May 20, 2020 was the day they amputated my breasts and my lymphatic system from my dominant side. At the time I just wanted the cancer out. I was hoping that the chemo did it's job and my journey with cancer would soon be a memory....chemo would've killed it. Surgery would've removed whatever was left. I might not even need radiation....if all went well.
I remember still.....when I went to the CIBC Breast Assesment Centre for my biopsy Nov of 2019 (this was even before I was diagnosed - the Doctor was just one doing the biopsy and looking at the ultrasound). Anyway, the Doctor there told me and Jason.... "this is just a blip...it looks like not much to worry about....maybe a little lumpectomy at best and you'll be back to your life in a year". I remember that day. I felt relieved.
That was the last time I've ever felt real relief that I'd ever be me again. I've never been me since.
I've been all sorts of things, wonderful and not so wonderful but never the me that followed the results of that biopsy.
It was worse than anyone imagined. Chemo needed to start right away. It was awful. There were days on chemo when I understood why people wanted to die, why they wanted to quit. I kept it all up. Every time for the last 4 chemo treatments my body had such a reaction to the chemo that they had to shut down my immune system completely to the point where I was wheeled out in a chair and unable to walk for 2-4 days.
I recovered. And looked very much to the surgery. Remove it. Whatever is left.
So May 20, 2020. They did it. Took my breasts and my lymph nodes and I spent a night alone in the hospital because of covid, crying and listening to the sound of an ice machine turn on every 40 minutes, just crying. Alone.
Next day I went home and I felt like, I'm on the road to recovery now.
Jason and I sat in the front yard and I had one of my favourite coolers, we cheered and I felt as normal as I thought I could. Bandaged, bald, skinny and weak, but I felt like OK.....it's OK.
The next day the surgeon called with my pathology report. The pathology report is the analysis of the tissue they took. If there was cancer, if they got it with clear margins (meaning that cancer didn't extend to existing tissues) and what the prognosis was.
I sat in the office she looked at my scars and she said "There was still a lot of cancer there....we got clear margins which is good but it was in 19/20 of your lymph nodes and there was extranodal extension and vascular invasion".
Translation. We took out what cancer we could see....which chemo didn't kill....in fact it grew....chemo did nothing.....but we took out what we saw- which was an 8.5cm tumor and an armpit full of cancer. However, it looks like it was in your lymphatic system and your blood vessels. This means.....it's loose in your body.
That was the worst day so far of my life. I asked what could be done and they said radiation was a must but it could only treat the immediate surgical area. The rest was up to my immune system and to the hormonal treatments. Other than that it was a wait and see...my prognosis was within the next 2 years there was a 65% chance it would come back and if it did I may not live 5 years. My children would be 13 and 17. It was then I sought naturopathic care and holistic treatments at $8000 a month. I needed to for my children.
Since then I have spent all of the go fund me and taken out multiple credit cards and now am living day to day, picking and choosing treatments that might work. I don't have the funds anymore for mistletoe, or for 2x week vitamin C. Yet nothing has changed. I still battle that initital diagnosis.
There have been so many people SO MANY who have been so generous, this isn't me asking for money. This is me being real. This is the reality. I hope someday the governement will see the benefit in these treatments and make them more available to people without $10,000 coming in a month.
I have PTSD. One year later, I am battling so many issues. I am afraid, I am anxious, I struggle everyday with making decisions, I don't feel like myself.
My body isn't something I've grown to love yet.
On my boobaversary I got drunk and my new fun neighbour and I cut down a tree that I didn't like in my backyard. Jason was so mad when he woke up. For so many valid reasons.....power tools and alcohol, cutting a tree without discussion but most of all because it was just ridiculous and such a lashing out.
I look back and I see....I just wanted to cut something off. I wanted to feel like the one who cuts something on that day. And it was just a part of a mulberry tree that caused nothing but trouble and mess and shade to my garden. Still......I had to apologize to my neighbours the next day with some buttertarts for the noise. It was embarrassing.
The fact is this was a big deal. I didn't handle it well. I'm not handling things well a year later. I feel like I'm almost handling it worse. I have my year checkups coming in July and I'm already a bit anxious, but most of all I'm starting to understand this is my life.
I'm a cancer person. I never wanted to be. I am now. And they said if I lasted 2 years without the cancer coming back I had a better chance at 5 year survival and so on.....it's a lot to think about. I'm one year out - almost.
I've disappointed my family with my behaviour dealing with this past year.....and something's gotta give. I can't go on lamenting the things that happened.
I heard a line....some movie. It was: "Get busy living or get busy dying".
Today I had to make that choice. More to follow on the details but believe me when I say this is a scarier battle to me than cancer.
How does one change their personality and outlook? How does one become their best self? How does one make ammends and forgive themselves for all the ways we did ourselves wrong?
The answer is simple:
Tomorrow is a new day.
I'll do my best. I know it's within me because I can imagine it.
I just have to bring it to life.
The cancer I can't control to some degree, but life....my life.
I can.
It's time for me to really try.
PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, fear of death, weakness, regret.
I will work to overcome them.
Otherwise.....I'm dead already.
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