So Here I Sit

It was a Tuesday morning. And just like every Tuesday morning, or any Monday through Friday morning really, the alarm clock started beeping at 5:45. I pushed snooze three times before finally I got out of bed and headed down the hallway. I walked to the bottom of the steps, "Reagan, Aiden, Ian, time to get up. Did you hear me? Time to get moving." Morning routine was underway. I turned and stumbled towards the bathroom. I did what I always do. I turned on the shower, checked in the mirror for new wrinkles on my forehead, used the toilet, and began to undress. WOW!!! Wait a minute, what was that??? That doesn't belong there. I don't go to doctors normally, but I knew right away that this was something I definitely needed to call about and I shouldn't wait.

It would have been nice to have had some kind of warning sign....YOUR LIFE IS ABOUT TO DRASTICALLY CHANGE sign flashing before my eyes. That would have been nice. Or how about a loud siren, or detour ahead. Anything. But no. It doesn't work like that. In an instant, a split second, that very moment I reached up and found the lump in my breast, my life was different. And without any warning sign at all.

I carried on with my morning. I got ready for work. Bob got up and got the kids ready for school and on the bus. Everything else went on as usual. But I still had a problem- I had found a lump.  So now what was I going to do? I had never been in this situation before. But I couldn't do anything yet, it was only 7:15am. The doctors office doesn't even open till 9 and I had to go to work. 

So I left for work, but in the back of my mind all I could think about was my lump. My thoughts were racing nonstop- I'll text my mom, maybe she'll know what I should do.  One of my sisters had found a lump a couple of months ago. It turned out to be a cyst. Maybe this is a cyst. Wonder if it's not a cyst, then what? They're going to cut it off. Where else in my body is it? I hope it hasn't spread to my brain.- I must have had hundreds of thoughts like these, one after another, all day long. 

Every minute until 9am seemed to take an hour. Then of course you can't call a doctor's office and expect they will just put the doctor on the phone. So I waited. By the end of the day I had an appointment....for Thursday. THURSDAY!! It was only Tuesday and they wanted me to wait till Thursday. More waiting. More thinking. And course there was crying. 

It was finally Thursday.  I sat in the waiting room of the doctor's office fighting back tears, anxious to hear what he had to say. By the time it was my turn I could no longer hold the tears back. The doctor spent the first part of the appointment just talking to me. He said  "Lots of woman discover lumps in their breasts and most of them turn out to be nothing. Given your age it's probably just a cyst." Okay, I felt better. If he said it's nothing, then it's probably nothing. Then he examined me. His whole demeanor changed after the exam. "Well", he said, "I'm definitely more concerned now then before I examined you." But of course he still couldn't say what it was because he didn't know. All he could say for sure was that it wasn't a cyst. I left there with a script in hand for a mammogram and a sonogram, a knot in my stomach, and tears running down my face.

When my dad was sick he had a yellow legal pad that he wrote down everything in, all of his appointments, medications, things he wanted to remember, and towards the end his plans for his memorial service. As I sat there with the phone in my hand making my own appointment, I had a realization. There I was, on the 7th anniversary of the day my father had died, with my very own yellow legal pad, literally.

I made the first available appointment. The earliest they could get me in was Tuesday. TUESDAY!!! Don't they know this is only Thursday?!!! Great, more waiting. That was five days away.  I was at their mercy. Every day seemed like a year and still my mind was filled with constant thoughts- wonder what I'll look like bald. How am I going to tell the kids.  If I die, wonder who will come to my funeral. Did this mole change colors? Maybe I have skin cancer. 

When Tuesday arrived, I had hoped that I would finally have some answers. Even though it had only been a week since I had first found the lump, it seemed like years. I just wanted to know already, good or bad. Tell me something. But nothing.  I needed to schedule another test. This time I needed to schedule a biopsy.

I felt like I was on a game show. Except with this type of game show you'd want to be eliminated. But instead I just kept getting passed on to the next round, getting closer and closer to the grand prize that you wouldn't want.

The biopsy was scheduled. Now all I had to do was wait nine long days. Fortunately, four of those days were Junior Bible Quiz district finals in Hershey, Pa.  The trip did serve as a very good distraction. There wasn't any time while we were away for constant, nonstop thoughts, or crying.

After we returned from our trip I still had four more days to wait. I tried during the days leading up to my biopsy to focus on all the positives. There are situations that are, in my opinion, worse than mine. Certainly, I wasn't going to be happy about a diagnosis, but I was very thankful that it was me we were waiting to hear about and not one of my children. (I actually have a whole list of possible worse situations I can share at some later time.)

This was it. The last stop. After I had my biopsy I would just wait one more time till I had answers, good or bad.  The results would take 2-4 business days. So I could hear something anytime from Monday to Wednesday.  I had hoped that the breast center would call on Monday. It was Presidents' Day and I was off work. Hour, after hour, after hour I waited on that Monday. When it neared 5 o'clock I really thought I wasn't going to hear anything. Minutes later the phone rang. But it wasn't the breast center, it was my doctor.   I hadn't expected him to be calling me.  With giant butterflies in my stomach I answered the phone.  Me~ "Hello." Dr.~ "Tara, how are you?". Me~ "It's been a long week." Dr.~"Yeah, I can imagine. So tell me what they told you." Me~"I haven't talked to anyone yet."  Dr.~"Oh. Okay. I had assumed that they had called you." Me~ No, they haven't. But I think I would rather hear this from you." Dr.~"Well, then I'll tell you. It's not good. You have invasive ductal carcinoma." And that was it.  There was my answer.  My head dropped to the kitchen counter. I thought I had prepared myself to hear that, but when he said those words, it all became so real. There were no more maybe's or might be's, just what was.  I managed to hold it together while I was on the phone. Then, I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I was devastated.  How could this be happening?

Okay, so now what? I knew what I had. What's next.  Family had to be told. But who was going to tell them? I certainly didn't feel like talking to anyone. Someone had to tell the kids. And friends would have to be told. 

I had appointments to schedule. First, I needed to meet with a surgeon (3 days post diagnosis). I called him the man with a plan. He was the one who decided what order everything would happen, chemo first followed by surgery and radiation. He was also the one to describe to me exactly what type I had, triple negative.  Triple negative? What does that mean?  He explained that, too. Growth rate? 90%....the fastest growth rate he had seen in his 26 years experience. 

Next, I met with oncology (1 week post diagnosis). That was the hardest appointment up till that point. After touring the chemo rooms it's pretty hard to continue to be in denial.  They also told me the exact type of chemo I would be on and all the possible side effects. The countdown was on - chemo would begin in one week. But hold on....there are lots of  tests that still had to be done. I needed an MRI to know whether it had spread to the lymph nodes. I needed a heart sonogram to make sure my heart was strong enough for chemo. I would need to talk with Genetics to determine if I had a mutated gene that caused this. If I do I will need to consider a double mastectomy. I needed to talk to my patient navigator. There's no time for a port to be put in, so that's waiting till the second round of chemo. And don't forget about blood work.

So the MRI was scheduled for the day after oncology and the heart sonogram for the day after that.  All the  doctors had felt that there wasn't any lymph node involvement, so I really wasn't even thinking about the results of the MRI too much. But I guess there was one thing that I had overlooked, the possibility that it had spread to the other breast. 

So here I sit. Tomorrow is the big day, my first chemo treatment. As if that isn't enough for one day, I need to have an MRI biopsy because the MRI showed something in the other breast. So tomorrow morning at 8am I'll get that done, followed by chemo at 12:25. I'm ready for someone to wake me up now. It all seems so surreal, too horrible to be happening to me. Except it is and there's nothing I can do to change it.