I finally got an appointment scheduled with Dr. Kollmorgan. Unfortunately it isn’t until April 8th. That seems so far away and I want to get started and have a plan in place. Yesterday (Monday) was a bit of a low day, mostly because of the delay in getting things moving towards a resolution. Today, a week from tomorrow doesn’t seem all that far away. I could see a different surgeon sooner but feel I am better off waiting for one of the best in the area rather than hurrying myself into something I might regret later.
My friend Carolyn A. took me to meet her breast cancer support group last night. They have been meeting for thirteen years and they have all survived breast cancer for at least that long and some for much longer. It was good to talk to a group of women about their cancer experiences. They represent a range of treatment options from lumpectomy to double mastectomy and all sorts of treatments after surgery. The common denominator is that they are all still active, vital women.
Of course they all pointed out that there have been many advances in the last ten to twenty years. I will definitely benefit from that and from the experiences that other breast cancer patients can share with me. All those times I harbored secret resentment against all the attention that breast cancer got! Now I can be grateful and take advantage of all the research that they raised money for. I can wear pink and not feel so resentful that the other cancers aren’t better represented.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Life Is Difficult
“Life is Difficult”
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
No kidding! Life IS difficult. The results are in and it’s not benign. Wishes not withstanding. It’s an infiltrating ductal cancer. (My spell checker wants it to be ductile, not ductal. But so far I have seen it spelled both ways on the web.)
According to the Susan G Komen web site:
The most common type of invasive cancer is infiltrating ductal carcinoma (also called invasive ductal carcinoma), which accounts for 65 to 80 percent of all breast cancer cases.
Searching the web it maybe not the best thing to do when you have a diagnosis and no other information. Words like “invasive”, “rare”, “aggressive”, “deadly cancer that can quickly metastasize to the bones and lungs” all send anxiety levels off the charts. I also see that this is the most common type of breast cancer and that there are many treatment options and a good “cure” rate. I definitely need more information but this may not be the best way for me to get it.
Dr. Barker promised a referral to one of the best breast specialist oncologists in the area and so now I will have to wait for a call, an appointment and then a plan. It’s hard for me to function without a plan. I need a list and a sense of what comes next and then what’s next after that. That’s how I cope. I can keep on putting one foot in front of the other as long as I have a sense of where I’m going.
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
No kidding! Life IS difficult. The results are in and it’s not benign. Wishes not withstanding. It’s an infiltrating ductal cancer. (My spell checker wants it to be ductile, not ductal. But so far I have seen it spelled both ways on the web.)
According to the Susan G Komen web site:
The most common type of invasive cancer is infiltrating ductal carcinoma (also called invasive ductal carcinoma), which accounts for 65 to 80 percent of all breast cancer cases.
Searching the web it maybe not the best thing to do when you have a diagnosis and no other information. Words like “invasive”, “rare”, “aggressive”, “deadly cancer that can quickly metastasize to the bones and lungs” all send anxiety levels off the charts. I also see that this is the most common type of breast cancer and that there are many treatment options and a good “cure” rate. I definitely need more information but this may not be the best way for me to get it.
