Journal Entries

JOURNAL ENTRIES (sorry there are no quick links, I can't quite figure that out yet on blogger)
DIAGNOSIS DAY - Sunday 10/28/12
DD+1 - Monday 10/29/12
Sunday 11/11/12
BACK TO WORK - Monday 11/12/12

I promised I would post entries from my journal from when I was first diagnosed.  This is from the day I was diagnosed:

JOURNAL ENTRY: DIAGNOSIS DAY

Sunday  10/28/12

Plan for the day:

• Go to the ER about this chest pain I’ve been having for two months
• Bring my mom to the English Manor to book Sean and my wedding
• Go to travel agent to discuss our honeymoon
• Food shop
• Laundry

I always have a plan.  A plan for today, a plan for the week, a plan for the year, a plan for the next 3 years.  Yes, I am a planner.  100%.

Today my plans and pretty much all future plans will go to shit. 

I arrive at the ER at 10:30 am with Sean after doing a little storm prep. (hurricane sandy is set to arrive today or tomorrow).  I see the ER doctor and tell her about how I’ve been having chest pains for about two months and I went to my general doctor not once, but twice and he said it was muscle pain but I think it's more.  She starts to be dismissive and tell me how muscle pain can last months and months.  I refute her by telling her I’ve been an athlete all my life, this is NOT muscle pain.  She relents and decides to do an x-ray and echo-cardiogram.

The x-ray comes back clear which puzzles me because I could've sworn I fractured my sternum playing roller derby.  They see something in the echo print out and want to do blood work.   They expect it to be nothing and tell me that once the blood work comes back in an hour I can leave.  Good.  I have shit to do.

An hour later they come in asking for one more vial of blood and they want to send me for a ct scan.  Now I’m nervous and I want to go home desperately.  The nurse/tech who takes my last vial of blood can’t find a vein and pokes around my arm until finally sticking me in the left hand. 

I just know things can’t be good if they are ordering more tests. 

I go to the basement of the hospital where they do the ct scans and there’s two other patients; an old man with cancer who I feel bad for as his wife stands by his side and an older woman who won’t stop coughing.  She starts talking to me and I want to tell her to turn around, I don’t want her illness.  She swears whatever we have, it’s the same.  I’m thinking no. 

She goes first and on her way out says it wasn’t so bad. I know I need contrast with mine so it will be a tad bit different.  The ct scan tech warns me that when she tests the “line” it will hurt (ie. Inject stuff into my hand vein).  Hurt is not the word.  I’m instantly in sobbing tears.  This is a great feat to get me to that point.  Earlier in the year I broke my ankle playing roller derby, told my captain I just needed to shake it off and then proceeded to skate for another jam.

Meanwhile, my mind is going a million directions at what could be so bad that they aren’t even giving me a clue as to what they think it is.  Of course, for half a second I do think the “C” word but try to put it out of my mind.  The big C is my worse fear, second is early menopause.  I’ve done everything I can in my adult life to prevent it – glass tupperware (no bpa), sulfate free shampoo, organic foods, nitrate free meat, antibiotic free dairy and meats, eat healthy, exercise, self exams, walking in the breast cancer walks every year (except this one, figures), and I even did my senior thesis on possible causes of breast cancer.

I finally stop crying from the injections, they finish the test and I go back to my ER room with Sean.  I can’t help but be scared and almost contemplate making a run for it.  Before I can really hatch my escape the head ER doctor sits down by my bed and with a solemn face says, “I’m afraid I have very bad news.”  I swear in my head she's joking.  She continues on with, “we have found a significant mass in your breast, lymph nodes and sternum.  We are 95% certain it is cancer.” She joking, right?  This has got to be a fucking sick joke.  Shit. Doctors don’t joke about this.  Am I really living a Lifetime (network) movie right now?  These thoughts occur in mere seconds as I cover my face and begin to cry and think "I don’t want to die."  She continues on with my diagnosis and suddenly I remember I am not alone.  I turn to Sean and we cry together.  I tell him,”I’m sorry.” This is one of the most surreal moments of my life.

I have to call my parents, I’m getting admitted to the hospital.  There’s talk of mastectomies and chemo and radiation.  This is unfucking real.

I tell my mom on the phone that I’m in the ER and she needs to come there, they’ve found something in my breast.  I call my dad and tell him the same.

My mom arrives first and I tell her what the doctor told me.  She tells me it will be fine and it's nothing.  I have to bring the doctor back in to tell her what she had told me.  She’s so distraught she can barely process it.

The doctors get me a private room in the Booker Cancer Center.  Getting wheeled past the sign that says cancer brings on a fresh set of tears.  I start texting my close friends to tell them my shit news.  I get an outpouring of support but I just can’t bear to talk to anyone on the phone yet.  I find out that tomorrow I will have a biopsy and mammogram and briefly get to speak to my surgeon and oncologist.  I have an oncologist?!  Ugh.

My dad arrives at my hospital room and my mom has called my sister and asked her to come.  I send Sean to get some clothes at my apartment 3 blocks away.  He told me later that everything hit him when he walked out of the hospital door.  I can’t imagine what he’s feeling.  We’ve known each other since we were 14.  We dated the beginning of college, stayed friends for a while then went our separate ways for years.  Two months ago we reconnected, one month ago, we got engaged.

