasting on monkey brains, but I’m pretty much trying to spend a little more quality time with my people. To that end, I’ve accepted more invitations this week than I’d normally be inclined to, from both my friends and my (literal) homies. For example, during my second night out to dinner and drinks with friends THIS WEEK (I know, I am OFF THE CHAIN, yo), I got an adorable text from my husband, inviting me out on a milkshake date when I got back home. Although I was already stuffed chock full of wings, queso, beans, rice, and fish tacos (oh, did I mention I’m also trying to EAT all the things now, before nothing tastes good anymore?), plus perhaps one margarita too many, I happily accepted and steeled myself, as my sweet friend (who’d generously sprung for my gluttony) drove me home, to make a way out of no way and FIT THAT GODDAMN SHAKE IN MAH BELLEH.

Luckily, when I walked in the door to my house, girded to dump some ice cream on top of my food baby, my husband saw the look of overconsumption-spawned misery on my face (or maybe just the protrusion of the food baby), and kindly suggested we take a raincheck. So we watched a movie until I slipped peacefully into a food-and-booze-induced coma on the couch. The next day, he took me out to lunch at a place we learned about last weekend—an unassuming but delicious Thai/BBQ fusion joint called Buck Tui (10/10 would recommend, but if you decide to check it out, beware of the dead pig on the website)—and then suggested we walk to get shakes, as a family, later that evening.

Which, again, we didn’t do, because at 8 p.m., it was still 91 degrees, with a heat index of 102. And the closest shake place is Sonic, which doesn’t even have malts. If I’m going to walk 5 miles round trip in a heatwave, I deserve a little malt powder, dammit.

So hopefully, we can make time in the coming (cooler) week to take that walk.

And finally, today (Sunday, August 7) was the long-awaited celebration of my little one’s half-birthday.

We’ve been planning to do something to honor the day for months, because his actual birthday is in February (so any celebration thereof basically necessitates an indoor cootie fest of some sort), and COVID has robbed him of two birthdays’ worth of celebrations. So this particular event was not fueled by the cancer diagnosis, per se . . . but the fact that what I initially conceived as a handful of kids coming to the house for a couple of hours of sprinkler-and-sidewalk-chalk fun turned into me renting out an entire movie theater and paying out the ass for the kids to have bare-minimum snacks (the movie theater strictly forbids bringing one’s own food, and my purse isn’t big enough to smuggle goodies for ten kids)? Oh, and letting the half-birthday boy talk me into goody bags (each of which contained gifts he’d handpicked: a Hot Wheels car, a self-inking zoo animal stamp, a set of markers, a blank book to use them on, and ten colored dice)?

Yyyyyeah. That may have had a LITTLE to do with the diagnosis.

At any rate, it worked out OK, and the little dude seemed happy (and he got to spend one last bit of quality time with his next-door bestie, who is literally moving out of town TODAY, and yet took the time to show up for him and a mediocre animated film). Now onward to the start of school for both boys this week, and the start of a new normal for me the week after that.

To help me along that road, however, I’m discovering I have the most amazing friends a soon-to-be bald gal could ask for. Although NONE of it is necessary (because I also have a pretty amazing husband), the little tangible treats-o-love have already started rolling in:

An out-of-state coworker sent THEEEEEE most amazing pastries I’ve ever tasted, all the way from Wolferman’s Bakery (it took serious self control to NOT eat the whole box; instead, I ate 50% of it and offered some up to my older son . . . then harbored secret resentment when he gobbled down the other 50%. But I’m past that now.

A sweet longtime friend, who has been on this train with me since I found the lump (because again, I was SO sure it would be nothing that I told her about it one day over lunch—and then she was dogged in her pursuit of updates, so she was among the first to know the worst) sent me three tubs of Queasy Drops, which are still sitting on my desk as a daily reminder to send her a note of thanks. So one thing that doesn’t look like it’s going to change is my failure to send thank-you notes.

Another kick-ass friend, whom I’ve known since Kindergarten, has already started the “giant earrings” train rollin’, by sending me two pairs of pearl-studded, bracelet-sized hoops (again with no bleepin’ thanks).

