{life interrupted}

I’ve had better weeks.  I’ve had weeks that I have had time to get all my homework done, make dinner every night and not come uncorked on the kids.  I’ve had weeks that Tony didn’t have to travel, we went on our regular Wednesday night date night and I got all my workouts in for the week.  I’ve had weeks that the sun shone all week, I didn’t have a full schedule and I was able to go for a couple mountain bike rides and have coffee a couple times with friends. The last few weeks have not been weeks like that.  Tony left the morning of September 22nd for four days, I didn’t get any homework done, I didn’t get to ride my bike...and my/our world was turned all upside down...again...for the second time. I have freaking cancer...AGAIN. There are two truths about cancer.  Cancer in any way shape or form sucks and cancer is unpredictable, which is what makes it scary.

About three weeks ago I had a biopsy of a couple lumps that I found on my left breast (same side I had cancer on). I felt them awhile ago, but they were pretty small and kind of difficult to locate all the time.  Lately it seemed that they were a bit easier to locate.  I kept thinking, “I’m sure they’re nothing.” Then I started thinking, I don’t want to get six months down the road and find out they are “something” and it is an uglier “something” than it would have been six months ago.”  So I called my breast surgeon. They scheduled an ultrasound, followed up with an appointment to see her with the results. So the ultrasound day came and the lumps were located by the ultrasound tech followed up by a quick viewing by a radiologist. He said he thought they looked like small lymph nodes and didn’t look scary at all, but with my cancer history he wanted them biopsied. He stressed over and over that it didn’t look like anything, but he had seen not-so-scary things that ended up being scary so let’s do a biopsy just to check it out. That, my friends, is a little something called foreshadowing.

fore·shad·ow

fôrˈSHadō/

verb  1. be a warning or indication of (a future event).

I got the results four days later and they were positive, positive for cancer.  I have cancer A-FREAKING-GAIN (I’m sure that’s a word, UrbanDictioary it), Invasive Ductal Sarcoma to be exact. I had a PET scan last Tuesday and we met with my breast surgeon on Thursday to see the results.  The results...the lumps I found are pretty small. It feels like two lumps, but it is actually a dumbbell shaped tumor. Of course, I would have a dumbbell shaped tumor. :-)  “How did you even find them?”, the ultrasound tech asked,  I know my boobs, and ladies, you should too.  Get close and intimate with them, know what your normal feels like, pay attention to changes, and get them checked out if you feel something that feels different or doesn’t feel right.  Listen to your gut.  If you get them checked out and it’s nothing. Go have a cheeseburger and a glass of wine, because that is a very good day!  Sorry, back to the results, the lumps are small and showed very little hyper metabolic activity, which is good, it’s not growing rapidly which is what I took from that information. Radiation is in my treatment plan, at this point we aren’t sure about chemo, the dreaded word when you find out you have cancer that raises so many questions.  Will I have to do chemo? Will I lose my hair? What parts of my healthy body is it going to wreak havoc on? At least those are the questions that immediately come to my mind.  I will have a future post on the topic of the possibility of losing my hair.

Again, I digress...the results.  I will have a lumpectomy on Monday to remove the lumps.  This surgery will be a walk in the park compared to my surgery last time.  An hour procedure and no heavy lifting for two weeks (one week, it I didn’t CrossFit.  My doctor doesn’t trust me in the gym. lol), but I can ride bike. That is a perfectly okay compromise. So the lumps really aren’t the huge concern, the concern is the nodule on the front of my aorta that showed up in the PET Scan that nobody can explain. It presents itself as cancer, hyper metabolic activity (rapidly growing) and a ring of calcification (cancer cells calcify as they die), but breast cancer doesn’t spread to that area of the body.  When I asked if it could be an unrelated cancer my doctor said, “Yes, but cancer doesn’t generally develop on the aorta”, so what is it? She doesn’t know and neither do the seven doctors, including ones in New York, Florida, and Chicago that she sent my images to. It is NEVER a good feeling when your doctor and all her people don’t know what that “something” is on your aorta that is presenting itself as cancer.

So we wait, we play the crappy waiting game.  We wait for surgery, for pathology reports, and oncology appointments that couldn’t be scheduled until the end of the month. We wait and prepare for the real possibility of traveling to Seattle or Phoenix for a second opinion. I wait and try hard to remain strong and positive. I wait and continue to take care of my body through diet and exercise. I wait and I periodically break down crying because even though I don’t want to be and try not to be, I’m scared and worried. I wait and wonder what I’m up against in the next few months. I wait and just enjoy every day because there isn’t anything else I can do. I wait...I wait and try hard to remain strong and positive, because I know on the other side everything will be okay. I wait.

I have struggled with my decision to blog about this again, and if I do publish this post it is with great hesitation.  I’m still not sure if I have made the right decision for myself this time.  My blog lost it’s luster and healing qualities when I was told that I post in my blog because I seek attention from it. For those of you that read this, that is NOT the reason I started this blog.  I started my blog the first time around for the the therapeutic qualities of purging my “cancer ick” and the  possibility that just one person would stumble across it and find comfort in the knowledge that another person was feeling or going through the exact same thing. It served both purposes very well. I looked for something like that the first time around and couldn’t find it, the personal, raw, realness of cancer so I hoped somebody would find that in my blog.  You know what, that happened, more than once.  I have had a handful of women email me over the past 3 1/2 years that were going through the same or similar circumstances.  I have a new, amazing, strong friend in Illinois because of my blog.  Our cancer journey’s the first time around are exactly the same and she Crossfits, as well, there is comfort in that, the journey getting back to our place in our fitness world. I have always said the only good thing about having cancer is that you may have the chance to help somebody because of your experience. I’m guessing that is why cancer came knocking a second time, there must be somebody out there that my story will help or comfort. Time will tell...I guess I will just wait and see. That seems appropriate since “waiting” seems to be my theme lately.