I’m thankful for…

Posted: November 22, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: cancer fatigue | Tags: , , | 16 Comments

…all the usual suspects — loving family, great and true friends, a happy home, abundant sunshine, a fridge full of good things to drink.

But today I’m extra thankful for an endocrinologist who emails her newest, worried patient after the close of business the day before Thanksgiving to say, “I know you’re awaiting your biopsy results, and I know you don’t want to have to wait out the holiday weekend.”

That, my friends, is quality health care.

And the result from the needle IN MY NECK is good. Very good. The biopsy is negative.

I’m thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.

It’s never over

Posted: March 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

If it’s not over until the fat lady sings, I would like to know what time she’s scheduled to take the stage. What’s that — there is no schedule? The fat lady sings when she’s good & ready and not one minute before? She is a diva.

The idea of all of “this” being over is a recurring one. By “this” of course I mean cancer and all its dangling, hangey-on-y ways of lingering and permeating myriads aspects of life. I was reminded of this (because cancer and its many tentacles are never far from my mind), while reading one of my new blog friend’s blogs. His wife just had a mastectomy in northern California, and he posted on his blog to tell all of her friends & followers that the surgery was over. He actually used the phrase “it’s all over” and then chuckled at and corrected himself, knowing full good and well that they have miles to go before they sleep, as Robert Frost so eloquently wrote in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Oh, how I love that poem. Robert Frost was a total stud. The imagery he creates, seemingly effortlessly, resonates to this day. I’m totally in love with the image in my head of his horse, which he carefully crafts with such an economy of words. I can see his horse’s big, gentle eyes, beseeching his master and wondering what in tarnation the pair of them are doing hanging out in the woods on a cold, dark night. I can almost hear his harness bells’ jingle, and I’m swooning over the phrase “easy wind and downy flake.” Love it.

While some first-rate poetry is a nice distraction, the subject remains. The idea of “being done,” or “it being over,” doesn’t really apply to cancer. As I pondered Paul’s blog post I realized this truism, and even though I’m a rookie in the “cancer journey” I’ve learned a lot and I know this to be true: it’s never over.

Here’s the thing: the “cancer journey” is long. It used to be the road less traveled, to quote Mr Frost again, yet nowadays is more and more common. Too common, as every day the numbers of people diagnosed continue to grow. For breast cancer alone, the chances of getting it have risen from 1 in 20 in 1964 to 1 in 8 today. In less than 50 years, our chances of contracting this damned disease have leapfrogged considerably. Which means more and more people will find themselves on a “cancer journey,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers continue rising.

Another things I’ve learned on my “cancer journey” is that someone keeps moving the finish line. I’ve only been at this for 10 months, yet have seen my finish line recede, sidewind, and fade into the distance. It starts even before diagnosis, with the testing that’s done to determine if we do indeed have a problem. Get through those tests, which in my case were a mammogram, an ultrasound or two, and a couple of biopsies. Then there’s the actual diagnosis, and getting through that becomes an emotional obstacle course. Following the diagnosis are lots of research, soul-searching, and decisions. But even when those are through, the real work is only just beginning. After the big decisions come still more testing (MRI, CT scan, PET scan, blood work, another biopsy), and that’s just to get to the point of having surgery. Get through surgery, then through recovery, and just when I think I may be getting “there” I realize that even after recovery, I gotta learn about re-living, which is kinda different when “normal” has flown the coop and there’s a new status quo involved. You might think that finding the new normal would be the end, but guess what? now there’s the maintenance and screening. If you’re the kind of person who makes a list and takes the necessary steps to reach the conclusion, you’re screwed, because there is no end. I can’t even see the goalposts anymore.

I’ve learned this much on my “cancer journey.” I’m trying to stop looking for the finish line, to avoid squinting for the goalposts, somewhere off in the distance. Since it’s never truly over, I’m gonna just keep on truckin.’

Is there a Hallmark card for that?

Posted: January 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

I ran into my OB-GYN yesterday. That’s always kind of weird. Remember when you were a kid, and you would see one of your teachers outside of school? Not in a Mary Kay Letourneau kind of way–that’s creepy–but maybe bump into them at a restaurant or the grocery store. It always struck me as strange to see them out & about in the real world, because they were so confined in my mind to the classroom.

It’s sort of the same thing running into one’s doctor out & about in the real world.

So there we were, playing tennis on a Sunday morning, and through the fence of the court I saw my OB-GYN walking toward the gym. I’ve seen her at the club before, sweating away on the step mill or the recumbent bike. We’ve exchanged pleasantries and then I’ve gone my way and left her to her workout.