While he’s out my friend Melanie and her daughter Fable arrive.  They are my derby family.  I talk to Mel several times a day; she’s my derby wife and we take it quite seriously.  Mel also has had experience with this and so I know she will be helpful; she’s also a yoga surfer babe who seems to know how to keep things in perspective for me.  They only stay briefly, dropping off books and flowers and hugs.

Next my friend Christy comes.  She's a nurse and the one who told me I needed to go to the ER.  She may have just saved my life.  We chat for a little and she leaves. 

My sister and her boyfriend Patrick arrive.  I’m starting to get overwhelmed. I don’t know what to say to my sister.  I’m not sure I know what to say at all.  Really, I’m just feeling totally overwhelmed between visitors and text messages and phone calls and doctors.  My entire life is suddenly in disarray.

Finally they all go and just me and Sean and the horrible wind that is picking up outside signaling the coming hurricane.  This is all so unreal.

JOURNAL ENTRY: DD+1

Monday, 10/29/12

I wake up this morning having barely slept; between squishing in a tiny bed, my diagnosis, and the needle still in my hand I wasn’t the most comfortable. 

I get my breakfast delivered.  They’ve given me a little bit of everything since I didn’t have time to order last night.  I try to eat the eggs but turn my nose up at the non-organic 1% milk and fat laden muffin.  Not a chance I’ll eat that. 

I send Sean to get breakfast and take a breather; I know this is hard on him.  I feel bad he has to deal with this.  We get back together and bam, cancer.  Any other guy would run for it but I know he won’t.  It’s comforting.  I also feel guilty.

While he’s gone I practice saying, “I have cancer” over and over in my head.  Each time I say it inside, I cry.  I’m hoping all the practice will mean that one day I’ll be able to say it out loud and maybe not cry.  So far, I’m failing.

It’s time for my biopsy and mammogram.  Oh fun.  I convince them to let me walk.  The people in the women’s center are unbelievably nice. I can also see the pain in their faces as they realize my age and diagnosis.  The mammogram is just as bad as I’ve been told, maybe worse.  They try to stretch your tit on a plate and squish it with another one.  Newsflash lady, my tits don’t stretch.  I’ve gone through many hours at the gym to keep those bitches muscular and high.  As they squish my boobs I count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.  Eight is the highest I ever get during the squish.  It reassures me that I can make it.  Only need to get to eight and breathe.  Aaah.

Next is the biopsy.  The doctor gives me details of what she’s going to do. AcK! I didn’t really need that.  They’re short staffed due to the coming hurricane so they pull someone from another department to assist her.  Wonderful, a rookie.  I question the new lady and find she’s actually head of another department that also does ultrasounds (like she’ll be doing now).  She holds my hand as much as she can during the procedure.  I’m thankful for her presence.  During the biopsy I try to memorize the bar code on the ultrasound goo.  I need to occupy my mind after seeing the size of the needle.  I’m still not entirely certain where it’s all going to go, my girls aren’t all that big.

After the biopsy is another mammogram and then I convince them I should be allowed to wait out the storm at home.  Thankfully they agree and I leave to go to Sean’s house.

Sunday 11/11/12

It’s hard to be 32 and stare your mortality in the face and try to tell it to shut the fuck up, I’m not done yet.  I’m still a little bit in denial, I’m still hoping for that call that this was all a big mistake and I don’t have cancer.  I mean really, I have cancer? What the fuck?!  That can’t be right.  It just can’t be true.  Not me.  I’m not THAT unlucky.  I thought I was just a little luckier than average.

My prescribed treatment plan is hormone therapy then chemo when that fails and they assure me it will eventually fail.  It almost seems like the worse your cancer is the easier the treatment.  They don’t seem to be rushing to save me.  I feel like I need to save myself.  If you have stage 1 they remove your breasts and give you chemo and after the dust settles, you’re all better.  At stage 4, you’re living with cancer.  Or dying, your choice.  I’m choosing to live.  I’m giving up my beloved brownies and Sugarush cupcakes in hopes that I can starve the cancer of the sugar I’m told it so desperately needs.  My doctors will starve it of the estrogen it also feeds off of.  This has to work.  I’m just not done yet.  I’m not fucking done.

*NOTE: This was early on in the journey when I was misdiagnosed as have an estrogen receptor positive breast cancer instead of triple negative breast cancer.  Hormone therapies are not an option for triple negative breast cancer patients as the tumors do NOT feed off of estrogen supplies.  Doctors and researchers are still trying to figure out what does feed triple negative breast cancer.

Back to work: Monday, November 12, 2012

Back at work for the first full week since this shit went down and since the weather went off the deep end.  Up until now a part of me has been telling myself that when the weather is back to normal I’ll wake up and this will all be a dream.  But it’s not.  Reality is really setting in now that my normal is nowhere to be found.  I get requests for clients for things most would consider minutia.  “Please update the cost basis on 0.56 shares of xyz,” I want to tell them to fuck off I can’t be bothered with this shit, I have cancer.  My bullshit meter is set even lower then it was (and it was set pretty low to begin with).