The Biopsy

On biopsy day we had to be in Ann Arbor at 7:30 in the morning. The traffic on the freeway was crawling and I became anxious about being late for my appointment. We were 15 minutes late and they took me right in. I noticed a clock radio in the room so I asked the doctor if we could listen to NPR during the procedure. After numbing my breast the doctor made an incision and used a device that sounded like a stapler to extract tissue samples in two different places, one on each breast. She also did a needle aspiration of one area on the left breast. The whole thing took about an hour and a quarter. There were two technicians assisting the doctor, and we started talking about kids, grandkids, the elf on the shelf and the tooth fairy. Before we were done we were cracking up about the trials of parenthood. It was not as bad as I thought it might be.

I was given post procedure care instructions, along with two ice packs to put in my bra. This might have been okay in July, but not in December. I left the hospital with a list of breast surgeons, and called my ob/gyn to find out who she recommended.

Now to wait 2 – 4 business days for the results.

Mammogram and Ultrasound

I was fine until the day before the mammogram, and then I started freaking out a little. I guess because I wasn’t going to be able to ignore it any longer. I just couldn’t face the thought of telling my children or my dad if I had cancer. I didn’t think I could deal with one more thing after my daughters diagnosis, my dad’s stroke a couple of months prior, another daughter involved in a fatal car accident, and losing my uncle to cancer; all in a four year span. I was tired and afraid. I went to bed early and fell asleep with my husband’s arms around me. I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to face the day.

I checked in at the Women’s Health Center of St. Josephs Hospital in Ann Arbor. I was soon escorted back to the area where you remove everything from the waist up and put on a lovely pink patterned gown, fastening it in the front. Then I was instructed to sit in a waiting room with several other women in the same state of dress. We all sat with our magazines or smart phones, checking Facebook for the latest status update. I looked around and wondered which of these women were here for a routine exam and which were anticipating something more serious.

I was finally taken into a small dimly lit room for the mammogram. Are they trying to create an atmosphere? How about some candles and Yanni playing in the background? The technician had warm hands and tried to be kind as she carefully adjusted my breast between in the machine and then smashed the hell out of it, saying “hold your breath.” The mammography machine loomed over me and hummed with each adjustment of position. Eight different images were taken, then she told me to go back to the waiting room while the radiologist read them. She came back in a few minutes and said she needed to do a couple of more images. Great, I thought. Two more images of my right breast and back to the waiting room. “Why my right breast?” I thought. It’s the left I’m concerned about.

Finally the technician took me to another waiting area for the ultrasound. Another tech showed me into a small room and had me lay on a table with my gown open. She squirted some slimy gel on my right breast and began to scan it with the ultrasound wand. I watched the screen as she performed the test. She stopped in two different spots, took measurements and notes, and then went on to the left breast. I am astute enough to realize that those dark spots she was focusing on were the areas of concern. I asked her if someone would be looking at the scans and talking to me about them before I left. She said absolutely. When she was finished she left the room and came back in a few minutes with a young doctor, and I do mean young. I swear she was about twelve. She explained that she wanted to take another look at a couple of spots on the ultrasound, so I lay back down while she did that. She told me that I needed to have four spots biopsied, and explained how that would happen. She asked me if I had any questions. I started to cry and said “I don’t even know what to ask.” I wanted my husband to be there with me instead of in the waiting room reading some old issue of Womans Day. She asked if I knew of a breast surgeon, that she thought I would need one after the biopsy. Obviously she was not feeling positive about the outcome.

A biopsy was scheduled for the following week, but in the morning someone called and said they could see me in two days. I felt relieved that I did not have to wait so long, and worried because they felt they needed to get me in so soon.

The next day I was a sobbing mess. Every time I talked to someone I cried and cried, wanting to just lay down on the floor and kick and scream. Telling my kids was the hardest part. I didn’t want to worry them. My daughters all cried with me. My son took it like a guy, very stoic and matter of fact. My dad immediately started talking about what the dogs had done during the day.