Dr. Barker promised a referral to one of the best breast specialist oncologists in the area and so now I will have to wait for a call, an appointment and then a plan. It’s hard for me to function without a plan. I need a list and a sense of what comes next and then what’s next after that. That’s how I cope. I can keep on putting one foot in front of the other as long as I have a sense of where I’m going.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A Gentle Needling
Today was my needle biopsy. That has such an ominous sound. Needles and my breast are not words I want in the same sentence. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared. No boobs hanging through holes on a table. Thank God! The radiologist numbed the site over the lump with “bee sting” pricks. Let’s not pretend that bee stings don’t hurt but it wasn’t bad enough to evoke yelps or groans and was over quickly. I didn’t even feel the big needle go in and only had mild twinges as they took samples using the large needle as a canal for smaller needles to zip in and grab a piece of the tumor/cyst. I watched on the ultra sound as the needle approached the dark lump and then sent out a zip line that shot into the mass and retrieved a tiny piece of it for testing. How astonishing. I got my instructions about no swimming or hot tubbing, no exertion or lifting, put ice on the incision and take it easy. I can do that! I probably won’t hear anything until Monday afternoon as they take two to three business days to process the samples and then contact my doctor about the results. Benign is my new favorite word. Benign cyst has such a lovely sound.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Borrowing Trouble
Where does one go to borrow trouble anyway? Not that I want to borrow any, mind you. Just wondering…
Today was my mammogram and ultra sound where they discovered what I already know. There’s a lump. The radiologist confirmed it and said that now I need to have a needle biopsy which they will perform on Thursday morning. Nothing has really changed except that now I feel plugged into the system and that makes me feel at least a little comforted. Whatever the tests show, there will be a next step and a step after that. While that might not always be easy, I’ll be ok if I can just stay in today. No borrowing for me…
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Medicinal Friends
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. Isaac Asimov
I love this quote!! Not that I’d want to know I had a time limit ticking away, but because a little urgency sweetens everything. He could have easily said he would dance a little faster I suppose; but since I write, this works for me. Writing is such an excellent outlet. It’s almost as good as talking to a friend, but not quite. Talking to someone who loves and understands you is the absolute best medicine available. I am blessed to have a couple of really, really good friends. Unfortunately, none of them live next door. Bad planning on someone’s part I guess… Luckily, I am married to my best guy friend, but there are times when a girlfriend is essential and fortunately he understands that.
I love this quote!! Not that I’d want to know I had a time limit ticking away, but because a little urgency sweetens everything. He could have easily said he would dance a little faster I suppose; but since I write, this works for me. Writing is such an excellent outlet. It’s almost as good as talking to a friend, but not quite. Talking to someone who loves and understands you is the absolute best medicine available. I am blessed to have a couple of really, really good friends. Unfortunately, none of them live next door. Bad planning on someone’s part I guess… Luckily, I am married to my best guy friend, but there are times when a girlfriend is essential and fortunately he understands that.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Small Moments
I don’t value small moments enough. I keep thinking about my first feelings of loss over the things I won’t get to do or see if I get embroiled in another cancer battle. What I truly think I will regret the most is the lost small moments:
When I get a call from a friend just to see how I’m doing;
When my husband crooks his arm just so, inviting me to snuggle with him on the couch while we watch Sports Center or World Poker tour and I go to sleep on his shoulder;
Breakfast at a local coffee shop with friends when the conversation ranges from current events to childhood memories to strange life experiences;
Seeing the swallows come back to check out the little house on our deck they have inhabited for the past several years;
Hummingbirds checking out the feeders and scolding me when they aren’t fresh;
Daffodils, crocuses, tulips, hellebores – optimistic flowers thinking we can’t possibly have another hard freeze – squandering their beauty on the hope of an early spring;
Ok here’s the choice: a snap-line journey over the Amazon canopy or a small moment. I find myself inclined to choose the small moment.
When I get a call from a friend just to see how I’m doing;
When my husband crooks his arm just so, inviting me to snuggle with him on the couch while we watch Sports Center or World Poker tour and I go to sleep on his shoulder;
Breakfast at a local coffee shop with friends when the conversation ranges from current events to childhood memories to strange life experiences;
Seeing the swallows come back to check out the little house on our deck they have inhabited for the past several years;
Hummingbirds checking out the feeders and scolding me when they aren’t fresh;
Daffodils, crocuses, tulips, hellebores – optimistic flowers thinking we can’t possibly have another hard freeze – squandering their beauty on the hope of an early spring;
Ok here’s the choice: a snap-line journey over the Amazon canopy or a small moment. I find myself inclined to choose the small moment.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Vu ja de all over again
BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING
I am converting my journal to a blog. Since I started my journal less than a week ago, this first entry is a catch up to cover March 15 - March 20:
Sunday - March 15, 2009
I found the lump. So high on my breast that it seems more on my chest than on my breast. It sets my thoughts racing. What is it? Probably a benign cyst. It’s so large that I can’t imagine it has been there for long. How could I have missed it? How could my ObGyn-oncologist have missed it? She gave my breasts a thorough exam just over a week ago. It couldn’t have grown that fast! Could it?
