When you Hear the Word Cancer

When I was just a kid, nobody talked about cancer. It was something mysterious, must be very bad I thought. I had an aunt who came to our home and everyone whispered about what was wrong with her. I was about five. I couldn’t see anything bad. But no one would tell me how she was sick.

I never thought much about that again, until when I was twenty-one, my mother started not to feel too well. She started losing weight, she was never very heavy, but began to take on a different look. Finally after she felt ill enough we got her to see a doctor. They could find nothing wrong and thought she had some kind of intestinal blockage and scheduled her for exploratory surgery. This surgery took only about half an hour. According to the doctor, they opened her up and saw a tumor the size of a grapefruit and then closed her up again. This was in 1947. I was working as a secretary at that time and received a call from my grandmother who lived with us and she told me the doctor wanted to see me in his office.

I was her oldest child and my father had died. I went to his office and he told me she had an inoperable cancer. I had a shock run through my body that is indescribable. The doctor made me put my head down on my lap, I think he thought I was going to faint. I asked him what kind of cancer was it and he said you can’t take it out as it is on a life giving gland. That was my answer. His advice to me was, don’t tell anyone except your grandmother who will care for her. I had two brothers living at home at that time and I never told them. She was from a family of ten brothers and sisters and I never told them. The doctor told me she had only six months to live and since I was living with her and my family and supposed to be married that year, I told my mother we had decided to postpone our marriage for a year to get better financially set.

I never told her either, as the doctor said it would take all her hope away and she would die quicker. How times have changed. Well, my mother was strong, she got better and was only feeling ill every month or so for a few days. I kept praying and hoping all the predictions were wrong but they weren’t. She lived a year and then asked me when I was getting married, so I told my husband to be that we were going to get married because the year was up. I had told him about my mother’s condition. The only other person I told. We were married quietly and after a few months, my husband and I rented a large house so all of us could live together. This was in December of 1949. We had married in August that year. In just about a month after the move, she became very ill and shortly thereafter went into a coma. The doctor visited every day and a friend of mine was a nurse who came twice a day and gave her morphine shots. She died on March 20, 1950. She was all of 43. I was 23. She had lived a year and eight months after the predicted six months. Some of it good, a lot of it bad. I was relieved when she died…I knew she was in such pain.

Then right after she died they began to do more with chemotherapy and the colon cancer surgery where they put a bag on your side, so you could live. Since I had lived first hand with the terrible not discussed  disease, I became someone to call and give advice on how to handle things. Really, when I think of not telling her family or my brothers and how upset everyone was, I realize now what a huge mistake that doctor made. Everyone had a right to the knowledge that she was dying, even her. In the end she did know as she told me before she went into the coma where her $2000.00 insurance policy was and that I should tell the funeral people I had $600.00 and then to pay off certain things for my brother’s school, her bills, things like that. But she never knew she had cancer. You know she was right, the funeral cost exactly $600.00.

When I was working in my forties and fifties, I had my next experience with cancer. A coworker had a mastectomy and everyone knew about it, but no one talked to her about it, except me. She told me she appreciated that because there are such feelings attached to that type of surgery and you really need to express them.

Shortly after that time, I was visiting my brother who lived about three hours away, and his wife who was forty told me she had a lump (small) on her breast. Me, the authority, got to feel it. I told my brother and her to get to a surgeon right away. Her primary care doctor had been watching it for over a year. Well, needless to say, she had a mastectomy and was the first one I knew that had chemotherapy. She never seemed ill, she looked great and five years later she came down with my brother in July to go to his high school reunion. Six months later she was dead. Not from cancer, but from chemotherapy poisoning, five years later. She was 45. I think they monitor things much more closely now, and have better chemotherapy drugs.

