Trying to remember all the details

It is 3:20 in the morning, and I’m about 20 feet from my front door. I feel like I could take off running down the street because I’m so excited that I finished chemo. I’m not going to write about chemo now because it will literally make me sick to do so. Chemo is evil. It may kill cancer cells, but what it does to the body is pure evil.

I haven’t wanted to write lately out of fear of not being able to fully capture how I feel. And for some reason, I want to remember every last detail of this experience. And truthfully, with the exception of chemo, being diagnosed with breast cancer has been overwhelmingly positive.

So, I’ll just tell it in chronological order. Bear with me, because this goes back a ways.

My late grandmother, Betty Trice, survived breast cancer twice. The first time she had it was in the late 80s. I was in the fifth or sixth grade. She had the cancerous breast removed and reconstructed and went through chemotherapy. One day during the summer, my family was together at my aunt and uncle’s lake house in Weatherford, and my grandmother took off her wig and I screamed. 

My beautiful grandmother, Mary Elizabeth "Betty" Trice. She was incredibly strong. She worked a full-time job as a secretary at Bell Helicopter, while raising four relatively well-adjusted kids.

Granny loved playing golf.

She and my relatives were sitting on fold-up lawn chairs in the backyard while my cousin Lindsey and I were playing in the lake. The sight of seeing my beautiful grandmother bald was shocking. I was 11 or so, and I was way too old to have behaved that way.

That must have been the summer between my fifth and sixth grade years, because I remember in sixth grade having an all-consuming fear that I had breast cancer. I didn’t even have boobs, per say, but I would stay awake at night scared to death that I had cancer. My mother took me to see our family doctor, just so I could hear him say that I did not have breast cancer.

I never really thought about it much more after that, even when my grandmother’s breast cancer came back. I think this happened when I was in high school or college, so, the mid-90s, when I was too busy concentrating on myself.

Later, in May 2010, my grandmother died—not of breast cancer but from complications of Alzheimer’s. During the last few days that she was alive, my grandmother’s great niece, Margie, spent a lot of time with us, helping my mother take care of my poor Granny. We talked about how strong my grandmother was, how she survived breast cancer not once, but twice. Margie also said, in passing, really, that Granny’s sister (Margie’s grandmother), died of breast cancer when she was 35.

Annievieve Mattox Boswell. This is my great aunt. She was at least 10 years older than my grandmother. She died of breast cancer at 35. I love her eyes. My cousin Lindsey has her nose. She was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1914 and died in 1949. She had two babies.

It hit me that breast cancer runs in our family and that I should be doing breast self-exams, something I’d never done before.

On Christmas Eve day 2010, I was in the shower, getting ready to see the Trices for our usual family get-together at our friend Larry’s house. I was in charge of making asparagus, and I had found this incredible Paula Deen recipe online.

Allie had been throwing what probably ended up to be a two-hour tantrum because she wanted to wear her green-striped froggy bathing suit and tights to our Christmas dinner (we relented). I’m sure Miles was cool as a cucumber, as he usually is unless he’s teething. 

Two hours. For two hours, Allie threw a fit so she could wear this bathing suit to our family Christmas dinner.

And while I was in the shower, I found a lump in my right breast. I didn’t think much of it, but I showed Mario. He didn’t think much of it, either, and we decided to forget about it until after Christmas.

In January 2011, I went to my OB/GYN, Dr. Tovar, about it. I remember clear as day him saying, “I’m 95% certain this is a fibroid.” I was pretty certain it was, too, but I was a little worried that he didn’t say he was 99% certain. He said that because of my family history, he’d like me to get a mammogram.

Did the mammogram. I remember the radiologist coming in to the exam room after he had reviewed the images, and he said, “this looks like a fibroid and smells like a fibroid, but I’d like to have one of my colleagues take a look at it..” Then he asked me an odd question: “Are you OK either way, whether we do a biopsy or not?” And I said sure, that I trusted him.

A few days later, Dr. Tovar called me and said he wanted me to have a biopsy because the images showed a little bit of calcification. Of course I Googled this “calcification” thing and didn’t find anything too alarming about it.

