Q&A

Question and Answer – Bring It On

Ok, sitting here with tubes hooked up to my port for the next five hours, I need to burn some time.

I get lots of repeat questions and have no problems answering them in a forum like this.  Ask me the same question as I’m walking down the grocery store looking for Pasta Roni and I’ll likely glare at you because it’s your idea, not mine.  So, here, ask away.  Here’s a few I’ve gotten already:

Q: What’s up?

A: Stage 2 Breast Cancer, 2 or 3 centimeters depending on which machine you ask, Grade 2, ER+/PR+/HER 2 Positive, no nodes.  (I’ll get to all that garbly-gook letter stuff later on)

Q: How did you know you had cancer?

A: Found the lump.  It was painful and, even though some say cancer is not painful, it can be.  Not earth shattering pain, but it never went away.  Plus the lump.

Q: Yeah, but what made it different?

A: The dimple.  I raised my arm and around the painful area was a literal dimple, indentation, in the skin.  A small concave area.  That had me scheduling the mammogram.

Q: Did you tell the mammogram people about the lump?

A: Nope.  Figured if they couldn’t find it, it was nothing.  I was called back two days later for more images.  Six days later it was biopsied.  Ten days from first mammogram ever to cancer diagnosis.  I’m an overachiever.

Q: How’d you get the cancer?

A: Dunno.  It’s been there 10-12 years.  It’s not hereditary, it’s not diet, it’s not lack of exercise, and it’s not my glass of wine four nights a week.  It just happened.  And no I’m not pissed at my body any more than I would be pissed at my ear for getting an ear infection. 

Q: So you could have caught this earlier?

A: Could have.  Then I would be dealing with the exact same thing at a time in my life and my family’s life that would have been a whole lot more complicated/inconvenient/whatever.  Ironically, controllingly, this is the perfect time in my life for this to happen.

Q: You’re weird.

A: Not a question.

Q: Where are you being treated?

A: Seattle Cancer Care Alliance at Evergreen Hospital Halverson Center in Kirkland, who also collaborates with UW Physicians, Fred Hutch and Seattle Children’s.

Q: How are you being treated?

A: Quite well, thank you.  Oh, how am I going to get rid of the cancer?  Chemo, surgery, radiation, more chemo, hormone blockers.

Q: Chemo? Are you going to lose your hair?

A: Not sure.  My regimen (TCH+P), the T and the C are hair-losing drugs.  I’m trying the Paxman Cool Cap which people lose less than half their hair or less.  Keeping my hair was an issue, then it wasn’t an issue, then it was an issue when the pharmacist suggested it because a side effect Taxatore is PERMANENT hair loss.  So we’ll try to keep it.  It will thin and it might not work.  But we’ll give it the good ole college try.

Q: Why Chemo?

A: I’m triple positive.  ER+/PR+/HER2+++.  My little enemy is fed by estrogen, progesterone, and some sort of protein.  (Any more than that, ask WebMD.)  This cancer responds incredibly well to chemo.  While it is a pain in the tush with the HER2 business, it is almost good news because Herceptin and Perjeta are both targeted chemos that nail the crap out of it.  Twenty years ago, this would have been one of the worst cancers. 

Hiking in the San Juans (after two beers).

Q: What are your odds?  (In other words, “are you gonna die from this?”  I do get it)

A: Predict 2 says 90 people out of 100 will be alive in 10 years with my chemo, surgery, radiation and hormone pills regimen. 

Q: 90 out of 100 – that’s sorta crap.

A: That’s not a question.  And it freaked me out for about six minutes (ironically at the same time we were trying to end-of-the-year max out retirement contributions) but how many of those ten people died when a bus hit them?  The numbers don’t take that into account.  With my regimen I have a 97% chance of not having a recurrence.  I think.  There are all sorts of recurrence/spread/mastesize business that I let go in one ear and out the other.  Because why go there?     

Q: Are you scared?

A: Of the needles and pokes and tests and throwing up and what the chemo will do to me, yes.  Of the cancer, no.

Saywhaaaa?

Nope.  For whatever reason I haven’t had the scared/death thing (except for those six minutes).  Could be naïve, could be Faith, but, seriously, Nope.  Again, needles, procedures, I need a Happy Hour pill for those because Scared has the total focus.  Pretty stupid, eh, especially when it’s not even the results – it’s the procedures! 

Another way to look at it:  This cancer is NOT my problem.  It’s the doctor’s problem.  It’s their job to fix it (yes, I’ve told them this.  Go figure I’d make that announcement.)  It’s my job to make sure I stay healthy, get to appointments and take care of myself.  But I ain’t pluggin’ in the IV or operating on the thing and I’m not aiming the radiation.  Therefore, not my problem.

On a side note, to tattle on myself so you don’t think it’s all lollipops and unicorns, I do break down occasionally from the magnitude of it all.  Like full on, feel sorry for my situation, pissed off at the disruption, this is not how I planned my life sort of thing.  And I’m a drag when I do it.  It’s usually with Jeff, who gives me a hug, and then tells me to help him get firewood.  Which you would think would be an asshole move – it’s not.  It’s exactly what I need.  Whine and then move on because, what else can you do? 

Q: Wanna hear a horror story about my great aunts brother’s god son who lost all his teeth because of lung cancer when the cancer was in his stomach and the doctor accidentally took out his appendix instead?

A: Go Away.

Q: Why can’t I call you all hours of the day or night to see how you’re doing?

A: Because I’m selfish.

A: Actually, because I don’t want to talk about cancer all the live-long day and I don’t want to have to act happy and chipper when all I want to do is throw up from the chemo.  Or I don’t want to hear the phone ring while I’m napping and hear Jeff having to explain my swollen tongue or back rash to someone on the phone.

Cancer is 24/7.  I wake up needing to make eight phone calls that day for scheduling, prescriptions, procedures.  I go to bed knowing I need to make four more the next day.  I drive to work wondering if I’ve made the right chemo decision.  I eat lunch wondering if ham is on the good or bad list (don’t care, it tastes good with gravy).  I worry about the pharmacist at Costco who, when he asked if I was healthy, and I said, “well I have cancer” and he looked like he wanted to crawl in a hole and how I could have answered that better (in my defense, I’m not sure how else I coulda answered that one).  I walk the dog and wonder how I can get the doctor to put the blood draw and the echo heart test on the same day so I can limit my drives to Evergreen Hospital.

I wonder how I can make cancer stop running my life.

There are many times in my day when I just want to be the dork who forgets which classroom she left her coffee mug in (again) or just another attendee at the baby shower, and not the Cancer Victim.  (By the by, hate that term victim – thesaurus says: victim = injured party, fatality, sufferer, wounded, prey, dupe, butt, target, quarry – can’t make this stuff up)  I HAVE cancer; I’m NOT cancer.  I have a toothache; I’m not a toothache.  I have a cold; I’m not cold – wait, that one didn’t work.

If there’s something I haven’t answered, bring it on.  I’ll either answer right away if I’m still hooked up to an IV pole, or it’ll be when I’m good and ready. 

So, thanks for playing along.