And a third beautiful soul is gifting me with yummeh satin PJ pants I chose myself (in a size larger than I need, because my size was sold out—but hey, this allows me to keep eating all the things with impunity if I so choose).

ETA: And OMG, y’all, the hits keep coming: literally two minutes after I finished and published this blog post, my doorbell rang with the delivery of a soft, fuzzy throw from two former coworkers (from two different employers), who happen to be married to each other!

Add to that an avalanche of calls, texts, good vibes and offers of help in all varieties—not to mention the most delicious chocolate chip cookies brought to the theater for me today by my cousin (do my people know me, or what?)—and I am full-on overwhelmed in the best possible way by all the love oozing my way. And although I have pretty much always had it this good (not to brag, but my people are FUCKING AMAZING), I am humbled and fortified by this outpouring.

Lezz do this shit.

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Big C, Little C — What Begins With C?

So in an effort to avoid what my journalist friends call ‘burying the lede,’ I’ll come out with it:

I have breast cancer.

Invasive ductal carcinoma. Triple negative. Stage 2a.

This is literally about all I know right now, except for a few other things:

  1. I will undergo chemo, surgery, and possibly (depending on what type of surgery I choose) radiation.
  2. In a couple of days, I’ll have an MRI to help determine if there are “spots” anywhere other than the lump I found, which will help determine the course of treatment.
  3. At the moment, however, it appears the cancer is localized to my left breast.
  4. Assuming the MRI confirms #3, I’ll have the option (after the chemo) to go with a lumpectomy (removal of the lump and surrounding tissues), or a mastectomy (removal of the entire breast).
  5. If I end up going the lumpectomy route, I will also have radiation (see item #1), and I may or may not choose reconstruction.
  6. If I end up going the mastectomy route, I will likely choose reconstruction (via the DIEP flap method, which mines one’s own fat (I mean, how awesome is that?) to reconstruct the breast, rather than using an implant).
  7. However, if I go bald from the chemo, I will likely NOT choose to wear a wig. Asymmetry makes my eyeball twitch (so walking around with one boob is likely to cause me a world of grief), but baldness doesn’t bother me—I grew up Black in the 70s, baby, and thanks to Isaac Hayes and The Ohio Players, the Pat Evans aesthetic runs deep in my soul:

Mind you, I am not in any way under the delusion that I will look NEARLY this bad-ass with no hair; but knowing it’s possible somehow alleviates most of the fears I have about hair loss (which is kind of huge for a Black woman—but that’s a discussion for another day), leaving only a couple of small concerns about whether I’m going to discover a weird dent in my head, and what I’m going to do about the giant mole that’s currently buried in my hair, about three inches above my right temple. But dammit, if there were ever a time to lean into giant earrings and hope for the best, it’s now.

But I digress.

The point is that big changes are afoot for me, and I hope to use this space to tell you about them, in a kinda-CaringBridge, kinda-stream-of-consciousness rambling way. But tell you what: since we all know my rambling can get a little out of control, I’ll make an effort to begin each blog post with the most recent medical news I have, so you won’t have to pick through a 6,000-word babble-fest to find out what’s going on with me health-wise (i.e., dig up the lede). Then you can decide for yourself if you want to stay for the rambling.

To that end, this is the point in THIS blog post where THAT part (which will also likely include some TMI) begins.

How It Started

At some point in early- to mid-June, I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, putting on deodorant, when I paused in wonder: why the heck did I have a DENT in my left breast? I reached my right hand over to touch it, and felt a rather large, oblong lump beneath the surface.

I wasn’t INCREDIBLY worried; in my early 30s, I’d undergone a series of imaging procedures on my breasts, because the new gynecologist I’d started seeing had some concerns about lumps she felt while palpating them during a routine exam. In the end, there turned out to be no cause for alarm (my boobs were just fibrous), so I skipped on my merry way. Cut to 20 years later, and I’m assuming this lump is just a matter of my girls being who they are, and perhaps partying a little harder in this, The Age of Perimenopause.