I’m experiencing a couple of conflicting impulses. I want to get busy setting everything in order. God forbid anyone should have to sort through all my paper messes if I get too sick too fast and don’t take care of them. At the same time, I want to pull the covers over my head and wake to discover this is a dream and there is no lump. No sudden urgency to put my affairs in order. It’s silly. Really. It’s probably nothing.
I wish I could stop thinking about the things I thought I’d still have time to do: like meet my half-brother in South Carolina. I think about the places I still want to see. In my head I’m writing them off: New Zealand, Ireland, Italy, Hawaii, Victoria, the Grand Canyon (again), Yellowstone, Mesa Verde. How ridiculous. I don’t know anything yet. I don’t even have plans to do any of these things so what difference does it make?
They have amazing treatments for breast cancer these days. Even if I have it, there’s a very good change I can survive it. Of course I can. But what if they say I have already had my lifetime limit of radiation? Does it make a difference that this radiation will be on another part of my body? I need to ask about that. No, I need to stop thinking about it - at least for now.
Monday - March 16, 2009
Sure enough, Dr. Barker agrees with me. There is a lump. Well, duh. No disrespect. Of course I have to have it medically confirmed. He will make a referral to the new Oregon Imaging location at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene. It is entirely state-of-the-art and the best place to start.
Tuesday – March 17, 2009
Yes, they called. That’s a pretty good response time. The first appointment they have available is Monday, March 23rd. That’s just a week away. It could be much worse. They have to check to make sure the insurance will cover it. By the way, my least mammogram was in 2006. Is that possible? Can it have been that long? How could I have let that happen? Let the flogging begin. Now that I am feeling guilty about that, I might as well open the floodgate. What on earth did I do with the gift of years I have been given since my last diagnosis and treatment? (See, I am already saying “last” like of course there will be a “next”; this is dangerous thinking) I was diagnosed with Stage 4 uterine cancer in 1996. I had two surgeries (plus a small one to remove my port), a series of toxic chemo cocktails and 30 days of full abdominal radiation. The cancer was gone. Check up after check up proved it was so. No more cancer. God bless the University of Washington Cancer Center and Dr. Tamimi. Of course my diagnosis was so dire (60 days) and the treatment so aggressive and lengthy that I had taken a disability retirement and when I was ready to return to work, there was no job for me. Hiring freezes and reorganizations had made me obsolete. But wait, I survived. I want to work. Too bad. No job. Well, that was ok. We could get by. I could use the time to recover my health, get fit, garden, volunteer and make a difference. Those are all worthy goals. Unfortunately, I’m thinking I failed to achieve any of them.
What did I do with the 13 year gift I was given? Not enough. Not nearly enough.
Wednesday – March 18, 2009
Today my Writer’s Group meets. Here is what I wrote to share with them.
What Really Matters?
Oprah often asks the question, “What matters most?” She says that Gene Siskel asked her that question and she didn’t have an answer. She’s been asking the question of herself and others ever since.
What really matters, what matters most…it’s all the same thing. How much of our time is spent on intentional activity that really matters or makes a difference? And, the other side of that question, how much of our time is spent operating on autopilot, doing things we do every day or every week, just because… Well, just because.
How do we resist the compulsion to do what we’ve always done the way we’ve always done it? Maybe we do it because that seems to work for us. It takes a shock of some kind to jolt us out of our rut and make us look at our priorities. I have had a few of those jolts in my life and each time I have thought that it was a turning point. I was sure I wouldn’t lose track of the “truths” my awakening had uncovered.
The real truth is that we can’t stay in that heightened state for very long. We lapse. We return to old, familiar behaviors and routines. Is it even possible to maintain that enriched sense that everything matters? And that it is the people in our lives who matter the most? When we think there is little time left, what do we most want to do? We want to reach out and ensure that those we love know how much they mean to us. We want to say all the unsaid things that we have ‘saved for later’; because now it is later-- later than we think. How do we find the words to express our feelings of gratitude and regret? How do we decide who to trust with our inner thoughts and feelings?