In the following days I stayed busy doing things around the house, cleaning out the chicken coop and putting up Christmas decorations. I went to a movie with a dear friend, and I went to a twelve step meeting, where I have learned over and over again to stay in the moment and not to waste today worrying about tomorrow. 

Waiting

I was fifty eight when I first noticed the indentation in my left breast after showering one morning. “Hmmm, that’s interesting,” I thought. I felt around but didn’t find a lump. I forgot about it until my next shower and again let it flutter to the back of my mind. I wasn’t afraid. I had faced the most frightening thing in life two years before when my daughter was diagnosed with stage four synovial cell sarcoma. I ignored it for a few more days before I decided I should make an appointment with my ob/gyn. I was due for my regular exam anyway.

She looked me over and felt me up, then wrote an order for a diagnostic mammogram. Explaining that I would have my usual mammogram and then an ultrasound if it was deemed necessary, she told me I could get dressed. “Did you feel anything?” I asked. “No,” she said. I am not sure she would have told me if she had.

I scheduled the procedure; the earliest they could fit me in required a two week wait. I told my husband and asked him to go with me for the appointment. The waiting was not very hard; I stayed busy and only thought about it a couple of times a day. I called my best friend, who was a breast cancer survivor, and told her. She made me promise to call after my appointment and let her know what we found out.

My husband had a dream one night during those two weeks that I was having a heart attack and wouldn’t let him call 911. He could feel my heart beating like crazy and the numbers on his phone were all backwards. Then he realized that he had to call 119 to get help. The same night I had a dream that I hung sculptures of the Mad Hatter and the Jabberwocky on my living room wall. I am sure that both dreams have deep psychological implications.

Thelma & Louise

What the hell were we training them for?

I was the first girl in my sixth grade class to wear a bra, and I hated it. I was sure that everyone could see the straps through my clothes. My first bra had little flowers at the junction of the cups and shoulder straps; I yanked them off because they poked out the front of my shirt like two extra nipples poorly placed. My mother called it a “training” bra. What the hell were we training them for? The Mammary Olympics? The boys in my class took great pleasure in pulling the elastic back of my bra and letting it snap as they ran away laughing. As I said, I hated it.

In junior high, most of the girls had graduated from “training” bra to B, C or D cup. We kept our books close to our chest to avoid being grabbed by some adolescent sex crazed boys ( I won’t mention any names, but you all know who you are) in the hallways between classes. There was no such thing as “sexual harassment” in the 1960’s. We just tolerated it.

I’ve never quite figured out the fascination with breasts. Is it the fact that they are our first source of nourishment and comfort? Or maybe the first publicly visible sign of budding sexuality? Whatever it is, men and women alike are interested in them. Admit it, ladies, you look almost as often as men do, comparing them to your own or wondering “Are those things real?”

As an adult I stared calling my girls Thelma and Louise, after the movie characters. They were looking for trouble and usually managed to find it. Every guy I met wanted to get to know them, up close and personal. They mostly went away with their hopes dashed.

I nursed my four babies sitting in an old rocking chair, loving those middle of the night moments of joyous bonding with the lives I had created. I didn’t mind the sagging, the stretch marks, or leaky nipples. This is what breasts were designed for. I didn’t care that men stopped looking so shamelessly, or that I could not go braless because I actually needed a serious system to prop them up.

I started having regular mammograms after I turned forty. I looked forward to them like having a root canal. The man who invented that machine should have to have his testicles “grammed” on a yearly basis in the same sort of device. The indignity of slapping your boob onto a tray and having it smashed in a vice is quite unpleasant. The results were always unremarkable and I took it for granted that I could not get breast cancer. After all, the common thought when I was a young mother was that you had very little chance of getting breast cancer if you nursed your children. I had that covered. I thought I was safe.

Sarcoma

Sarcoma - is there an uglier word in the English language? If there is I don't ever want to hear it in reference to anyone I love. Synovial Cell Sarcoma has invaded my family and I just want to go somewhere and scream at the top of my lungs. The doctors talk about treatment options that sound worse than the disease. They sit in their white coats and calmly use phrases like "quality of life" and "life ending illness". My heart is aching so badly I can barely speak. The doctors leave the room and I put my arms around my daughter, hugging her so tightly, never wanting to let go.