Plus, based on a few Google searches, this didn’t seem to have the characteristics of a cancerous lump: it didn’t “feel like a frozen pea” (it was much bigger and softer), it didn’t seem to be immobile, and it did, occasionally, feel slightly tender (which, I’d read, malignant tumors generally don’t). Still, in an effort to err on the side of caution, I booked a June 13 appointment with (again) a new gynecologist, mainly in order to get a referral for a mammogram and put this whole thing to bed.

(The gyno visit turned out to be a whole ‘nother thing; based on questions I answered about my periods during intake, I ended up feet-up and cooch-out, deep breathing and clenching my toes while the doctor plucked out some of my uterine lining (OUUUUUUCH!) for a biopsy of that tissue. And y’all know me and my love for a good story (and good irony), so I was already crafting a tome in my head about how I went in because of a lump in my breast, but ended up discovering cancer in my uterus. (I make no apologies for being this much of a weirdo.) The endometrial biopsy showed no malignancy, however, so I put my (figurative) pen down, cooled my (also figurative) jets, and followed the gynecologist’s referral to follow up on the breast lump.)

On June 27, I walked into the appointment the gynecologist had set up for me at a place called Midwest Breast Care, thinking I was there to have a mammogram. Instead, the visit was short and sweet; a nice nurse practitioner named Kelli felt me up for like three minutes, and then set me up with an appointment at Diagnostic Imaging Center for a mammogram and ultrasound. Because of the 4th of July holiday and a planned trip to Texas to visit some family people with my offspring, THAT appointment didn’t take place until July 15—but things started moving pretty quickly at that point, because before the end of that day, I’d been given the first piece of concerning news: the lump they’d examined via mammogram and ultrasound had earned a rating of BI-RADS 5—which indicated a 95% chance of malignancy. I was going to have to have a biopsy.

That’s when the “Oh, shit” began.

The biopsy took place at a different place—The Women’s Imaging Center (where the doctor from Midwest Breast Care could perform the procedure herself)—on July 19; it, too, was relatively short and sweet. The worst parts were:

  1. The injection of local anesthesia to numb the area
  2. The play-by-play details the doctor was kindly sharing with me as she worked (I know some people are probably comforted by knowing EXACTLY what’s happening when they can’t feel or see what’s going on, but me, I prefer ignorant bliss), and
  3. The fact that my husband, who’d accompanied me on this appointment, wasn’t allowed to come into the procedure room with me and hold my hand, so instead I clutched the edge of the mattress where I lay, took deep breaths, and tried to pretend the doctor was reading me a book, because I never pay attention when people read shit aloud to me.

I walked out of the biopsy a little shaky from nerves, but fine—and then began the wait for results, which I’d been told would take 2-3 days.

Two days later, on Thursday, July 21, as I wrapped up a Zoom meeting at work, the phone rang.

The woman on the other end introduced herself as a nurse with Midwest Breast Care, and after the initial pleasantries (“Fine, thanks, how are YOU?”), said she was calling to share my biopsy results with me. I said, “OK” . . .

. . . and then she paused. Paused for a full, deep breath. That pause told me everything I needed to know.

And, of course, a couple of seconds later, she confirmed the worst. Aside from telling me the mass was malignant, however, she was unable to share any more information. I would, she said, learn more when I met with Dr. Get-It-Done (who’d performed the biopsy) in nearly a week, on July 27.

How It Went After That

In the moments following the news, I felt mainly numbness and sudden exhaustion (I joke that whereas sudden stress triggers a “fight or flight” response in other people, it triggers a “fall asleep” response in me). I immediately called my husband at work, and he said he’d come home right away—which I tried feebly to discourage, because I didn’t feel so much like I needed a good cry in someone else’s chest, but rather a good nap. But he came home anyway, and after we talked for a little while, I went upstairs and crashed.

After I woke up, he drove me on a couple of errands (I was due to pick up groceries for, and deliver them to, my mom, and then pick up our younger kid from day camp, so we did both of those things, and then made a run to Costco), and as we drove around town, my inner Maudlin Maude came ALL the way out to play.