But I haven’t seen her since she found the lump in my right breast in March that turned out to be malignant and led to me having a mastectomy and getting an infection and going through some crazy stuff on this “cancer journey” and changing my status from regular person to survivor. It was kind of important to me to say something to her.

But what to say?

What’s the right thing to say to the person who essentially introduces you to your cancer? Is there a Hallmark card for that? I’m guessing not.

After she wrote my orders for the mammogram in March, the scenario could have had 2 different outcomes: either the mammo comes back clear and she sees me at next year’s well-woman exam; or the mammo comes back scary and she refers me to a specialist.

I’ve had a mammo every year for the last 5 years, a bit ahead of the recommended guidelines. Not because I like tests or crave extra attention, but because my mom died of a reproductive cancer, so my OB-GYN, who is married to an MD Anderson oncologist, has always been  especially pro-active with me. To me, that’s a sign of a competent person: I didn’t have to say, hey since my mom died of uterine cancer, what extra steps do I need to take to ensure my health? I never had to ask because she was on top of it. 

Thank goodness she was.

When my mammo came back scary, she called and told me and referred me to Dr Dempsey for a biopsy. I love her for that, because Dr Dempsey was the exact-right, totally perfect surgeon for me.

From there, Dr Dempsey referred me to Dr S for plastics and Dr Darcourt for oncology, and my OB-GYN was out of the loop. She called me a couple of times after she got the pathology report from the biopsy to check on me and see if there was anything I needed, but I was knee-deep in researching this beast, having tests run, scheduling all my appointments and keeping my regular life going that I never called her back. Then the infection took hold, post-surgery, and my life was topsy-turvy, to say the least.

I did sit down after all the brouhaha to write her a note to say thank you for finding the lump and saving my life.  That’s just the way my mama raised me, to write a thank you note to someone who had extended you a kindness or given you a gift. I especially like the gift part, but the kindness part is good too. 

This one was a strange note to write, though, and I found myself at a loss for words. That doesn’t happen to me very often.  I don’t remember what I wrote but probably scratched out something along the lines of “thank you for finding the lump that saved my life.” Whatever the words were, they were a feeble attempt to convey a mountain of gratitude and I sure wish I had had just the right words to let her know that she really and truly has made a difference in my life. 

So when I saw her from the tennis court yesterday, I didn’t even think about it, I just hollered her name and ran toward her. We were right in the middle of  a game and not at a good stopping point, but this was important, so I didn’t care, and neither did my tennis friends.

She asked how I was and I told her the truth: I’m good.

I’m good.

There wasn’t much to say after that; we had covered the important stuff.

She said she was really glad to see me, and to see me playing tennis especially. I said, me too. I thought I would want to say so much more, but we really had covered the important stuff.

Oh no, not again!

Posted: October 19, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, cancer fatigue, infection, tennis | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

So I have this little spot on the area formerly known as my right breast, which is now known as the right chest wall and was, over the summer, the site of a whole lot of activity. Things have been really calm lately, so I guess it was time for something to happen. This little spot popped up a week or so ago, about the time I started playing tennis again. Because I so enjoyed being back out on the court, and because I really needed to believe that I was finally out of the woods, I tried to ignore it. It wasn’t very big, it wasn’t all that red, and it only stuck out a little.

Well, if I’ve learned one thing from this whole mess, it’s that ignoring a spot in the hot zone doesn’t work. Never. No matter how hard you try. So once this little spot got a little bigger, a little redder, and stuck out a little more, I knew it was time to make the call.

I’ve gotten to know Dr S’s office manager, Marcie, and his nurse, Brenda, really well. Maybe too well. So when Marcie answered and I told her what was going on and I asked her if she wanted to ask him if he needed to see me, she said she wasn’t going to ask because we both know the answer. And yes, she does just lay it out there like that. Personally, I find it refreshing.

My  next check-up with the good doctor isn’t for another 3 weeks, and Marcie said there’s no way he’s going to wait that long to see you, so get yourself on in here. I tend to do what Marcie says. Dr S, not so much, but Marcie for sure.

When Brenda saw the little spot, she made that face. That “I skipped the poker face” lesson in nursing school. That face that makes me want to run screaming out of that building and never come back. So not only did she make the face, but she said he’s probably going to want to biopsy that. Commence running and screaming.

He wasn’t in that exam room five seconds before he hollered at Brenda to get him a syringe and a needle. I said, Wait — a syringe and a needle? Why both? What are you going to do? He looked me right in the eye and said, I don’t know, but I need a needle! A this point, it was too late to run screaming from the building, but I wanted to.