My next experience was extremely personal. On January 29^th, 1989, I was wearing a black blouse and went to brush a hair or dust off it up by my shoulder and felt something as big as an egg. Up over my right breast. I went into the bathroom and looked and sure enough you could see it. Where had it come from, I had always checked myself with breast exams. I was proud of my breasts, was this a punishment. That is the kind of stupid thing that goes through your mind. I had my husband feel it and he said oh it is probably just a cyst. I called into work the next day and then called my GYN who told me just go see a surgeon. So I called one we knew who had previously operated on my husband for gall bladder and he made an immediate appointment for me. The next day I had a mammogram of both breasts and they discovered a smaller lump in the left breast by the nipple. I then had sonograms the same day. The news was good, looked like they were both just cysts. Thank heavens my surgeon insisted on surgical biopsies of both breasts. I was ordered to have a bone scan before the surgery to be sure nothing had spread and as a base line for future scans if needed. I was going through these tests as though I was somebody else. I am one of those strong independent women and I wouldn’t even let my husband take me to them. Of course he came after the biopsies, but I drove myself to the hospital. Oh, silly me. The surgeon told me that the initial reports looked good but that there was some question as to the right breast so I was sent home to wait. I didn’t drive home, my daughter had came to the hospital with my husband and she drove my car home.

I went back to work after a couple of days and then got that call that said I had invasive carcinoma in my right breast and had to have surgery as soon as they could schedule it. I had discovered the lump on January 29^th and was operated on on February 15. I drove myself at 7:30 AM to the hospital and told my husband he could come up during the surgery. There is a couple hours of prep you go through and I didn’t want him to have to wait for that. (I am so thoughtful, sarcastic). The surgery was a long one as I had a radical mastectomy and the surgeon removed my pectoral muscles on my right side and thirteen lymph nodes, just to be sure to “get it all”. I sent my husband and daughter away as soon as they saw me as I was still groggy from anesthesia and they went relieved that I had survived the operation. My biggest fear, never having had any surgery in my life is that I wouldn’t awaken from the anesthesia. So as far as I was concerned, it was done.

I was moved to my room and shortly afterward told I could sit up for awhile and go to the bathroom but to call the nurse to be sure I would not be dizzy. So I did all that. The next morning, I got up by myself, went into the bathroom, did my usual beauty routine, at that time, liquid makeup, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, the works. I came out of the bathroom and a little volunteer young girl in a cute uniform asked me where was the mastectomy patient? I said that was me, she laughed and said she was sent in to help me get dressed. I had also gotten out of the hospital gown and put on something pretty with a bed jacket covering the bandages. I have to laugh when I think about that now. When my surgeon came in he said he had good news. Nothing was in my tissue that they had removed, so much for my pectoral muscles. I was operated on on a Friday morning and was told I would be in the hospital for seven to ten days. The next day on Sunday, my surgeon came in and told me he had more good news, nothing in my nodes. Wow what luck. I never felt sick and I felt fine and was only getting minor pain medication, Tylenol I think. He told me on Monday he was going on vacation the next day and I asked him why couldn’t I go home. I felt so well. I still had the drains and things they used but I told him there was nothing I couldn’t do for myself that the nurses would do.

It was funny, on Tuesday morning he came in and all my reports were great, and he said I have told a colleague of mine about you and I am going to let you go home, but if you notice anything about your scar, reddening, any of that I want you to call this doctor immediately and he will see you. I promised that. I had a long trench rain coat then I recall and put it right over my robe and my husband and I were walking out with the doctor after signing my discharge papers, when the doctor he had asked to look after me came in the door. He pulled the doctor aside and asked me and him to go into some kind of linen closet or something, it was clean, and he had the doctor take a look at my scar. The things I am remembering writing this. It was kind of funny in an odd kind of way. I had a chart I had to write the amount of drainage on and had to report that if it was not enough. I had an appointment back with the doctor in one week and he took the tubes out which had long stopped draining and then told me to see an oncologist.

I did see a wonderful doctor who put me on a new kind of chemotherapy then called Tomoxafin. It is still being used today. I had to sign a paper saying taking it could give you an increased risk of endometrial cancer. I took that pill twice a day I believe for just five years. Then the doctor who had told me at first I would be taking it all of my life, said they have just changed their minds about that and five years is enough. I never had any side effects from that, just an occasional hot flash or something. Otherwise, right back to work.