We try to plan for the coming months of chemotherapy that they say will be so debilitating that she will not be able to work or care for her children. We try to figure out what to say to a twelve year old who has only one parent as it is. We sit in silence and cry, and cry, and cry.

I wake up in the morning and for one fraction of a second I forget, and then it all rushes back in, this nightmare that I can't wake up from. People say that you don't get more than you can handle and I say bullshit to that. If I believed in a god who is in control of our life events I would hate the mother fucker. I want to dig a hole, crawl in and pull the dirt in over me.

Bad News

We all know on some level that our lives can take a turn at any given moment, that in the space between two heartbeats everything can change, for better or for worse. How many of us are really aware, though, of that exact moment when everything you trust goes flying on the wind and a whole new reality comes in to fill the void?

Some of these moments come to us in slow motion, when you go into the bathroom and open the box, sit on the toilet and pee on the little cardboard strip, waiting to see if it turns pink or not. You sit down on the couch after dinner to watch the days lottery numbers come up, your heart beating a little faster with each number that comes up and matching your ticket, until finally you see that all of the digits match and your voice is stuck on oh my god for the next three minutes.

Other times the moment comes and goes and you don’t even realize it. You are introduced to the person who you will love for the rest of your days, and you are busy thinking about the how you are going to finish the project you are working on by the deadline your boss has given you. You look into his eyes and fail to see your children looking back at you, or the devotion he will show when you begin to forget how to find your way home from the grocery.

Then there are those moments when you know immediately that life has taken a turn. You day is going along in the same routine manner that it has every day for years, when some piece of hard reality comes at you in a phone call or a knock on the door. There can be no question that all you know to be true has been turned upside down and there is no going back. Try as you will to rearrange the pattern of days making the pieces fall just enough to the left so that the resulting picture will be more to your liking, it all comes back to cold reality. The bottom fell out of my world on a warm July afternoon in 2011. As I was about ready to leave my office for the day, my cell phone rang. It was one of my daughters, telling me that she was in the emergency room at the local hospital. I could hear the panic in her voice as she said "Mom, there is a mass in one of my lungs".

Just The Two of Us...Finally

I have come to believe that the “Empty Nest” syndrome is highly overrated. I hear stories of parents, mothers in particular, who feel lost, abandoned, aimless, when their kids leave home. I had my first child thirty six years ago, and until last week had one or more children and/or grandchildren living in the same house. I have fantasized about the time when they would all be gone on to find their way in the big world, on a different piece of real estate, never believing that it would really happen. Well, now it has.

In the 1970’s, The Walton’s was my favorite TV program. I loved it so much I actually named several of my children after characters on the show. Seeing the multiple generations living together on the farm gave me a warm fuzzy feeling after every episode. The big kitchen, full of three generations of women working to prepare the family meals seemed so appealing. When they all gathered at the table to discuss their problems, or sat around the radio listening to world events, I just knew I wanted my family to live like they did.

I lost track of the times that the shed next to the farm house was redone to accommodate one of the Walton children and their growing need for independence. It served as a private writing place for John Boy, a newspaper office (again for John Boy), a home for Ben and Cindy when they got married, and numerous other incarnations as the seasons progressed. When we bought our farm, I imagined the same kind of life for us. Our children were having children, and this was a place that could grow and change with the family. Sadly, life does not imitate art in the way that I would like it to. I imagined that we would be like the Walton’s, and in reality we are more like the Simpsons.

In my real family, the kids fight, run away from home, take drugs, won’t clean up after themselves, and generally conspire to drive me crazy. Thus my change of attitude toward the “Empty Nest” syndrome.

During the last season of the Walton’s, the mother is conspicuously absent. She is away “contributing to the war effort” and finally “in a sanitarium in Arizona because of her TB”. Then in the last few episodes, the father disappears, supposedly to join mom in Arizona. I found this to be highly disappointing. At the time I felt that Mama and Daddy Walton would never leave their children behind to fend for themselves. Now I think I understand completely.