I call my gynecologist. Next step, a needle aspiration to see if it might be just a lump of liquid. I go in for the procedure. No such luck.
Next step, a biopsy. I ask to see the thing after they take it out, so they hold it up to me with forceps. It’s white and grainy. I remember commenting to the doctor who removed it that I expected a tumor to be an ugly green or black. This was in a joking mood, before I learned it was malignant. That news comes in a phone call at work, from my gynecologist. A further procedure will be required.
I tell my son Dan. He listens with a grave expression, eyes glistening.
Next step, a quadrantectomy. They will remove the lump along with the surrounding quadrant of breast tissue, and sample the lymph nodes in the nearby armpit. My girlfriends gift me with a nightgown for the hospital. The night before, I put finishing touches on my son Jesse’s Billy Idol costume that he will wear for 70s Day at school the next day. I’ll be going in at the crack of dawn, so he has to powder his red hair white by himself.
Last thing I remember before they put me out is a bunch of strangers circling the room, faces blurry in the shadows while I’m spotlighted in the glare of the overhead light. The strangers are medical students, prepared to observe my breast being worked on. No privacy for me in this surgery, I remember thinking. And then oblivion.
“Everything went well,” the surgeon says when I come awake again, and I thank my lucky stars.
Until the next day on rounds, when he announces that there is lymph node involvement. So that’s how it’s gonna be, I think, numb. Under the influence of postsurgery analgesics, I have just read a whole Ursula LeGuinn fantasy novel and not remembered a word.
Next step, a month to recover from surgery, then start chemo. Oh my God, chemo. I picture a movie I saw once where the wife pukes her guts out in a losing battle with the Big C, while her helpless husband and child look on. My new doctor, an oncologist, says I’m to take a bunch of pills every day, and have intravenous drips every other week for 12 weeks. Desperate to know we’re doing the right thing, I get a second opinion from my neighbor Larry, the doctor who famously cured cyclist Lance Armstrong of testicular cancer. He concurs in the treatment plan.
And so it begins. The first day of intravenous treatment, Dave and I attend a party for runners hosted by our friend Mike. I feel fine, carrying my little secret, wondering how I’m going feel in the hours ahead and happy for the diversion.
Weeks pass, and I learn what to expect. I down the daily handful of pills. On injection Fridays, I go mall shopping afterward, the stimulation distracting me from rumblings in my gut. I eventually puke, yes, but it’s not that bad. Yet as time wears on, I start to feel puny just pulling into the parking lot by the clinic where I get the injection. To this day, I still get that feeling when I pass it by. Butterscotch hard candies are my standby to keep the nausea at bay.
Toward the end of chemo, my blood cell count becomes very depressed. They give me penicillin to ward off infection, and I proceed to break out in tiny pinpricks of red all over a swollen face—an allegic reaction.
Throughout it all, I go to work every day, albeit at my own business started with three partners—a blessedly sheltered environment when I need to be sheltered. One day I’m caught speeding on my way to pick up kids from school. No sympathy from the traffic cop toward my story of rushing home from chemo to get my kids on time—that’ll cost me $45. I break into tears. We can ill afford the fine.
On a business trip with a partner to pitch a project in Chicago, my hair starts to fall out. The day of the big meeting with the client, I keep my coiffure together with hairspray. On the ride home, I pull it out by handfulls. I knew to expect this with chemo, but my hair was so thick, I thought somehow I’d be immune to this side effect.
Next step, a wig to hide my balding scalp. Dave and I joke that this is my opportunity to make myself over, e.g. as his favorite chanteuse Tina Turner. Most wig shop products are so unnaturally thick, they put me off. I find a neighbor lady who outfits people with wigs from her basement—and order the perfect thin, natural looking synthetic wig. And so I manage to pass as a normal person out on the street, not one dealing with a life and death struggle. And it really doesn’t feel like life or death. It feels more like getting through one day at a time.
At night, I lie awake in the dark thinking how unfair this all is. I had been taking such good care of myself. Quit smoking long ago, took up running and aerobic dancing, was eating properly. Yet none of this guaranteed the bad cells wouldn’t gain a foothold. Now modern medicine is launching a massive assault on the bad cells. I feel so tiny, so lacking of control, in the face of it. Occasionally there comes a tear.
At long last we’re done with chemo, and not a day too soon—I didn’t think I could face that much longer. But we’re not done yet.
Next step, radiation therapy. And so begin the daily trips to the hospital for my fifteen minutes on the table under the cloud-decorated blue ceiling, while the rads work their way into the breast tissue, on their search and destroy mission. For some reason the song “Beautiful Dreamer” runs through my mind on these sessions, repeating and repeating its soothing melody until my turn under the fryer is over. Undressing and redressing in the booth before and after, I think about others going through the same ordeal. How we could help each other. I think about how I could write a manual for those unlucky enough to join the C-club, full of practical tips for getting through procedures and treatments.
Tired, so tired is what I mostly remember from the six weeks I endure radiation therapy. Even so, there is yet one more step to go—a radiation implant.
This involves a surgical procedure—they insert a series of slim cylinders across the incision site, containing grains of radioactive material—and a weekend stay in the hospital. I bring work along to help while away the hours while the rads do their thing. Nursing staff look in on me from time to time, but stand at the door and don’t come in. Meals are wheeled in on carts and tossed in my direction, the bearer beating a hasty retreat. I’m obviously too hot to handle! Thankfully this is the last of my ordeals, and with time it becomes clear the treatment has worked. My energy returns, my hair grows back, and eventually life returns to normal.
It’s been ages since my bout with the bad cells, and I’m here to tell you, there is life after cancer. When it’s happening to you, it fills your whole life. Even long after treatment is over, not a day goes by that you don’t think about it, recalling the details, how you felt, wondering if it could strike again. But in time the anxiety fades. It still enters my thoughts now and then, and I feel lucky to have made it, knowing that not everybody did. I’m glad for every day of the 30 years since I had cancer, but it’s become just a dim memory among all the other events of my life.
Let's just hope it stays that way.
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