After my six month's check up with the surgeon, he thought I should have another biopsy of the left breast, so I did.  This time he removed the entire tumor.  It was benign, I think he thought something might have been missed and he wanted to have me be safe.  Actutaly, this surgery was worse than the first one for me, more painful, have no idea why, probably not so many nerves cut. This was in June, and I was going to be 63 in November so decided to retire and spend time with my husband and I did so on December 31, 1989.

I went through the usual routine, visits once every two months the first year, etc., until about five years later once a year. I continued that for twelve years until 2000.

That year I missed my appointment as my daughter was in a terrible auto accident that left her in a vegetative state. The doctor’s office called me to remind me I had missed my appointment and if I wanted to reschedule, I said no, as I had a more important thing to do now with every single day and that was to visit my daughter in a brain trauma center. Praying and Hoping against Hope that a miracle would happen.

One year after her accident almost exactly, during the night I hemorrhaged and good old me, didn’t want to wake my husband, asked my son who was living with us at the time, to take me to the emergency room because I couldn’t stop the bleeding. Well someone who didn’t know too much just told me to wear a pad and call my GYN in the morning and I did and they were waiting to see me at 9:30 AM. I told the doctor there that I had endometrial cancer and he said how do you know that and since I had been seeing them every year and he looked at my records, guess he thought I could be right, so then another battery of tests. This started on August 28, 2001. In about a week he called my on my cell phone and I was in a parking lot and he told me I needed to have immediate surgery but that they couldn’t do it because it was a very virile cancer and that I had to have a Oncologist Gynecologist surgeon perform the surgery and there wasn’t one local. So I did my own digging after he wanted to send me somewhere were my husband would have to stay in a hotel and I found one in a medical center about half hour from where we lived. Well, September 11 happened, things were closed down, but I finally got an appointment and was scheduled for surgery on October 12. Once again all went well. The cancer had not even reached the cervix but my surgeon suggested I have chemotherapy because of the type of cancer it was. So I was only in the hospital for four days again and then home and three weeks after my surgery driving to see my daughter again. I think I am a nut.

I began my chemotherapy, a very strong one, on November 5. I was told I would lose my hair, etc., but by this time the anti nausea drugs they gave you with the chemo and to take if you felt nausea at home were great. I never was sick. Especially during the first two rounds which were three weeks apart. I drove up to see my daughter three or four times a week. Then I began to feel weaker but okay and I cut out some of my visits. When my chemo was almost over, I had a checkup with my surgeon who said I didn’t have ovarian cancer and that is why I was taking the chemo as it takes longer to get those results. But he said to finish it and I did. I did lose all my hair, but found a wig on line that looked just like my own and if I didn’t tell anyone, no one would ever know. In fact my granddaughter who visits me every other weekend never even knew I had surgery. I have passed the seven year mark for that cancer now. Am I lucky or blessed. I don’t know.

I just write this to tell you all that cancer no longer is a death sentence. Everyone knows that now what with all the celebrities having it and talking about it, but thought you might want to know first hand details from someone who has survived it twice and now I am eighty-two.

A few years after my breast cancer surgery, while having a annual check up with my surgeon, he told me that because of my experience in going home so early and doing so well, things had changed and now everyone goes home in a few days at that time. I believe now it is almost the next day you go home.  You are safer at home from getting infections that you are so subjected to in hospitals.

For several years after my breast cancer surgery I was a volunteer for the Cancer Society in the Reach to Recovery Program. We were called when someone was about to have surgery on the breast or had just had surgery, to go and see them in the hospital or after awhile as people were going home so soon, in their homes, to reassure them that you can look good and feel good and get through it all. The most important thing is a positive attitude. Some one came and saw me and she was cheery and although with my particular personality, I knew I was going to be okay, I realized that her visit to someone who was afraid of what happened or was going to happen would really feel better after some encouragement. I hope if anyone reads this who is struggling with the fear of the whole process that this helps you. You can reclaim your life. You can live a full life. You don’t have to have a lot of money to get through this. There are support groups if you need them, there are survivors like me to talk to. There is prayer, there is your family, your friends, and mostly your inner self. You are strong. Believe in yourself and conquer your fear.

Conquer the Cancer.