On January 31, I went in for the biopsy. I had on my black Ugg boots, and the nurse and I were talking about how comfortable they were. I had just changed jobs at work (same department, different manager), and I called my new boss to tell her that the biopsy was a little more invasive than I had anticipated, and that I’d need to stay home the rest of the day.

Then the weather went nuts. It iced, like it does in Dallas. The ice was so bad, they nearly had to call off the Superbowl. Our sitter closed, and we were stuck in the house with the kids for several days straight. Now, I love my babies, but it is HARD to entertain an 11-month-old and almost-3-year-old inside a house for more than a day. We must have watched a dozen “Max and Ruby” episodes on Nick Jr. I found a half-eaten banana in between the couch cushions that Allie had stashed. My babies weren’t old enough to go sliding down the streets or make snowmen. It was miserable, really.

OK, so not too miserable.

It was so cold that Spanky Mae couldn’t bare to put her little paws on the ice to potty outside. So, she pooped inside. In the playroom. At one point, praising God for a mere two minutes of quiet time to read a full paragraph from a newspaper, I realized it was too quiet. I looked in the playroom to see Miles mushing something around in his mouth. Dog poop.

We had to get out of the house. I begged our sitter to keep our kids the next day so I could risk my life and drive to the office over sleet-covered highways. This was a Thursday. February 3.

I worked until about 4 and headed out to my Jeep in the parking garage. My cell phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize. It was my OB/GYN calling from his personal cell phone.

He said he’d looked at the pathology report. “It’s cancer,” he said.

That’s all, folks! I don’t mean to be all cliff-hanger-y. This is just breast cancer. People survive it. But I’m too tired now to finish the full story.

Saving Skin

Did anyone watch that miniseries on HBO called “John Adams”? There was an episode where his daughter, “Nabby,” had a mastectomy. This was back in the early 1800s. Here’s what a historian James S. Olson wrote about it. Skip down to the paragraph that starts with “The day before surgery…”

http://www.shsu.edu/~pin_www/T@S/2002/NabbyAdamsEssay.html

Yeah, so my mastectomy was nothing like that. I had what they call a skin-sparing double mastectomy. I’m not showing you my boobs, but if you click on the previous link, you'll see some good examples.

Here’s roughly how a skin-sparing mastectomy works.

Your breast surgeon and plastic surgeon, who are in the OR together, figure out exactly where to make a nice, neat little incision. Mine happen to be going diagonally down from my armpits through the center of my nipple. The scars from the incision are roughly four to five inches long. My incisions cut through at about the 10 o’clock angle. I think the doctors choose the incision site based on where the tumor is in the breast. My main tumor (I had two) was at about 10 o’clock.

This was in my right breast.

Even though I didn’t have any cancer in the left side, I opted to have it removed anyway. Because I’m relatively young, the chances of the cancer recurring on the left side were pretty high. So, "cut it off," I said. 

I would have made this decision regardless of what my BRCA gene analysis said, but once I got those results back, it just gave me more reason to have the left breast removed. The test showed that I have a mutation on the BRCA 2 gene, which gives me a higher chance of the cancer recurring than if I didn't have the mutation (it also puts me at a higher risk of getting ovarian cancer, but that's for another post).

I already knew breast cancer ran in my family. My maternal grandmother (a.k.a. Granny, or Betty Trice) had breast cancer twice. She had a mastectomy on one side, went through chemo, and then 10 years later the cancer came back on the other side.

At any rate, you get the idea of why I went ahead and decided to have my left breast removed, even though it didn’t do anything wrong. Which brings me back to my scars. Since they made the incision at 10 o’clock on the right side, they made it nice and symmetrical on the left side.

And here’s where the “skin-sparing” thing comes in to play.  

1.     After she makes the incision, the breast surgeon scoops out all the breast tissue. I imagine this is like scooping out all the seeds and slush from a cantaloupe, only it doesn’t smell as sweet, and the surgeon probably doesn’t throw it down the Disposall.

2.     She scoops as close to the skin (cantaloupe rind) as possible, keeping as much of the breast skin in tact as possible. I’m pretty sure with a radical mastectomy, like Nabby’s, the doctors just lop off the entire boob and keep just enough skin to sew you back up, so you have, basically, your pectoralis major muscle covered with skin.

