My Great Breast Cancer Adventure

My Armpit, My Spirituality, My Shame, My Chi, Etc.

Flasback to January 2010:

Now that my aching breast has been dispensed with, my armpit aches. Bummer. I'm worried about this new development. But I try to focus on work instead, try to think up ways to keep the daily grind meaningful. Creative ways. Inspired ways. Good luck you, chump, I say to myself.

I want my work to be, as the Buddhists would say, my right livelihood, maybe even my spiritual practice. I think a lot about what it might mean to have a spiritual practice. I commit to walking the dog every day and manage to do so every other day. While I walk I take photos. Photography is my new hobby and, I am beginning to think, probably closer to a spiritual practice than my daily grind. But maybe not. Maybe I am wrong about that. Who knows? The Dalai Lama?

Or what about yoga? I often think about doing yoga, about starting to practice it religiously, not today of course but someday. Sometimes I attempt to do simple stretches, but if I stretch the wrong way my armpit begins to ache or my back goes kaput, and I immediately shift into reverse.

Blue Breast: Second Surgery

ALERT: I know things now that I didn't know in 2005. For example, if I had known then what I know now, I probably would not have allowed them to do the sentinel node biopsy, or to take any of my lymph nodes, period. It's even possible that I might not have had the lumpectomy. So please keep this in mind when you read the post below, and do your research on lymph node removal and breast cancer; don't just assume that it's going to help you to have nodes biopsied or removed. You can start your research by going to breastcancerchoices.org.

A flashback to 2005:

The first surgery is over, the lump is out, and the diagnosis is in: Breast cancer. Stage two, invasive, intermediate grade, a mix of ductal and lobular. The good news is: The cancer has been excised. The not so good news is: I have to go back for a second surgery, to get a wider excision margin and also to see if any of the cancer infiltrated my nodes. The surgeon will inject a dye into my breast. The dye will travel along the glands that lead to the nodes. My breast and pee will turn blue for a day or two.

I can't seem to follow a straight line these days. I start out heading toward the doctor's office, then do a zig in the direction of death, followed by a zag in the direction of life. Finally I reach the hospital at the corner of Fulton and Shrader, with no idea how I got there.

My Ache: The First Biopsy

A flashback to the summer of 2005.

My Ache

When I arrive at the hospital, everything bodes well. I locate and enter the parking lot that I worried I wouldn't know how to enter or pay for, then I successfully navigate my way to the right elevator, then through the maze of hallways, and finally to the correct suite of imaging rooms. Although I have lived for more than 25 years in San Francisco, which is not really all that big of a city, I am still a small town mid-western girl at heart, still not at ease with the plethora of urban options even when they are confined solely to one large hospital.

My waiting room experience also goes surprisingly well. According to Cosmopolitan magazine, Christie Brinkley attributes her trim physique to vegetarianism, Jennifers Lopez and Aniston both pump iron, and Halle Berry does power yoga. The mammogram goes well too.

But the TV-like screen of the ultrasound machine presents a view of my left breast that reveals a distinct black mass. The mass quivers, shifts, disappears and reappears as the radiologist moves a rectangular metal sensing device back and forth over the quadrant in question. When, after a minute or two, the doctor doesn't turn to me and cheerfully announce, "All right, all done!" — when, instead, he silently and intently proceeds to push numerous buttons and switches, in order to further scrutinize the lump, I feel my first jolt of unease.

Salt: Waiting for the Biopsy Results

I wrote a rougher version of the following personal essay, around six years ago (in 2005), just prior to my bc diagnosis. Today I dug it out, smoothed a few of the rough edges, and felt some satisfaction in doing that, especially after having spent all day yesterday leading a workshop called "I Want to Write BUT...A Kick in the 'But' Class for...You?"

I felt like I should give myself a good kick in the 'but,' too.

Here's what I ended up with:

Salt

I woke up this morning thinking, as I once again swung my feet over the edge of the bed, about all the people I've known who have died in the last decade. My brother, my mother, my father. Tina's sister, Gabrielle's lover. That 14-year-old girl, can't remember her name, in my son's acrobatics class, whose safety buckle malfunctioned during a routine trapeze trick. Just go, I say to myself. The appointment does not require high drama, requires nothing more than two hands that can grip a steering wheel, two legs that can carry you into the doctor's office.

The Other Woman

I wrote this personal essay back in 1999 or maybe even earlier, can't remember. It was published in November of 1999, in Salon magazine (Salon.com); this was back when the magazine had a special section just for personal essays. It no longer has that section and is an entirely different magazine, really.

By the same token, my love life is now an entirely different love life. It has changed hugely over the last twelve years, as has my health. My then-11-year-old son is now a grown man!

I am putting this essay in this blog because I think it's interesting how I wrote this story about someone else having breast cancer...how I tried to imagine myself in her shoes. It feels to me as if I had a premonition of sorts, albeit an unconscious one.

Was it really was a premonition? Who knows? Does it matter? I don't know that either. But it gives me a bit of a chill to read it now. It makes me wonder about all that I don't know and never will know.