The whole world became more vivid: the grass so verdant it practically hummed, the sky suddenly Simpsons-intro perfect. Looking out the window from the passenger seat of the car, I suddenly felt, deep in my bones, the inherent magic in all the things: Trees! Why had I never taken the time to appreciate the miracle of trees? Their different shapes, textures, colors? And how had I ignored the simple fact that the clouds not only bathed us in rain, but actually engaged with us by occasionally arranging themselves into shapes we recognized—dinosaurs, penises, Winnie the Pooh—to keep us entertained? And OMG, Arby’s! I was going to miss Arby’s so much . . . how many more Jamocha shakes would I be able to experience in my life? I should have had more Jamocha shakes!

Every song we heard in the car during our three-hour tour spawned a This-Is-Your-Life-type mental vignette of some small moment from my past—and, it’s worth noting, we keep our Sirius XM firmly planted on the 70s on 7, 80s on 8, and Yacht Rock stations, so there was no shortage of nostalgic mind movies.

Every person at whom I glanced at a stop light, in line at a cash register, or out the window of the car as they stopped to pick up their dog’s poop became a fascinating and complex creature whose stories, stresses, and triumphs I suddenly wished I could know.

It got DRAMATIC, y’all.

For the six days between the initial diagnosis and the follow-up discussion with Dr. Get-It-Done at Midwest Breast Care, I wavered between sadness, numbness, exhaustion, and that first-day maudlin-yet-stoner-like fascination with the world and everything in it.

But the kicker was that I couldn’t tell anyone. I mean, come on—y’all know I like to fling my business ALL UP INTO THE WIND. But this time, I had to slow the blow.

I mean, of course my husband knew, and he was amazing support. In fact, the day we found out, the speed and unequivocality with which he said YES to my every request made for a little silver lining:

“Hey, can we have pizza for din-“
“YES.”

“Would you please put the little one to bed toni-“
“YES.”

Shoulda gone big and asked him for an Airstream.

But I digress again. The point is that without ANY more information than “I have cancer,” there was NO WAY I could share the news with the other people closest to me: my older kid (who was away at camp when we got the news, anyway), my mom, my sister. And I have this weird hang up about Order of Operations with big news like this (good OR bad): ya gotta tell your inner circle first; you can’t let your sister find out on Facebook!

So I kept mum.

The day after we got the news, we shoved our littler dude in the car and drove up to Minnesota to fetch the bigger dude from camp. Our little dude is only 6, and although he’s more perceptive than I’m ready for sometimes, we were able to process the news a little bit—speaking in quiet, parentally-coded sentences—during the 8 hours on the road.

Once we picked up the 14-year-old, however, we had to mum ourselves back up—which proved unfortunate when, sometime in the middle of our drive back home, I received an email with my official lab results from the biopsy. From that report, I learned that in addition to the BI-RADS 5 rating it had earned from the mammogram/ultrasound, my little overachiever of a lump had also been categorized as “high grade.” So I silently Googled THAT as we tooled down the highway, and . . . it wasn’t good. But I couldn’t SAY anything about it with both kids in the car, so I texted my husband, who was in the driver’s seat right in front of me (my 14-year-old is taller than I am, so I graciously offered him the roomier front seat for the ride home, and sat in back with the little dude, play-acting arguments between his two identical Thor figurines about which one of them was more handsome).

My husband read my text (and the report) during a bathroom stop, and then once we got back into the car, we had to turn off Dan Fogelberg (damn that deep-feelings-melody man) for fear he’d make us both start bawling—which would likely make the kids more than a little suspicious. But at that point, I really started to feel like I was in for some REALLY bad news once I was able to talk to the doctor.

Once we arrived back home, I had to deep breathe and fake chill my way through a regularly-scheduled weekly visit with my mom (which also included my children), and peppily vague my way through a couple of check-in texts from friends who wondered whatever became of that issue with my breast (back when I was SUUUUUUUUUUURE the lump was going to turn out to be just an angry, atrophied milk duct or something—and that the worst possible news I’d get would be that even though it was benign, I was going to have to have it removed anyway—I’d told a couple of friends about it, mostly to complain about the pitfalls of middle age).

