Blindsided by Cancer

Perhaps it’s obvious to say that I was unprepared to receive a diagnosis of breast cancer. What wasn’t obvious, at least to me, is that I was also unprepared for the aftermath of breast cancer treatment.

My cancer was caught early. I was extremely fortunate to only need a lumpectomy and lymph node removal surgery. Since the cancer had not spread, I avoided chemotherapy. My treatment consisted of twenty radiation therapy sessions over four weeks.

The standard of care for invasive breast cancer also includes taking hormone blocking drugs for five years. For women who have not gone through menopause, these drugs initiate symptoms pretty much overnight. I have chosen not to take these drugs. A not uncontroversial decision.

My mother died of metastatic liver cancer aged fifty-six. She had been given six months to live but lasted two years more than that having endured brutal chemotherapy and massive radiation. I suppose on some level you could call that a win. But even knowing she was living on borrowed time and watching her descend into confusion as the cancer spread to her brain, I was wholly unprepared for the enormity of her final breath.

Watching my mother slip away was brutal. Actually, to say she slipped away is a bit too saccharine. She was ravaged from the inside by her body’s own mutating cells. Cancer is a horrible, horrible thing. I was afraid to even contemplate it for close to two decades after she died. But life had other plans.

When I was 45, I had a breast cancer scare and on the advice of my radiologist chose to have a surgical biopsy. Thankfully it was negative, but the experience sent me into a tailspin. Five weeks elapsed from the time I was told I had an abnormal mammogram to the time I got the biopsy results. Five weeks shot through with strain and anxiety. But I held it together calling on every minute of yoga and meditation I had ever practiced to help me navigate the uncertainty.

When the phone call came and my husband told me the good news, I dissolved into tears. The dam burst and all the stress I had been holding so tightly flooded out. In some ways the hardest days were yet to come. I sank into a low-grade depression and felt completely at sea. Which seemed really weird because I didn’t have breast cancer. But somehow the murky depths pulled me in, and it was some months before I fully untangled from those reeds.

Fast forward five years and it’s time for my biannual mammogram and ultrasound. I really wasn’t nervous. I did regular self-checks and had no reason to think anything was amiss. Even when I was told the ultrasound picked up an anomaly, I wasn’t very worried, telling myself that if the subsequent biopsy was to be positive, I’d just be looking at a lumpectomy and radiation. How unknowingly prophetic I was.

The day I got the call was our seventeenth wedding anniversary. The phone rang as I was making lunch for my husband and I. When the voice on the other end told me I had a positive biopsy and started talking about next steps, time slowed way down and I went completely numb. I almost forgot to ask her what kind of cancer it was. The words ‘invasive ductal carcinoma’ didn’t even register so I wrote them down knowing my overwhelm-induced numb out would cause me to forget.

I calmly walked down to hubby’s studio, knocked on the door and seeing he was busy went back upstairs to wait for him. Ten long minutes later he came upstairs and as I started to tell him my voice trembled a little. He began to cry but I didn’t. The great calm had set in. I didn’t really cry until two weeks after I finished radiation therapy treatment.

Things get really busy in the aftermath of a cancer diagnosis. There are lots of doctor’s appointments. I had to go back for two more incredibly painful and traumatic biopsies. Thankfully they were both benign. Meeting with a surgeon and an oncologist. Blood work for a cancer gene panel. My oncologist told me in no uncertain terms that if I had the breast cancer gene, I would be having a prophylactic double mastectomy. My numbness got a little number on hearing that.

Waiting for the results of that blood test might have been the most stressful part of the whole cancer journey. The strain felt like a vice grip on my head. I have been a jaw grinder for years and cracked a tooth so badly it required a crown, but this was a whole new level. I would lie in bed at night with near uncontrollable jaw spasms keeping me awake and even though I wasn’t consciously thinking about the results, there was a spectre in my mind that could not be vanquished.

The best news I ever got was hearing that gene panel was negative. Even if it would turn out that the cancer had spread to my lymph glands, it would be treatable. Not great, but treatable. A gene marker for breast or liver cancer? Well that’s a whole other story.

I’ve been so very lucky. No cancer genes. The cancer did not spread to my lymph. I did not need chemotherapy. You’d think that on finishing four weeks of daily radiation therapy, I’d be jumping with joy. In fact, I was so exhausted I didn’t leave the house for three days and by the end of the week I was struggling with anxiety and feeling tendrils of those tangled reeds pulling me towards the murky depths.

As a cancer patient, nobody told me that the hardest part might be after I finished treatment. Diagnosis and treatment are very focusing. Everything else takes second place. Adrenaline kicks in and carries you through. But now that treatment is over, I’m here trying to pick up the pieces, trying to navigate the inner maelstrom of anxiety and borderline low-grade depression.

Is this typical post cancer experience? Is it because I’m no longer on HRT, the combination of two drugs that gave me back myself after a couple years of perimenopausal symptoms that drove me towards the abyss? I don’t know. I’m here trying to integrate and find forward momentum. It’s uncomfortable.

Being told you have cancer is a nasty shock. All the waiting tests your endurance. Waiting for appointments, for more information, for test results, for surgery, for treatment to begin. For treatment to end. I’m still waiting. For what I’m not really sure.