Thank goodness they have options for reconstruction nowadays. Women who aren’t interested in breast reconstruction can still have a radical mastectomy today. I guess it’s like Nabby’s, only with health insurance, a sterile environment and the anesthesia. Women who don't want reconstructive surgery may go buy a bra with pockets for foam breast forms. Or they may go around flat-chested.

Again, thank goodness for reconstruction. Here’s what that looks like in a nutshell.

3.     In the OR, the breast surgeon gets out of the way and lets the plastic surgeon do his work. Plastic surgeon puts tissue expanders in where my breast tissue used to be. Basically, my skin was like an envelope, and he just slipped empty tissue expanders in there over my pectoralis major muscles. (Technically, the top part of the tissue expander is under my pec muscles. But who cares?)

4.     The tissue expanders are empty silicone bags. They have a port or something on them, about the size of a quarter, which you can easily feel if you rub your hand over it (but please don't, or I will kill you). During my surgery, my plastic surgeon filled up the bags with a little bit of saline, just so I’d wake up and have a little bit of boobage going on. I can’t imagine what a shock it would have been to wake up and have been totally flat.

5.     Over three or four weeks, I healed from the surgery. But I still go back in to the plastic surgeon every few weeks so he can inject more saline into the tissue expanders. He injects a needle connected to a giant syringe filled with saline into the port of the tissue expander. (Super fun photo of this below.)

6.     He’s filling up the expanders so that my breast skin stretches out a little. Yes, the surgeons spared as much skin as possible, but I still don’t have as much skin as I did before the surgery. So he’s stretching the breast skin little by little. He puts about 60 ccs of saline into each tissue expander every time I go in.

7.     Yes, my boobs get bigger and bigger after every injection, which is awesome if you're me or if your name is Mario Medina.

8.     In order to eventually end up with natural-looking boobs, the plastic surgeon will fill the expanders 30% larger than the size that I'd eventually like to be. This is so there’s room for a little “hang.” Not like post-two-kids hang, but maybe like a 16-year-old's boobs hang.

Check out the wallpaper at my plastic surgeon’s office. This is the wallpaper of a gynecologist’s office, not a plastic surgeon's. Someone should tell him.

But tissue expanders suck. Here’s why:

They feel like rocks under my skin. I can feel the rippling of the bag. They make my boobs look like they’re right under my chin. They’re not meant to be permanent.

So, in a few months, I will have another surgery to have the tissue expanders removed and silicone implants implanted.The same type of silicone breast implants that you'd get if you were going in for an augmentation surgery.

Hopefully that helps explain my comments on Facebook/Twitter… especially the one that said, “At roughly $1/syringe, it costs about the same amount to fill my boobs with saline as it does to fill my Jeep with gas #breastcancer.” 

Fun Mastectomy 2011 Photos!

I thought I'd end that title with an exclamation point to give it that "Spring Break 2011" photos feel. You will see some boobage in this set of photos (well, really close to boobage), but it ain't the kind from the beach, I can assure you. These are gross. But, again, I'm posting this for the next 33-year-old who's diagnosed with breast cancer. Just so she knows what drain bags look like, you know?

I'll start with something cute. This one's from Allie. She's really into drawing smilie faces these days. She draws Mommy Smilie Faces and Daddy Smilie Faces. Her drawing sessions go something like this:

Allie: Mommy, woo sit down heow (here).
Me: OK, Allie.
Allie: Woo want me to dwaw a pitcha for woo, Mommy?
Me: Yes please, Allie.
Allie: Woo have a big head, Mommy. Now I dwaw woo eyes and woo mouf.

It used to end around there. But the other day, she went a little further.

Allie: Heow's (here's) woo boo-boo, Mommy!

She had drawn a circle roughly where one of my drainage grenades would be. She then drew three more. She knows exactly how many boo-boos I have. Here's the resulting picture.

Allie's Picasso-esque vision of Mommy with her boo-boos.

So, now for something a little more realistic. Here's a photo of the nurse holding one of the drains that she had just removed from me. I had four of these suckers. Two on each side.

One of my drains. Which look remarkably like grenades, don't you think?

