It's October 13th. Today is National Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day. We get one whole day out of the entire pink month of October. One day. And that's a day people try to co-opt for bogus Facebook games that do nothing to spread awareness or raise funding for metastatic disease.
I'm sharing an excerpt from my memoir, Metastasis is an Ugly Word, when I first learn that the so-called cyst I thought I had was actually cancer, back in the days when I was still blinded by the pinkwashing of the disease.
*******
When I went to the Family Health Services clinic to have the cyst drained, the doctor examined it, and refused to proceed. She said it felt too solid, and if it was a cyst, it would be a more involved task to drain it than she was equipped to handle. She gave me a referral to a surgeon, which terrified me.
Not because I was worried that it might be cancer, but because I was worried about how I was going to afford that. I was thirty-nine years old, still more than six months away from qualifying for Every Woman Matters. Then she told me that wasn't true. I had an actual lump, it didn't matter how old I was. I qualified for that reason.
I was flabbergasted. I told her I'd never heard that, I'd looked into the program before, that I'd never received the impression it was accessible to me before the age of forty, lump or no lump.
"I know," she told me.
That made me angry. But what was done was done. I was there, and I would be able to see a surgeon to get a biopsy, and I would be covered under the program. No use in looking back and being angry about what might have been. Just another appointment to work into my mostly-free schedule.
I just let Karen, my Human Resources contact at work, know I'd not be coming in that day, as I was still on light duty per worker's comp because of my wrist. Most of my time at work was spent doing nothing but sitting with a certain resident who needed a one-on-one caretaker pretty much around the clock. Although I wasn't medically cleared to physically assist him if he needed to go to the bathroom, I could free up the other CNAs to work the floor and stay with him and make certain he didn't try to stand on his own.
By now, it was November 12th, and once more I'd waded through a world where everything was flooded with pink ribbons everywhere. If you didn't have Awareness about the Pink And Beatable Disease Of Women, you lived under a rock in the middle of nowhere. But I was still too young to worry about breast cancer. Besides, there was no history of it in my family to my knowledge at the time. GI tract cancers were a different story, but I had no symptoms for one of those either, and aside from an injured wrist, I was strong and healthy.
The day for my appointment came, and I went to the surgeon's office at Bryan West Hospital. When she did the biopsy, the tissue proved to be solid, not a cyst. Either the surgeon was a remarkably good actress, or she too wasn't terribly concerned about the possibility of cancer. After all, eighty percent of breast lumps are benign, especially for women in their thirties into their forties. Still, the biopsy sample was on its way to pathology, and the office would contact us once they had the results.
A week went by, and every day while sitting with the resident at work, I would pull out my phone and check the patient portal website I was given at the surgeon's office and look for results. The more I checked the site, and the longer it went by without an answer, the more anxiety I felt. It chewed on me enough that several coworkers and residents noticed my increasing agitation, and asked me what was wrong. To the residents, I simply said I was just thinking about something at home, and to my coworkers, I admitted the truth. I had a biopsy on a breast lump.
Saying it made it real, saying it brought in dark and scary feelings of panic. What if was cancer? What would I do? How could I afford it? It couldn't be cancer, we couldn't afford it, I'd die from not being able to afford the treatments, didn't that happen all the time? Why wouldn't they just post the result, why was it taking so long? I was going to load the page, and any minute now, it was going to tell me what the results were, and they would be benign and I'd laugh at myself for being so paranoid. Just another possible serious medical issue that turns out to be nothing at all.
I was already on Ativan for occasional anxiety attacks, and I took more of it now. I couldn't sleep. I was a bundle of nerves inside and working overtime to keep the nerves concealed. At night, I distracted myself with reading Watership Down for the umpteenth time, while in the back of my mind wondering if this might be the last time I'd ever get to read the book. No, that was silly. It wasn't cancer. It was going to be fine.