Who do you trust? Martha Beck writes about something she calls the “Trust-o-Meter”. She says we all have one built in to us, hot wired by training, time and experience. Before we can know for sure who we can trust though, we must first trust ourselves and our inner cues. We have to get really honest with ourselves before we can rely on our intuition to know who we can completely trust and who we should avoid at all costs.
It is a sad truth that not everyone has our best interests at heart. Many times there are covert messages and secret competitions going on between ourselves and others. We don’t always recognize them for what they are, but we always feel their effects. When someone undermines us, we know it whether we want to acknowledge it or not. They leave us feeling “less than” rather than better about ourselves. This may have to do with our appearance, our relative worth, our sense of belonging or a number of other measures we use to feel right with the world.
Can we prune these influences out of our lives? When we prune a tree, we remove the branches and shoots that do not serve its growth and vigor. You can take it one step further. A diseased weak branch not only does not serve the tree – it drains the energy that can be used elsewhere – the energy needed to produce more fruit, more flowers and stronger branches. Are there people or activities in our lives that need to be pruned to enhance our ability to grow and develop?
Isn’t that what we want? To grow, develop and reach our full potential? If we look at our talents as assets, shouldn’t we invest them wisely? We all have goals as well as limited amounts of time and energy. How should we use them?
If we are on track, we will be doing things that matter to us and those things will be making a difference in the world or at least in our own lives. If we aren’t making a difference, what purpose do we serve? Is that important in the great scheme of things or not? There are many questions here, maybe more than we want to deal with. However, I think these are all questions we need to ask ourselves. Finally, when we determine our answers, we need to act accordingly.
In her magazine column, Oprah writes about the twenty things she knows for sure. Number 19 is: “When you don’t know what to do, sit still. The answer will come.”
I’m sitting still.
Thursday – March 19, 2009
Today we had lunch with our friend Ken at P.F. Changs—one of our favorite restaurants. I couldn’t bring myself to mention the lump to him. If it turns out to be something, that will be soon enough to tell him. He is such a good friend that it seems useless to worry him. I am thinking the same thing about our kids. They all have enough to worry about without adding a new thing into the mix. Today is Lisa’s birthday. The last thing she needs is a worry bomb. Besides, I’m worrying enough for all of us. After lunch, we went to Barnes & Noble to look at books—one of our favorite activities. I took a nap when we got home. So much for getting my affairs in order. Maybe tomorrow.
Friday – March 20, 2009
Swiss Cheese Dreams. I have good dreams. In them I am competent and skilled. I am usually doing something complex and important and understand it completely. It’s only as the dream is ending that I see that things are full of holes and incomplete. One minute it is a fully realized house, office, town, etc. and the next minute I see that it is full of false backs like a movie set and I understand how insubstantial it all is. I think these dreams have a meaning for me beyond the fact that they fulfill my fantasies of competency. It should be enough that in my dreams I can dance and draw and inspire. But there is something about them that awakens my skepticism. Although I’m pretty sure I am the architect of these dreams, it confounds me that I know more in my dreams than I do in my waking state. Now I find myself peeking around corners to discover if it is actually my waking hours that are the illusion. Is this life what I create while my brain is resting in my real world? I’m looking for the false back and fuzzy edges but so far I haven’t found any. Of course that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Today I saw my physical therapist, Kristy. I wanted to see her about my creaky knee problem. I was tempted to cancel but went anyway. My knees bother me whether or not I have cancer. And either way, I’m better off if I am stronger and can exercise without pain. Now I know I don’t just have a lump in my breast and popcorn knees, but poor balance and an almost total inability to squat. Who knew squatting was an important skill to maintain? My knees are not only crunchy, they are wayward. They want to take the path of least resistance which is the worst thing for them to do. So now I have new exercises to strengthen my legs and get my knees back in proper alignment. I hope I am more faithful about doing these exercises than I have been about all my other exercise!