I've never been so happy in my life as I was when that final drain was removed. My sister-in-law, Chris, was with me during this appointment, which ended at about 11:20 a.m. We immediately went across the street to Mattito's so I could have a late-morning celebratory margarita.

OK, so the next photo is pretty gross. You can see a lot of bruising from my mastectomy. This is actually much better than it was a few days ago. You can also see the two holes from where the drains were. Thanks, Chris, for taking these nasty pictures.

Chupacabra holes.

Okie doke. That's enough nudie photos of me. I'll wrap this post up with a sweet video that Sabra, the children's governess, shot just before I came home from the hospital. Love how Miles whacks his sister in the head at the beginning.

Take care, Everyone. As always, thank you for your prayers.

The Mastectomy

Turns out it’s not that bad to have your boobs cut off. If you ever have to do it, I recommend bringing my mom, my cousin Lindsey and my husband with you. They will keep your spirits up so you don’t freak out too much about the thought of having your boobs sawed off your chest.

Here’s how Monday, February 28 went.

Mario and I got up at 4:30 a.m. I showered with the pre-op soap that the breast surgeon’s nurse gave me. It’s a pink, liquid soap that she gave me in a pee-specimen container. It’s some sort of germicidal soap that I had to use on my chest and armpits to make sure my skin was as clean as possible. It smelled like the anti-flea shampoo that I use about once every three years on Spanky Mae when I actually bathe her. I think she’s had exactly one bath since our human babies were born.

My stepmother, Sherrie, and my little sister, Nicole, had spent the night with us so that they could get Allie and Miles ready for Miss Sabra’s house. Sabra is the world’s best daycare provider on the planet. She runs a daycare out of her home and has become like part of our family (or “fan-i-lee,” as Allie would say). I think of her as a governess who teaches our kids things like How to be Nice to Each Other and How to Count and What Squares Are and such. If I think of her as a governess out of a Jane Austen novel, I don’t feel so badly about not being a stay-at-home mom.

Anyway, Mario and I got to Medical City at around 6 a.m. Lindsey and my mom were pulling in to the parking lot right as we were, so we all walked in to the pre-surgery area together. It was nice having a team with me. My mom refers to Lindsey as her hospital advocate. Lindsey has some sort of biomedical science degree from Texas A&M and is a respiratory therapist at a hospital in Ft. Worth. We know that if we have Lindsey in tow and something goes wrong in a medical setting, Lindsey will swoop in and fix it.

And she came prepared, too. She made dozens of her lemon cookie things, which usually have lemony yellow icing drizzled on top. But in honor of breast cancer, she covered them in Susan G. Komen pink. She brought them to bribe the nurses just in case it came down to that. Lindsey could bribe just about anyone to do anything for one of her lemon cookie things. I believe that if Obama knew about these, he could use them to bribe North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons or whatever they have that they’re not supposed to for just one bite of Lindsey’s lemon cookie things. (I’m so not in to politics, I don’t know why I chose to reference it here. These lemon cookie things are freaking amazing, though.)

So we get to a sort of holding room where Lindsey pulled a gift out of her purse for me. It was wrapped in a cute little silver container that used to be Granny’s (our Granny went through breast cancer twice. She passed away from Alzheimer’s this past May). In it were three tubes of the World’s Best Lipstick. It’s Crystal Berries from Ulta. If you are not in the know about this stuff, you need to educate yourself. This color looks good on any skin tone, and it’s impossible to get because Ulta is always sold out of it. Lindsey buys it by the dozen online (when she’s lucky and they actually have it in stock). As she passes my present to me, my mom snags it and steals one from me. Not cool, Mom. You shouldn’t steal from your breast-cancer-laden daughter.

Then a nurse comes in to take me to what I was most worried about: Nuclear medicine. One young breast cancer survivor who I recently met said that nuclear medicine was the worst part of the mastectomy. This is where they had to inject my breasts with a radioactive dye. The dye would travel to my lymph nodes in my armpit area so that the breast surgeon would be able to identify the sentinel node (the first one that cancer would spread to if it had spread) for removal.

Needles have never been a fear of mine, but seriously? Four shots around the nipple area of each breast? I was definitely nervous about this part. The breast surgeon’s nurse warned me that some women describe the pain from these shots as worse than childbirth. She just wanted me to be prepared, you know?