I was sure there would be results posted on Friday, but there was nothing. The weekend rolled by in silence, and I was even more certain there would be something on Monday. Again, nothing. On Tuesday, a full week after the appointment, Jen called the office. My stomach twisted into horrible knots while I tried to make out what was going on just from her end of the conversation.
I couldn't stand it any longer.
"Is it cancer?" I whispered, twisting my fingers around each other.
She nodded.
My world dropped out underneath me and a cold wave of terror flushed every nerve. I started to panic and she shushed me, still trying to listen to what the doctor was saying on the other end.
November 19, 2013, I entered the New Normal.
The New Normal was a world that had cancer.
It's Cancer. Cancer. Cancer.
I was sure it was some horrible dream. I was in full-blown panic, our roommate came to see what was wrong. I was hysterical. The tests had to be wrong. No, it wasn't cancer. It was supposed to be something easily removed. It wasn't cancer. I couldn't have cancer. Cancer meant I was dying, no no no no this wasn't happening!
It wasn't that I didn't think breast cancer was easily treatable, that there wasn't a cure. As far as I knew, that was the case. But the money! Where would we get the money for the treatment that would save me? That is why I panicked. How were we going to afford this? I was going to die from a treatable disease, just like so many other Americans who couldn't afford health care. What were we going to do?
The surgeon said it was Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. It was the most common kind of breast cancer, easily treated. Easily treated. I'd be fine. Jen talked me down out of the panic attack, I was going to see an oncologist at the Southeast Nebraska Cancer Center on the 22nd, it was all still covered under Every Woman Matters, it was going to be fine.
I remembered the insurance I purchased in July of that year, and the cancer coverage, thinking of my resident who'd passed from colon cancer, thinking of my grandmother who passed from pancreatic cancer, not thinking at all of a cancer that no one in my family I was directly related to by blood had experienced. Or at least, that is what I knew at this point. I'd either never known or I had forgotten that my great-grandmother on my mother's father's side had breast cancer when she was younger.
I got on the computer and went to Facebook, looking to see if Angela, a friend of mine who does the schedules at work was online. She was. I asked if she was at the facility and when I got a confirmation that she was, I asked her to stay there. I needed to come in and it was big.
I grabbed the paperwork, planning to talk to HR about what I needed to do to get that insurance, and went to work. I didn't think about cancer, I focused on driving that mile and ran inside.
I told Angela, and the first thing she did was hug me, then grab my wrist and drag me to the office next to hers, the HR office. That's when I found out Karen herself was seven years out from a breast cancer diagnosis. I was with people who understood the panic I was desperately fighting and the relief of being understood, of being with people who had dealt with it and were okay, I broke down crying as the worst of the fear died down.
Karen said she'd come with me to the oncology appointment on Friday. Angela made certain I understood that I was not to worry about money. Declare bankruptcy if needs be, but the important thing was to focus on fighting. Not on worrying about what it was going to cost. Money wouldn't replace my life.
I had an appointment upcoming the following week to do surgery on my wrist, since it was healing too slowly for our liking. I was still on light duty, and the next few days of work were spent mostly getting told I was going to be fine, and talking with the former director of nursing, who had stage IV breast cancer. It was going to be fine.
I was going to be fine.
I could beat this thing. It was curable. It was just a bump in the road, I'd be fine, this would be cured, I would be cancer-free and back on track with the job I loved.
It was still terrifying though. But I knew that my outlook had some input on my chances for survival, regardless of the disease. People who give up in defeat do worse overall than those who keep a positive nature. I worked with that every day, I saw it in action, I knew this. So I knew I couldn't let fear and anxiety win.
I behaved in the manner I wanted to feel. I projected the kind of positive outlook I wanted to have. I acted far more confident than I felt, and I refused to allow the fear a foothold. Every time I started to panic, I would stop and recite the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert's Dune until I calmed down. As time went by, I found myself having to recite it less frequently.
"Make believe you're brave, and the trick will take you far." That line from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I was true.
I could do this thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment