The Cancer Diagnosis
So I guess this is a cancer blog post. I think this is a cancer life for now. Although I feel like I’ve known forever, it’s only been almost two weeks.
I remember the sticky summer night I inspected my post-milking breasts for any sign of former life. Lennox had done a number on my body since her Emergency C-Section arrival, and she did not carry any forgiveness to my chest. It was a spur-of-the-moment check, more just to find any residual perk from my pre-childbearing years.
When I felt it.
I had been too tired to turn on the bathroom light, but I immediately flipped the switch.
What was… that?
“Where the fuck did that come?” I whispered as I cupped my fingertips to a smooth pebble-sized lump. It squished and moved like a rope, cohesive but flexible.
I rushed upstairs and jumped onto the bed.
“Babe, DO YOU FEEL THAT?!”
Gable was fast asleep when I grabbed his hand to my tit. The alarm in my voice quickly vanished any idea of a potential romp.
He half opened his eyes, felt it, and then woke up.
He felt it again and stared at the fear in my face. “Call someone in the morning.”
The time between the call to the doctor and my first check-up was filled with every Google search about breast cysts.
“lump in chest not cancer”
“rope-like lump in chest”
“What does a cancer lump look like?”
Fibroids. Fibrocystic breasts. Estrogen.
Estrogen.
I felt like I had hit the jackpot. The more I read about elevated estrogen amounts, the more I connected the dots. My hair had coincidentally started thinning, my mood swings were becoming erratic, and my periods were all over the place. Gable had a vasectomy last January, and I had gotten off of birth control the following February. It was my first time since I was 19 years old off Tri-Sprintec or Lo-lo-estrogen. When I stopped breastfeeding Lennox in May, it felt like my body was out of control.
But this was July.
And then I felt another lump.
The hard jellybean in my armpit was much smaller than the first lump. But it was there, and it was new.
I called back my OBGYN and had an appointment two days later. She swept her fingertips across the sides of my breasts, and went she got to the lump, she took her time.
“So you’re going to go to the radiation department for a mammogram, ultrasound, and biopsy. I will go ahead and write you the order for that biopsy now. I don’t want to waste any more time,” she said as she studied my face. As if I was going to figure out what she was telling me. I was still so naive.
I got to the radiation department a week later. After being outfitted in the coziest hospital robe of all time, I was given my mammogram and ultrasound. I made small talk with another tech in the department while sitting in the hallway and avoiding a collision with an old man on a stretcher.
“Mrs. Moore,” my ultrasound technician stuck her head out the door. “Can we get you back in here for a second? We just need to take a few more pictures.”
Our casual banter turned silent as she applied the probe under the cyst. The doctor came in just a few minutes later.
“Okay, Mrs. Moore, we don’t do same-day biopsies, but you will definitely need a biopsy. Some suspicious nodules of concern seem to be consistent with malignant growth.”
There it was: suspicious nodules of concern. Malignant growth.
Radiation ultimately assigned my biopsy to a breast surgeon.
A nurse pulled me into the hallway and wrote down her office number. “Mrs. Moore, after reviewing your images, our department head decided it would be best if a surgeon performed the biopsy. Your doctor has also seen the images and agrees she would be best for the job. Expect for her to take two sample tissues.”
When I got to the surgeon’s office, it felt like the entire world had seen my “images.”
I cried through the biopsy. I listened to Jose Gonazlez through my headphones and gripped the edge of the chair. The song, “Line of Fire,” carried me through my sobriety five years before, and here it was playing as the surgeon withdrew a sample.
And another.
“Okay, I’m just gonna need to get one more sample while I’m here.”
She deliberated with her nurse about needles and vacuums. The sound of drilling filled the room.
“Okay, this is the 11:00 nodule. No, that was 12:00.”
“Mrs. Moore, I’m actually going to take one last piece. You’re doing great!”
An hour had long passed when I finally sat up. “So,” I said, “on average, how many times do you biopsy a patient four times?”
She looked at me for a minute. “You were my first.”
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I should’ve known right then, but I held onto hope. She assured me that she would call me personally with the results. The invasive biopsy left my left breast swollen, bleeding, and tender. The bruising created yellow regions around each poke.
The biopsy had been on a Wednesday, and it was a sunny Friday afternoon. I convinced myself that I wouldn’t hear a murmur about the results until the following week, until I received an e-mail notification.
“Your lab test results are ready.”
I was out on the back deck with my kids. My son, Jet, was in the middle of launching a truck over the fence when my chest fell into my stomach. I opened the e-mail.
“LEFT BREAST AT 12:00; CORE BIOPSY;
STROMAL FIBROSIS AND FOCAL SCLEROSING
ADENOSIS.
NO ATYPICAL HYPERPLASIA OR MALIGNANCY IS SEEN.”
Hot tears of joy melted my cheeks.
“BENIGN.”
I called my husband and picked up my babies. My knees fell from beneath me, and I lay on the deck. The bullet I dodged. Life was renewed. My gratitude shone in the sunlight above my tumbling blonde hair. We ordered pizza, and I opened the sunroof as I picked it up. My sister-in-law, her husband, and their new baby girl were staying at our place for a family wedding the next day. Life was perfect.
______________________________
Gable brought a hot cup of coffee and a slice of warm quiche to my bedside. He kissed me on the forehead, and I grumbled into existence. I reached for the mug and my phone. There was another notification.
“Your lab results are ready.”
“What the fuck?” My eyes shot open. And then I remembered; four samples.
My heart sped into flight as I pressed my phone screen again through each login. And then there was nothing.
“LEFT BREAST AT 1:00; CORE BIOPSY;
INVASIVE DUCTAL CARCINOMA.
GRADE (ELSTON/ELLIS) – 3. “
INVASIVE DUCTAL CARCINOMA.
FUCK.
FUCK.
FUCK.
I sat breathless for a few minutes before I screamed for Gable. He already knew. I heard him excuse himself to my sister-in-law and her husband. I handed him the phone. We both just said “fuck” for two minutes straight.
I came down the stairs, and my sister-in-law, Malora, reached her hands out to me.
“I’m not going to tell you it’s okay because it’s not. But YOU are going to be okay.”
I put it in the back of my mind for the day. We went to the beautiful wedding on our family friend’s property. In the back of a barn next to a cornfield, I slipped off my shoes for the entire day. My son got his shit rocked in a bouncy house for hours, and my daughter, Lennox, waddled around the grounds. Our sweet family looked like a vision.
I watched the sunset over the fields, the purple blanket unfurled beneath the clouds.
I knew after that day that life as I knew it would be over.
______________________________
I met with the breast surgeon the following Tuesday after she called me with the news that I already knew. Gable and I held hands in the waiting room and watched a lone fish swimming in its tank. We got to the back office, and the breast surgeon brought a packet of papers.
“NEOADJUVANT THERAPY.”
She told me I would need chemo, surgery, and radiation.
“So I’ll need chemo?” I shuddered.
“Yes, you will definitely be going through chemo.”
And then the tears came.
She gave me the nurse navigators card and told me that the pathologists would continue testing my tissues for hormone receptors.
“Cancer is receptive to progesterone or estrogen; it acts as a food.”
Estrogen. I fucking knew it.
We walked out in tears as it was finally confirmed.
______________________________
My lab results continued to come in. The two extra tissue samples that the breast surgeon took through the biopsy were the only two that tested positive. If the radiation department had conducted my biopsy as planned, they would have missed the cancer entirely.
And my hormone results?
“ESTROGEN RECEPTORS – POSITIVE, APPROXIMATELY 80%”
PROESTROGEN RECEPTORS – POSITIVE, APPROXIMATELY 10%.
HER-2/NEU BY FISH – POSITIVE.”
For those of you who have made it this far, I thank you and hope that you do not understand the terminology. Unfortunately, the medical jargon that was once not my problem is now very much part of my daily life.
I am triple positive, with an estrogen dominance. Just as I fucking suspected.
As I write this, I have undergone several rounds of testing. Poking and prodding, blood flowing in and out of tubes. Feeling cold saline through my body, almost to the point of passing out.
I have met with my wonderful oncologist, who is confident I will beat this monster in a year.
After six rounds of chemo every three weeks, surgery, and radiation.
I chopped off over 12 inches of hair today, and I hate it. I miss my long hair. And I hold onto the stupid hope that my baby strands won’t decay in the toxic spread that will circulate my body next week.
But it will. I know this.
I will celebrate a date with my husband tomorrow night before surgery on Monday. On that day, a device called a Port-A-Cath will be inserted beneath my collarbone for chemo admission, blood draws, and all of the other horrors of cancer.
And Tuesday is my first round of chemo. For six hours, my oncologist will blast four different drugs through my body that will both kill and save me. Through this alien device that will live beneath my skin.
And thus, the battle begins.
Kathlyn Ramsey Moore 