For some reason, by the grace of God, these shots didn’t affect me like that. I barely noticed them. A couple of them burned a little bit, but it ended up being a breeze. I attribute little things like this—the fact that the shots didn’t hurt—as God’s answers to all the prayers that people have been sending out on my behalf.

After that, I was wheeled in to the pre-op unit. I met my anesthesiologist, Dr. Smith, who was wonderful—and not just because he gave me pain meds. I can’t remember what all we talked about, but he was unusually friendly for an anesthesiologist. Anesthesiologists don’t really get to know their patients; there’s no need for them to do so. They just knock out the patients and go on their merry way. I wish I could remember what we talked about. I don’t. I just remember liking him a lot.

Then Dr. Antonetti came in. He’s the plastic surgeon. He’s very quiet and unassuming. When he explained the reconstruction process to me in one of our earlier visits, he said he’d use “donor skin” to replace the breast tissue that the breast surgeon would have to remove.

Having just read the best freaking book ever “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by Mary Roach (buy it now. I promise you’ll like it), I knew what Dr. Antonetti meant by “donor” skin. It’s cadaver skin, man. So freaking cool. Someone donated their body to science, at which point it probably got sliced and diced a million and one different pieces, and I ended up with some of his/her tissue to make my new boobies. I have cadaver boobs. Technically, it’s just the under-part of my new boobs that belong to someone else, so it’s like half cadaver boob and half Melanie boob.

So when Dr. Antonetti came in to say Hi just before surgery, I told him that I hoped he got lots of extra cadaver skin because I was thinking that I might want bigger boobs than what God originally gave me. He seems to hate it when I refer to the allograft as “cadaver skin.” He much prefers “donor tissue.” Which is exactly why I keep using “cadaver skin.”

After I said that, he looked over at Mario and said, “Well, it’s really up to him.” Mario was sitting near my head, out of my view. But he must have made a gesture like he was carrying two giant watermelons on his chest, or maybe there was some sort of telepathic communication between these two, because when I woke up from surgery, I was rocking some massive knockers, man. Lots of cadaver skin going on up in here.

The surgery went something like this. I’m sure I’m oversimplifying this, but I do work at a children’s hospital. And even though I’m not even close to being clinical, I do like to pretend that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to medicine. The breast surgeon, Dr. Alison Laidley, removed the breast tissue, along with the sentinel lymph nodes from each armpit. The tissue and lymph nodes went to pathology. A cursory look at the lymph nodes showed no cancer.

Then Dr. Antonetti took over and started the reconstruction process. He put tissue expanders under my pectoralis muscles. These are basically empty breast-implant sacks that will “slowly” be filled with saline to stretch the skin around my new boobs. Before surgery, I was under the impression he would only fill these expanders with a tiny bit of saline. Instead, this cat took something like a water hose connected to a saline faucet, turned a knob and let ‘er run like he was filling an Olympic-sized pool.

I swear he said during a pre-op visit that these suckers would be filled slowly, over a period of time, via saline injections into the tissue expanders. I don’t know how much more saline will fit in these things, because right now, a week after surgery, I feel like I could pop at any second.

I think I was in surgery for six or so hours. But then my right breast started to swell. I don’t really remember this part very well because I was still coming out of anesthesia. I remember Dr. Antonetti pushing and prodding around on my right breast and begging him to stop because it hurt so badly. Apparently, I had developed a hematoma, and it was swelling like crazy. They had to wheel me back to surgery.

I remember waking up in the PACU having to pee like a race horse. The nurse put a bedpan under me, but I guess I got pee shy and barely anything came out. They wheeled me back to my room, and I still had to pee so unbelievably bad. I think it was pretty late because my mom was asleep on the little couch in my room. And I started crying because I thought I was going to pee all over my bed. I told her to go pull a Shirley MacLaine scene on a nurse (remember that scene in “Terms of Endearment” where she goes ballistic about getting Debra Winger needing some pain meds? I promise, no more “Terms of Endearment” references.) Mom did her job and got a nurse to come help me go to the bathroom. Ahhhh relief.

