The Cancer Series
The Annunciation
The doctor announced that I had cancer cells that showed up in the annual mammogram. They were microscopic and I was going to need a biopsy. All I heard was; YOU’RE GOING TO DIE. So I went out and bought an expensive heavy all wheel drive Volvo that I could barely afford. I soon realized that the fear was doing me more harm. I finally found St. Vincent’s Cancer Center for terrified women like me. My doctor had failed to mention that this facility right below her office was everything a woman coping or recovering needed.
Most women in my support group were not willing to complain about anything either because, as paranoid as it sounds, if we had to come back, we were afraid of retribution.
Biopsy
No one prepared me for the horror of this procedure. The room was freezing. Hospital gown was thin. You crawl on a cold slab, lay flat and stick your breast through a hole. Docs raise the table to suspend you in a darkened room. They give you a local in your breast and start cutting. I felt the cutting, tugging, pressure. My body cramped from the tension. I was crying, but didn’t dare move. Could you feel anymore vulnerable?
Operation
I had three operations in three months because the doc couldn’t get enough of a margin. “Tell your friends to pray for you,” she said,” because if this third operation doesn’t work I’ll have to do a mastectomy.”
I emailed everyone I’d ever met. As it turned out, the third time was the charm.
Radiation
For six weeks I spent my mornings with bald headed women. We became a band of sisters. Even when husbands left because they couldn’t deal with being caregivers for their ailing women, we were there.
Docs didn’t tell me about the tattoo for radiation targets: small black dots around my breast that guided the techies to the spot where they aim their beam. Another thing they don’t tell you is that the radiation will affect your heart if it’s beamed on the left breast or lungs if they beam on the right breast. The lungs become more vulnerable to pneumonia which I caught immediately after the radiation treatment.
I hope, since 2001, procedures and docs have gotten better so the women won’t feel and be victims of a sad system.