I am converting my journal to a blog. Since I started my journal less than a week ago, this first entry is a catch up to cover March 15 - March 20:
Sunday - March 15, 2009
I found the lump. So high on my breast that it seems more on my chest than on my breast. It sets my thoughts racing. What is it? Probably a benign cyst. It’s so large that I can’t imagine it has been there for long. How could I have missed it? How could my ObGyn-oncologist have missed it? She gave my breasts a thorough exam just over a week ago. It couldn’t have grown that fast! Could it?
I’m experiencing a couple of conflicting impulses. I want to get busy setting everything in order. God forbid anyone should have to sort through all my paper messes if I get too sick too fast and don’t take care of them. At the same time, I want to pull the covers over my head and wake to discover this is a dream and there is no lump. No sudden urgency to put my affairs in order. It’s silly. Really. It’s probably nothing.
I wish I could stop thinking about the things I thought I’d still have time to do: like meet my half-brother in South Carolina. I think about the places I still want to see. In my head I’m writing them off: New Zealand, Ireland, Italy, Hawaii, Victoria, the Grand Canyon (again), Yellowstone, Mesa Verde. How ridiculous. I don’t know anything yet. I don’t even have plans to do any of these things so what difference does it make?
They have amazing treatments for breast cancer these days. Even if I have it, there’s a very good change I can survive it. Of course I can. But what if they say I have already had my lifetime limit of radiation? Does it make a difference that this radiation will be on another part of my body? I need to ask about that. No, I need to stop thinking about it - at least for now.
Monday - March 16, 2009
Sure enough, Dr. Barker agrees with me. There is a lump. Well, duh. No disrespect. Of course I have to have it medically confirmed. He will make a referral to the new Oregon Imaging location at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene. It is entirely state-of-the-art and the best place to start.
Tuesday – March 17, 2009
Yes, they called. That’s a pretty good response time. The first appointment they have available is Monday, March 23rd. That’s just a week away. It could be much worse. They have to check to make sure the insurance will cover it. By the way, my least mammogram was in 2006. Is that possible? Can it have been that long? How could I have let that happen? Let the flogging begin. Now that I am feeling guilty about that, I might as well open the floodgate. What on earth did I do with the gift of years I have been given since my last diagnosis and treatment? (See, I am already saying “last” like of course there will be a “next”; this is dangerous thinking) I was diagnosed with Stage 4 uterine cancer in 1996. I had two surgeries (plus a small one to remove my port), a series of toxic chemo cocktails and 30 days of full abdominal radiation. The cancer was gone. Check up after check up proved it was so. No more cancer. God bless the University of Washington Cancer Center and Dr. Tamimi. Of course my diagnosis was so dire (60 days) and the treatment so aggressive and lengthy that I had taken a disability retirement and when I was ready to return to work, there was no job for me. Hiring freezes and reorganizations had made me obsolete. But wait, I survived. I want to work. Too bad. No job. Well, that was ok. We could get by. I could use the time to recover my health, get fit, garden, volunteer and make a difference. Those are all worthy goals. Unfortunately, I’m thinking I failed to achieve any of them.
What did I do with the 13 year gift I was given? Not enough. Not nearly enough.
Wednesday – March 18, 2009
Today my Writer’s Group meets. Here is what I wrote to share with them.
What Really Matters?
Oprah often asks the question, “What matters most?” She says that Gene Siskel asked her that question and she didn’t have an answer. She’s been asking the question of herself and others ever since.
What really matters, what matters most…it’s all the same thing. How much of our time is spent on intentional activity that really matters or makes a difference? And, the other side of that question, how much of our time is spent operating on autopilot, doing things we do every day or every week, just because… Well, just because.
How do we resist the compulsion to do what we’ve always done the way we’ve always done it? Maybe we do it because that seems to work for us. It takes a shock of some kind to jolt us out of our rut and make us look at our priorities. I have had a few of those jolts in my life and each time I have thought that it was a turning point. I was sure I wouldn’t lose track of the “truths” my awakening had uncovered.
The real truth is that we can’t stay in that heightened state for very long. We lapse. We return to old, familiar behaviors and routines. Is it even possible to maintain that enriched sense that everything matters? And that it is the people in our lives who matter the most? When we think there is little time left, what do we most want to do? We want to reach out and ensure that those we love know how much they mean to us. We want to say all the unsaid things that we have ‘saved for later’; because now it is later-- later than we think. How do we find the words to express our feelings of gratitude and regret? How do we decide who to trust with our inner thoughts and feelings?