On Tuesday, I was still pretty out of it. Mario said that even in my state, I was correcting people’s grammar. Seriously, must I always be a bitch about this? A nurse came in and had some apparatus for me to inhale into so that I could begin taking deep breaths (it still hurts to take deep breaths). She was trying to tell me to take a certain type of breath. She couldn’t think of the right word, and she was getting frustrated. Apparently I asked her in an irritated voice, “You mean ‘shallow?’ ”

D’oh. I guess that’s not correcting grammar, but I was a butthead about it. Man, I can’t help it! Pain meds do this to me. It’s not my fault.

I remember Dad sending me a Facebook message telling me he enjoyed visiting with Mario and me at the hospital. I have absolutely no recollection of him visiting with us.

I remember Lindsey telling me to breathe into the little apparatus thingy until the arrows got to 1,000. She was pushing me like Bela Karolyi telling Nadia Comaneci to do a back flip on the beam, man. And I just couldn’t do it.

I remember flipping out about my Medical City Children’s cup that I was drinking out of. (I don’t want to get fired so I won’t go into detail about drinking from the enemy’s cup.)

I remember being in so much pain, I can’t begin to describe it. My mom would ask me, “Are you in any pain?” And I told her that it felt like I had a horse or a house sitting on my chest. I had a PCA pump with morphine, but I swear it was empty. I pushed the button repeatedly, and my pain level never budged. I remember my stepmother being in the room and I had tears flowing down my face because of the pain. She and my mother got a nurse, who was able to give me a shot of Demerol. From that point on, my pain has been manageable.

And that’s about it. I’ve been home for almost a week now. My mom, Aunt Teri, Sherrie, Nicole, Sabra, Mario, Chris (sister-in-law) and Ida (mother-in-law) have been amazing helping me get around and keeping my kids bathed and clothed. Every night, friends and neighbors bring us home-cooked meals so that we don’t have to worry about dinner. Again, I thank God here for putting us in the hands of gracious, generous friends who have gathered around us to support us.

Until yesterday, I had two drains (four total) dangling around each side of me. These drains were inserted into my boobs during surgery and allow fluid to drain out of me so that I don’t swell up and get infected. These drains are at the end of about two feet of rubber tubing that hang out of my boob area. This nasty reddish/orange-ish fluid drips out all day and collects in these little grenade-sized rubber bulbs. Sometimes little bits of tissue flow out as well. When they reach the bulbs, they look like little tequila worms floating around. I have to measure the fluid each day. (So gross, right? I had to share it.)

Thankfully, I’m draining less and less each day, so Dr. Antonetti was able to remove one grenade from each side of me. Now I’m down to one grenade per side. Allie has been drawing pictures of me with my grenades by my side. It’s kinda cute, I guess.

Today I will meet with Dr. Laidley. She will talk to us about the pathology report and spell out what my next steps are. I think this is the visit where I will find out if I will need chemo and/or radiation. I’m hoping for good news.

Praise God for you guys. Praise God for putting me in the hands of great doctors. For a mother who loves me no matter how crabby I get and who will measure the nasty fluid in my grenades. Praise God for my coworkers who went so overboard with pink gifts and a party for me before I left for surgery. Praise God for all the kind messages on Facebook and for my mother- and sister-in-law who are unloading the dishwasher and making beds for me. I’ve never been so grateful in my life. Breast cancer isn’t so bad, really, because of y’all. 

Sorting it all out

So it turns out that “reconstructed” boobs aren’t quite what I had in mind. They’re not like Baywatch implants. They’re pretty much just as good as the plastic surgeon can get them with whatever he can salvage of my own breast own skin and pieces of cadaver or animal skin. A patchwork-quilt boob, you could say.

And do I want saline or silicone? Silicone feels more real, but saline, I think, is safer. But they’ve made advances with the silicone, so they might be OK. But I don’t really know because I don’t have time to research this thoroughly. And no matter which way I go, they won’t last forever. Eventually I’ll have to replace them, like a beat up car.

