This Can’t Be Happening to Me
I was a healthy 37-year-old woman having a routine checkup. Then the doctor felt a suspicious lump in my breast.
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The next Monday, after seeing Dr. Parker, I went to my sister Kathy’s house in Bedford for a week to recuperate. I spent the time at her house watching TV and doing exercises to regain the strength in my arms. The skin on my breasts was returning to normal—at least it had gone from dark blue to reddish-pink. Mostly I avoided looking in the mirror and decided to concentrate on getting through each day.
I was to start chemotherapy on Friday, June 20. I was petrified about that. I had dreams about waking up with no hair. In one dream I’ll remember forever, Dr. Doty tells me that I have cancer of the hair follicles and that the hair on my head will never return. When I went to Dr. Doty’s office I was relieved to hear that the chemotherapy would be administered by intravenous injections, rather than by intravenous drip. The shots weren’t that bad, but they made me feel tired, and after a couple of days on the cytoxan I was a little sick to my stomach, but not to the extent I had anticipated.
After getting over the initial shock of what I was going through, I began to notice the same people in the doctor’s office week after week. I asked Lora Allen the age of the youngest cancer patient in the office, and she said thirteen. In the waiting room I met a woman who had had a colostomy, an older woman with brain cancer, a man with Hodgkin’s disease, and another woman, slightly older than I was, who had had one breast removed about the same time I did. Every week I found myself looking for these people, hoping that they were doing okay.
Now, with some time to think, I started reading everything I could about breast cancer. The American Cancer Society statistics were staggering. About one of every ten women will have breast cancer. In the United States 130,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed this year. The survival rate ranges from 67 to 90 percent, depending on the stage of the disease. This year 41,000 women are expected to die of breast cancer; it is the number three cause of mortality among women after heart disease and lung cancer. I also read that breast cancer has a tendency to run in families, but none of my relatives had had it.
I was able to return to work part time on June 23. For the first two weeks I could barely move by the time I went home. Very slowly I began to find my strength coming back to me. It was wonderful to be going to work every day instead of dwelling on what had happened and was happening to me. Jennifer made a big difference in my recovery, giving me both emotional and physical support. But I know that as my daughter she worries she will get breast cancer too. The weeks went by quickly. I kept waiting for my hair to fall out. It got thin, but I still didn’t need a wig.
Dr. Parker had scheduled my nipple reconstruction for Wednesday, August 27. That would be done as day surgery at Grandview Surgical Center and would consist of taking a one-and-one-half-inch-square piece of skin from the inner thigh of each leg o make the areolas. The nipples would be made from labial tissue. I arrived at the hospital early that morning and was immediately sedated. I woke an hour and a half later feeling stiff and sore. My friend Mary picked me up and took me home, where I fell back asleep. I had six- to seven-inch scars on the insides of my legs that hurt whenever I walked. I was able to return to work the next Monday.
Between my visits for chemotherapy I had to see my surgeons, Dr. Parker and Dr. Jones, for checkups. Once a month I had to see the oncologist, Dr. Doty. In September Dr. Doty found a knot in my neck that concerned him. Day surgery was arranged at Seton Medical Center on September 19. This time I had to force myself to go to the hospital. I didn’t know how much more I could take. I remember being wheeled into the operating room, praying that this would be the last time I would be operated on.
When I awoke, I was in the recovery room. Dr. Jones, who had done the surgery, came to see me and told me that the tumor wasn’t cancerous. Thank God! I could hardly wait for Mary to pick me up. The less time I spent in hospitals the better. After I got home I slept most of the day, and I was able to go back to work three days later. One of the side effects from that surgery was that I lost feeling on the left side of my neck, although as had been the case with my previous nerve damage, I was told that sensation should return.
I continued to receive chemotherapy about once a week. Every three months I had chest x-rays and a blood chemistry profile. In December my profile turned suspicious. Dr. Doty told me that there are twenty to thirty reasons for that, and he decided to wait two weeks to have the profile redone. Again the blood profile turned out abnormal, and Dr. Doty scheduled me for another bone scan and a CAT scan at Seton.
Since having surgery in May I had gone from feeling sorry for myself, from feeling disfigured and depressed, to feeling happy just to be alive. Now I was angry that I had to face yet another test that might show that I had no hope for survival.
On January 7, 1987, I went to Seton for the bone scan and CAT scan. I wouldn’t know about the results until two days later, when I saw Dr. Doty. I found myself simultaneously dreading that meeting and wishing it was over. Finally he informed me that everything was okay. For the first time since that initial visit with Dr. Lindsey I felt like jumping for joy.
During the Christmas holidays of 1986 my sister Kathy had asked me what I wanted as a present. I asked that she get a mammogram. In March she did, and there were no signs of cancer. We were ecstatic. My sister Angela, who was adopted, has not had a mammogram. Then in late April Kathy noticed a bruise on her left breast. She went to the doctor to have it checked, and the doctor drew fluid from her breast. The fluid contained cancer cells. My heart was broken. I thought that since I had gone through this, everyone I loved wouldn’t have to. Kathy has fibrocystic disease also. It turns out that she was one of a small percentage of women whose mammograms are inaccurate because the presence of nonmalignant breast masses blocks the image of the cancerous tumor on x-rays. On May 26, her birthday, Kathy had surgery. Both breasts were removed. She is now undergoing almost to the letter the same chemotherapy treatment that I had.
I finished chemotherapy last July. Although I had suffered few severe side effects, my blood counts had been low on several occasions. Dr. Doty and I decided to forgo the radiation treatments since they might complicate future therapy if the cancer recurred. Now each day I take twenty milligrams of Nolvadex, an anti-tumor drug. I see Dr. Doty every three months, but soon I will have to go only twice a year. My breasts still don’t look normal. In a way they look like caricatures of breasts, but it is wonderful to have something there. The cost of the operations and chemotherapy has been unbelievable. The total so far comes to about $32,000. If I had not had health insurance, I don’t know what I would have done. Paying off my share of the bills took a full year.
It has been a year and a half since my ordeal started. I have learned a lot about myself and about my disease. I have had relatives die from cancer, but until you find yourself having to cope with the disease, you can’t understand what a diagnosis of cancer actually means. If it hadn’t been for friends and family, I am sure that I wouldn’t have been able to hold on to my sanity. I consider myself very lucky to be surrounded by such loving, caring people.
The American Cancer Society has a program for women who have had breasts removed. It is called Reach for Recovery. Volunteers who have had mastectomies are trained to help other women who are just beginning their recovery. The volunteer visits the woman in the hospital, explains the exercises needed for her to regain her strength, and lends a psychological helping hand. I’m hoping that I can get into a training program so that I can help make dealing with cancer a little easier for someone else.
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