cancer – day 0

And here we are again, shock. And not shock. This was the phone call I was expecting. I didn’t think it would be quite so difficult to get an answer out of the medical community. They’d done this core biopsy the morning before, had me in pain, and yet, because my surgeon who ordered the biopsy was out of the office (on his way to a weekend in Tahoe) and apparently only likes to give this kind of new in person, they were going to make me wait all weekend for the formal answer from the surgeon about my cancer.

Well, that was not going to cut it for me, and I started making phone calls, and then started makig threatening phone calls. And finally I got a call back from my gynecologist who is also my primary care physician and therefore had a copy of the lab results. Cancer.

One of my friends suggested I keep a journal of this experience because some day it could be helpful to other young women who get breast cancer. I had to decide what date to start counting from . . . the day my doctor found the lump, the day the mammogram showed the tumor, or maybe the day I got the biopsy report that said it was cancer. Even though it really started on April 19th, 2008, when I got the phone call from my gynecologist that the mammagram and ultrasound looked liked an invasive carcinoma.

I decided to go with April 25th as day 0 for my journal, the Friday my doctor told me formally that it’s cancer. Invasive, malignant, breast cancer.

There have been lots of little stories to tell along the way already . . . how I freaked out on my dance partner because he was the first person I talked to after finding out about the lump (and the colonoscopy I was going to have to have), how messed up my first biopsy was, how I had to chase down the biopsy results because my surgeon prefers to discuss things “in person” and I was not about to wait until freaking Monday to find out, having the MRI show two more cancerous areas, and of course all the conversations with family and friends along the way. But since this is the first blog about it, I’ll just get you caught up on the facts as we currently know them.

I have an infiltrating ductal carcinoma, which is an invasive malignant cancer, as well as an area of what they hope right now is ductal carcinoma in situ, and another area they hope isn’t even malignant yet. The two additional biopsies I’m having on Tuesday will tell us about the latter issues.

And to top it off, breast cancer is both rare and more aggressive in young women (classified as younger than 40), and they are definitely going to put me through aggressive treatment with chemotherapy. Apparently the cancer is a greater threat than the possibility that my heart condition will suffer/flare from the chemo treatments.