Who do you trust? Martha Beck writes about something she calls the “Trust-o-Meter”. She says we all have one built in to us, hot wired by training, time and experience. Before we can know for sure who we can trust though, we must first trust ourselves and our inner cues. We have to get really honest with ourselves before we can rely on our intuition to know who we can completely trust and who we should avoid at all costs.
It is a sad truth that not everyone has our best interests at heart. Many times there are covert messages and secret competitions going on between ourselves and others. We don’t always recognize them for what they are, but we always feel their effects. When someone undermines us, we know it whether we want to acknowledge it or not. They leave us feeling “less than” rather than better about ourselves. This may have to do with our appearance, our relative worth, our sense of belonging or a number of other measures we use to feel right with the world.
Can we prune these influences out of our lives? When we prune a tree, we remove the branches and shoots that do not serve its growth and vigor. You can take it one step further. A diseased weak branch not only does not serve the tree – it drains the energy that can be used elsewhere – the energy needed to produce more fruit, more flowers and stronger branches. Are there people or activities in our lives that need to be pruned to enhance our ability to grow and develop?
Isn’t that what we want? To grow, develop and reach our full potential? If we look at our talents as assets, shouldn’t we invest them wisely? We all have goals as well as limited amounts of time and energy. How should we use them?
If we are on track, we will be doing things that matter to us and those things will be making a difference in the world or at least in our own lives. If we aren’t making a difference, what purpose do we serve? Is that important in the great scheme of things or not? There are many questions here, maybe more than we want to deal with. However, I think these are all questions we need to ask ourselves. Finally, when we determine our answers, we need to act accordingly.
In her magazine column, Oprah writes about the twenty things she knows for sure. Number 19 is: “When you don’t know what to do, sit still. The answer will come.”
I’m sitting still.
Thursday – March 19, 2009
Today we had lunch with our friend Ken at P.F. Changs—one of our favorite restaurants. I couldn’t bring myself to mention the lump to him. If it turns out to be something, that will be soon enough to tell him. He is such a good friend that it seems useless to worry him. I am thinking the same thing about our kids. They all have enough to worry about without adding a new thing into the mix. Today is Lisa’s birthday. The last thing she needs is a worry bomb. Besides, I’m worrying enough for all of us. After lunch, we went to Barnes & Noble to look at books—one of our favorite activities. I took a nap when we got home. So much for getting my affairs in order. Maybe tomorrow.
Friday – March 20, 2009
Swiss Cheese Dreams. I have good dreams. In them I am competent and skilled. I am usually doing something complex and important and understand it completely. It’s only as the dream is ending that I see that things are full of holes and incomplete. One minute it is a fully realized house, office, town, etc. and the next minute I see that it is full of false backs like a movie set and I understand how insubstantial it all is. I think these dreams have a meaning for me beyond the fact that they fulfill my fantasies of competency. It should be enough that in my dreams I can dance and draw and inspire. But there is something about them that awakens my skepticism. Although I’m pretty sure I am the architect of these dreams, it confounds me that I know more in my dreams than I do in my waking state. Now I find myself peeking around corners to discover if it is actually my waking hours that are the illusion. Is this life what I create while my brain is resting in my real world? I’m looking for the false back and fuzzy edges but so far I haven’t found any. Of course that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Today I saw my physical therapist, Kristy. I wanted to see her about my creaky knee problem. I was tempted to cancel but went anyway. My knees bother me whether or not I have cancer. And either way, I’m better off if I am stronger and can exercise without pain. Now I know I don’t just have a lump in my breast and popcorn knees, but poor balance and an almost total inability to squat. Who knew squatting was an important skill to maintain? My knees are not only crunchy, they are wayward. They want to take the path of least resistance which is the worst thing for them to do. So now I have new exercises to strengthen my legs and get my knees back in proper alignment. I hope I am more faithful about doing these exercises than I have been about all my other exercise!
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