December 4, 2017
Today’s an anniversary for me—a
celebration. Today I am two years cancer
free, having undergone a mastectomy to rid my body of the cancer lurking there
on December 4th, 2015. It was
probably the scariest day I’ve ever experienced, because of the unknown.
The biggest unknown--would they
find it had spread to my lymph nodes?
When Mom went in for surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in her kidneys
years before, they found one of the kidneys 90% consumed and the other 40%
consumed with tumors. Worse? The cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and
she’d need chemotherapy and radiation.
Less than 9 months later, she was gone.
Now, I had been assured that my cancer was caught early and it was highly
unlikely that it had spread, but still they said they wouldn’t know positively
until they got in there and tested the nodes.
Of course the other looming unknown was what would it feel like to wake
up from surgery and be literally missing a piece of myself? It’s a surreal notion to contemplate. I mean, there are certainly people in this
world who lose limbs to disease or accident, and the impact on their lives is
immeasurably more than it is for one who loses, in essence, a large area of
fairly non-utilitarian fat (post-child-bearing years) from the body. Nonetheless, it was a piece of ME, and a part
of me I’d been accustomed to living with for a great many years. When the landscape was thus altered, would I
awaken to still look like me? Would I still feel like me? Would I recoil at the
scars left behind and feel less whole?
Finally, there was the unknown of how all of this would affect the
people I loved. I know my husband, my
kids, my sisters and brother, and my friends were worried. Would my husband still look at me the same
way? Would my kids be in constant fear
of a recurrence? I found that as I was
reassuring them all that this was just a blip on life’s radar and that it would
be an inconsequential bump in the road, I was really just reassuring
myself. Everything was going to be
alright, because it simply had to be.
It turns out I was one of the lucky
ones. The cancer was caught early
enough, and it hadn’t made its way into the lymph system. There was no radiation or chemotherapy, and
my team of doctors has been wonderful as I have navigated the path toward
reconstruction. To be honest, I am
sometimes sheepish about even calling myself a “cancer survivor”, because I
didn’t have to endure the grueling and often brutal effects of the aftercare
that many of my counterparts have braved.
I got the easy way out. The scars
are there, a permanent mark from the past, but I am otherwise unscathed from
the attack. With an incredible husband
who never left my side and has cared for me after each of the five surgeries I had,
and with an amazing network of family and friends who have cheered me on and
supported me in innumerable ways, I look ahead to celebrating this milestone
for many, many years to come. This day
will always be a quiet marking of “Before” and “After” for me, but it isn’t the
day that defines my Life Story. It’s
just a milestone along the way.
Read more of the story in these links:
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