All the while, faced with what I believed was my imminent doom, I began to see/feel signs that confirmed as much: a slight back ache from scrubbing down the shower became certainty that the cancer had spread to my spine. Each moment of forgetfulness or ding-dong decision-making (both of which, we all know, are regular occurrences for me) became irrefutable proof that it had spread to my brain. Gastrointestinal distress brought on by questionable Mexican food . . . ? Well. You get the picture.

But finally . . . FINALLY . . . the follow-up consultation came.

The appointment was at 1:30 in the afternoon, and for the whole morning, I was so freaked out, I felt vaguely nauseated and couldn’t concentrate on ANYTHING. When I arrived for the appointment, and was undergoing the initial vitals check, the nurse who took my blood pressure didn’t TELL me what it was, but instead said, “You need to STOP STRESSING.”

Easy for YOU to say, lady! You’re not the one about to find out your chances of having another Christmas with your kids!

At last, we were ushered into a conference room, where Dr. Get-It-Done sat with us, went over the pathology results in detail, and answered all of our questions.

And while it wasn’t ALL good news (the triple-negative nature of the cancer means a slightly less desirable prognosis, and more limited treatment options), let me tell you what: when you’re sitting there, prepared to hear that your cancer is at Stage 4 (and that shit, forget Christmas, you may not make it to Halloween)—and then you hear “Stage 2,” which means the cancer hasn’t spread—the urge to kiss EVERYONE within a three-mile radius takes over your entire soul.

How It’s Going

So since then, things have been . . . dare I say GOOD? I know that sounds jacked up, but between learning that I’m at Stage 2, AND being able to share the news (and thus the emotional load) more widely, I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my psyche.

(Well. The one chunk of weight that still remains is telling a childhood friend whose husband is battling colon cancer. When she first shared that news with me, I signed on to be one of the people she could call in the middle of the night if she needed to vent, to be a friend who’d haul ass onto a plane at a moment’s notice. In short, I signed on to do what I could to help her feel BETTER.

So since the first “Oh, shit” moment, I’ve struggled with how on earth to tell her this news—and when. I mean, if I told her before I knew anything for sure, and then it turned out I was fine, I’d get her all freaked out for nothing (when she already has enough to freak out about). On the other hand, if I WASN’T fine, and then suddenly sprung this on her, she might do the math and be like, “Wait—I just talked to you six days ago, and you didn’t say ANYTHING about this!”

Ultimately, I took the gamble that it would all turn out to be nothing, and she’d never even need to know any of it had happened.

I lost that bet.

So there’s a hurdle I have yet to jump (therefore I’ve excluded her and her husband from the Facebook post linking to this blog post until I make that leap)—but compared to the period of time when I couldn’t tell ANYONE, I’m still psychologically lighter.)

Hard days ahead, yes—LAWD, yes—and of course things won’t be the same, but my closest people now know (and are taking the news better than I expected), and at this point, in the lull between diagnosis and treatment, things feel . . . normal.

The surprising thing, so far (other than—for real—the Stage 2 status, because I was already writing my obituary in my head) has been the fact that I always assumed a diagnosis like this would, for me, bring great clarity and perspective, a take-no-prisoners, tolerate-no-bullshit certainty about how I wanted my life to be . . . and that didn’t really happen, not like I thought. Mostly things still feel the same. I still take a little bit of bullshit (mostly from my kids), and I still care way too much about things like dusting and vacuuming and making sure my bathrooms get cleaned once a week. Is this who I really am? Not sure.

But the one thing I AM sure about is who—per the title of this blog post—gets to be the “Big C” and what punk-ass interloper gets relegated to “Little C.”

I am OWNING this capitalization. Chandra. THAT’s what begins with (capital) C.

Take THAT, cancer. Ya lowercase motherfucker.