I’ll just come out and say it. This blog is more for me than anyone who might be reading it. If you’re an acquaintance or coworker and you’re not real comfortable reading about my boobs or my figure, feel free to skip over stuff or not read it at all. If you’re family and you read this and you want to give advice, maybe just hold off for a little bit. I’m posting these and making it public for the girl who’s diagnosed after me and does a Google search for “breast cancer at 33.” Like I did. I found some other 30-something woman’s blog, and I found it comforting.

I have to get all the scary stuff out of my head. I’m scared of the number 9, which is the “total Nottingham score” of one of the tumors the pathologist found. It basically means the cancer cells are dividing like crazy and that there are even some dead cancer cells, which isn’t good b/c cancer cells evidently live longer than normal cells. So if a pathologist finds dead cancer cells, it means the cancer has been there a while.

I’m scared of the word “extensive,” which is how the girl from my breast surgeon’s office described the results of the breast MRI I had on Thursday. Thankfully, there’s nothing in my left breast, but “extensive” cancer in my right breast means that the cancer isn’t contained in a nice, neat little tumor. It’s all throughout the tissue.

I’m scared of the “something” on my liver that the ultrasound tech found. I know I shouldn’t have asked a tech about what he was measuring during my abdominal ultrasound, but when he started clicking around a bunch and zooming in on a particular area, and then using some instrument that made the computer screen turn red and blue, I knew he was on to something.

When I asked the girl who called me from the breast surgeon’s office about this, she said that the ultrasound results weren’t ready, but that it could have just been a cyst on my liver. “You’d be surprised how many people have cysts on their liver,” she said. Yeah, I was surprised when I Googled “liver cyst” to learn that only 5% of the population has liver cysts. Stupid Google. Stupid me for Googling everything.

When I look at Miles sprawled out in his crib, I’m worried I won’t see him grow up, and I’m worried about who will get Allie ready for her first day of 1^st grade.

I’m probably fine. They’ll probably just cut my boobs off, biopsy the right breast, and tell me they got it all and that the cancer hasn’t spread and that I won’t even have to do chemo. That’s really what I’m praying for. But these are the fears that just sort of hang out in the back of my head all day.

I try to compartmentalize the cancer thoughts so that they’re not always there with me, so that I can focus on work when I’m there and my babies when I’m with them, and on Mario during the hour or so a day that we have totally to ourselves. But it’s hard. I’m hoping that getting them out on paper will help me separate the scary thoughts from whatever I need to be focusing on. I’m sorry if I’m at work and I’m not doing a good job of compartmentalizing at the moment.

Now, here’s what I’m grateful for. I’m grateful that I found this stupid thing. What if I never did that breast exam? Who knows how long this cancer would have growing before I found it?

I’m grateful for my family, who is staying strong and keeping me focused. My mom talked to me last night and told me that we are going to get through this. We are going to take one step at a time and get through one thing at a time, and we will get through it. I’m sure she’s told me that a dozen or so times before when I’ve gone through something difficult, but this time, it really stuck.

I’m grateful to Tony from Einstein’s. There is an Einstein’s in Lewisville that Mario and I have been going to since we moved to Flower Mound in 2006. And since we started going, we seem to always run into a group of men, probably ranging in age from their 40s to 60s, who are there when we are. One of the men, Tony Gonzalez, started talking to us one day and told us the group of men he’s with are all from the same Catholic church. I think he said they go to mass in the morning together and then go to Einstein’s to solve the world’s problems.

We’ve been friends with Tony since I was pregnant with Miles. He always asks us about our kids and how we’re doing. It is a treat to see him there. I told him last Thursday about my situation, and he said that this weekend, his group of Einstein’s dudes were going on a church retreat and that they would pray specifically for me.

I can’t believe that some random group of men would pray for me. I think what I like so much about these guys is that they remind me of my Granddad. My dad’s dad owned a pharmacy in Seymour, Texas, and he knew every single person in that town. When I was little, probably around 5 or so, he’d take me with him to the pharmacy and sit around some tables and chairs and visit with other Granddad-looking men. My Einstein’s men remind me of my Granddad. I bet Granddad’s coffee buddies would have prayed for someone like me.

I’m grateful to my friends who’ve said they’d pray for me and/or send good ju-ju my way.

