Three Years

August 21, 2017 was a Monday. The details are still so clear in my head.

This was the seventeenth anniversary of when I started my job (at the time).

Bigger still, though, it was the day I was told I had cancer. I knew it was coming. My doctor had called me the day before but I hadn’t been near my phone and so wasn’t able to answer.

Doctors do not call you on the weekends with good news.

I called my doctor’s office at 9am the next morning, Monday, August 21, 2017. I was at work because, why not? I didn’t feel sick, there was no reason not to work.

He took my call right away. Again, not a good thing.

He told me right there over the phone that the biopsy came back saying I had cancer. But he didn’t want to go into details on the phone. He asked me if I could come to his office that afternoon. He wanted my husband to be there too.

I called Tom and gave him the news. I asked him if he could meet me at the doctor’s office at 2:30.

I called my mom and asked her if she could meet the girls’ bus at 3:10 at our house. I explained the situation. She cried.

I hadn’t cried at that point. I mean…why? We didn’t know how bad things were yet. I wanted to save my tears for when they might actually be needed.

But I get it. I totally get why my mom cried. If I were told one of my children had cancer, no matter how old those children were (I was 46) I’d cry too.

I continued to work, because what else could I do?

Tom and I met at the doctor’s office. Dr. S was very kind. He explained that my cancer was invasive ductal cancer. It was triple negative. He said I’d need to meet with the surgeon but it might take weeks before I could get in.

At that point, his nurse came and told us that she’d contacted the surgeon’s office and had gotten me in to see him that same week, on Thursday, at 3pm. Dr. S was surprised that Dr. B had an opening.

I was not surprised. It felt very much like divine intervention at work. Just like those nights I’d lay awake, thinking about the pain in my left breast. There was no lump that I could feel. It was too deep. But I knew that pain wasn’t normal.

From there, things just snowballed. Meet the surgeon, get chest x-ray, get breast MRI with contract, schedule surgery (September 5). Meet the oncologist. Get port placed. Set up appointment with chemo nurse (Kyla) for chemo education. Set up appointment for first chemo. Second chemo; two days after that second chemo treatment, my hair started falling out and I was bald all the way into the 16th chemo. Meet with Parkview billing because OF COURSE my treatment was going to span two years and I’d have a whole new deductible to meet. This woman was awesome. She found me a program that would pay up to $5000 toward my Taxol chemo. Guess who much my twelve infusions of Taxol cost? That’s right, exactly $5000.

After chemo was done it’s time to get port removed, meet with radiation oncologist, feel terrible about self for a few days because while he was kind, he was the first doctor in all these doctors I’ve seen and who have seen my stupid boobs to make me feel like maybe the cancer was my fault. Get over myself, schedule appointment to get fitted for brace that I will lay in for my five minutes of radiation that will take place every week day for seven weeks, for a total of 35 treatments.

Schedule first radiation, get through all 35, ‘graduate’ from radiation.

And…done.

Except of course once you’ve been through cancer treatments, you never really feel done. Every twinge, every new ache must be the cancer coming back. It can’t possibly be that I’m getting old and I’m way too fat.

I still see my chemo oncologist every six months. This past June I was released from seeing my radiation oncologist. I see the surgeon once a year. His office schedules my mammograms. I’ve had one more breast MRI (with contrast.)

I’m doing okay. I’m here and I’m so very grateful for that. Every single day is a gift that I don’t appreciate nearly enough what with my irritability and being tired. But that’s life. We can’t be all sunshine and roses every second of every day.

But I do try and take a minute each day to be grateful. I’m grateful to God for His grace and His love. I’m grateful to the doctors and nurses and technicians and billing clerks and hematologists and receptionists who were always so kind to me. Who always treated me like a person, someone going through a traumatic experience rather than a number, someone to push through the program.

I would like for this to have all meant something but it doesn’t always have to. Sometimes, it’s just one chapter in the book of your life. And that’s okay too. But sometimes, like on days like this, I feel the need to go back and reread that chapter, if only to see how far I’ve come.