He poked the spot with the needle– more than once — and then used the syringe to try and collect something but nothing came out. The spot appears to be nice and harmless. Perfectly innocent. It’s probably scar tissue, so we’re just going to watch it. Keep an eye on it. See what happens.

Works for me. I’m thinking I’ll be out of there in time to get the cheap rate on the parking. Just wanted to ask him one question though, real quick as he’s out the door.

All I wanted to know was the name of the doctor in Miami who pioneered the technique that he’s thinking of using for my reconstruction. I’ve done a little research, but not much, and wanted to make sure I was headed in the right direction.

I have a lot of questions about this procedure, and it’s a big decision to make now that it’s not as simple as tissue expanders to implants. But I wasn’t going to ask the questions right then, because that’s a conversation for another time. I just wanted to know if I was on the right track in my fact-finding.

If you missed my post on Caring Bridge a while back about the “examine the fat” game I played with Dr S not once but twice, for two times the humiliation, you’re in luck because I’ll be dadgummed if he didn’t want to play it again. And as we all know, whatever Dr S wants, Dr S gets.

(If you want to read the original post, go to http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/nancyhicks/journal/2. I haven’t figured out how to add a link to this blog so if that doesn’t work, go to the old Caring Bridge blog and look at the journal entry for October 6th).

Why that man insists of tormenting me, I will never know. But I think he really enjoys it. Just as I’m wrapping my head around yet another change in the game plan, from TRAM-flap reconstruction to this new Brava technique of building new boobs out of fat that’s been relocated, he throws me another curve ball. Now he’s thinking that maybe the Brava technique isn’t the right option for me after all. Maybe we need to re-visit the TRAM-flap, which means he needs to pinch an inch and see how much building material I have.

I said uh-uh, no way, not again. We have done this twice and I’m still recovering from the humiliation. I’m not doing it again. He didn’t go so far as to say he doesn’t remember, but that’s my suspicion. I guess I should be flattered that my fat is so unremarkable as to render him striken with amnesia not once but twice, but I’m too wrapped up in being humiliated, again.

That man doesn’t take “no” for an answer. I said it repeatedly, and y’all know I’m no weenie when it comes to making myself heard. I told him politely then with some choice words that I wasn’t going to show him again. His response: Come on, it’s not like I’m a stranger.

THAT’S THE PROBLEM! Once you lose the “stranger” status with your doctor,  you move from clinical to personal, in a hurry. I know this man too well and have quite frankly been through enough already and really shouldn’t have to suffer yet another indignity.

However, knowing him as well as I do and having been through as much as I have with him, I know the fastest way to get through the unpleasantness is to just, well, get through the unpleasantness. And that’s how I found myself once again playing the “examine the fat” with Dr S.

And guess what? The result was exactly the same: He scrutinized my belly and said there’s probably enough to make a B-cup. But only on one side. I said, I know you think I’m really demanding, but I insist on having a matched set. We had previously discussed the idea of doing the TRAM-flap for one side, and using an implant on the other side, but I said then and said again that I don’t want to do that. Just seems like asking to be lopsided at some point down the road. He actually agreed with me, which scared me just a little.

So he seems to be leaning toward the TRAM-flap again, and away from the Brava technique. He gave me the website to research, I said, ok fine, we’ll talk about it later. And I thought I was out of there.

As I was checking out with Marcie, though, he called me into his office. It’s not quite like it was being called to the principal’s office as a kid, but a little disconcerting still. He’d pulled up the website and wanted to go over it right then & there. I didn’t even want to think about how many patients were waiting for him.

So we looked at a bunch of photos and I was quite underwhelmed with the results. Maybe it’s because I was perfectly satisfied with the set-up I had, pre-mastectomy. I’ve explained that to Dr S before: that while he does amazing work, and the majority of reconstruction patients whose photos I’ve seen look way better after than they did before, I was just fine where I was. So the “new boobs” as a prize for going through breast cancer, mastectomy and reconstruction isn’t a big draw for me. Excuse me for being underwhelmed.

As if I’m not confused enough at this point, he introduces yet another option: taking the muscle from my back, under the shoulder blades, and using that to build the new pair of goods. We looked at some photos of that, too, but I had one question: how would that affect my serve? Seems to me that slicing the muscle away from an area that is used to torque the body and generate force while serving the ball means bad things for one’s game.  I’m not going through life with a permanently wimpy serve. I’ve suffered enough.