I feel like maybe if I don’t have time to do all the research in the world on plastic surgeons and breast surgeons and hospitals and silicone vs. saline, that with all the prayer going out on my behalf, maybe God will put me in the right hands. I would research all this stuff, it’s just really hard when you don’t have much time to decide because you just want your cancer-boob cut off as fast as humanly possible, and you have a full-time job, and two kids and a husband. Not that I am complaining. Believe me, I would much rather spend time with my family and my job than I would researching cancer.

I feel like I don’t deserve all the prayer, because I’m not the world’s most devoted prayer person myself. I always thank God for what he’s given my family, but I don’t always remember to pray for others outside my family. Somehow, I’ll make it up to you.

And I promise not to post such downer posts all the time. 

 

I got the cancer

So, most of you know by now that I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Invasive ductal carcinoma, to be exact. Two tumors in the right boobie. Grade 3 with a score of 9. Most likely stage I or II cancer.

In an effort to keep friends and family updated, I thought I'd start posting to The Funky Cold Medinas blog again. 

And to keep today's posting time as brief as possible (as I am supposed to be working, not blogging, right now), I thought I would just copy and paste an email that I sent to a group of women I've begun referring to as The Trice Women. These are the women on my mother's side of the family, and we all share the same (or close to the same) boobs, genetically speaking. 

At any rate, I sent them an email explaining what's been going on with this whole cancer thing over the last few months. I've copied and pasted the contents of that email below.  I'll keep everyone posted as I learn more information.

Many thanks to all of you who have prayed for me, sent me good ju-ju, warm thoughts, good vibes, etc. I am grateful. 

* * *

To The Trice Women:

...And just to keep everyone up to date and on the same page, I thought I'd email you guys instead of re-telling the story several times. Again, I'm sorry this is so impersonal.

Anyway, here's what went down the past few months:
1. Friended Margie on Facebook during Granny's last few weeks.
2. Asked Margie a few questions about how we're related, etc.
3. Margie mentioned that Granny had a sister, Anne, who died of breast cancer at age 35.
4. I realized that with our family history, I should be doing breast self exams... something I had never once done.
5. I happened to find a pamphlet in my files that explained how to do the self exams.
6. I started doing the exams. I did one in early December, and didn't notice anything.
7. I did one on Christmas Eve Day, and I noticed a lump in my right breast.
8. Scheduled an appointment with my OB/GYN to have it looked at.
9. He said, "I'm 95% certain this is a fibroid." Even so, he wanted me to get a mammogram, just to be sure.
10. I get the mammogram, and radiologist says, "This looks and smells like a fibroid." But still, he wanted me to get a biopsy just to be sure.
11. On Jan. 31, I had the biopsy.
12. On Feb. 3, my OB/GYN called me on the phone and said, "It's cancer." He said the next step is to see a breast surgeon.

That news came last Thursday. Mario and I just waited and waited until we could get more information.

So, here's what's gone down the last couple of days.

1. On Monday, I had to pick up the pathology report, mammogram films and medical record so that I could take them with me to the breast surgeon.
2. OB/GYN translated the pathology report, which is very scary because, in a nutshell, it says the cancer cells are dividing very rapidly.
3. Mario and I furiously start Googling every term on the pathology report, and it just gets scarier and scarier.
4. FINALLY, today, we met with the breast surgeon, Dr. Alison Laidley, at Medical City.

So, here's what Dr. Laidley said:

1. I have two tumors in the right breast, which are somewhat far apart from each other. This means I am NOT a candidate for a lumpectomy. Instead, I will have a masectomy of my right breast.
2. Very soon (I hope this week), I will have a special type of MRI that focuses on my breasts. I will also have a chest X-ray, abdominal ultrasound and genetic testing. The MRI, X-ray and ultrasound will help determine if the cancer has spread anywhere beyond my right breast. The genetic testing will determine if I have a hereditary gene mutation that leads to breast cancer. This won't change anything as far as my treatment goes, but it will let us know if the Trice Women (including Allie), need to have genetic testing.
3. Because cancer in young women (younger than 40) tends to be aggressive and fast-growing, I will most likely have a double masectomy. This will lower the chances of the cancer recurring in the future.

And here's the bottom line (and the best news):

I will get new boobs, as insurance covers reconstruction. Yay new boobs!