My Fight with Breast Cancer

I walked out of the office of the Breast Clinic to see my mother sitting in the waiting room looking nervous.  I was still riding the inertia of anger from my awful, metastatic cancer diagnosis!  I didn’t even stop to think as I walked up to my mother and yelled- in front of God and everybody- “Well, Mom?  I have fucking stage four cancer.  Do I look like I have Stage 4 cancer?  What the fuck is going on?”  Honestly, I usually don’t use the F-word so liberally, but when you are fifteen minutes from chemotherapy and just got diagnosed as “incurable”, I don’t think lady-like verbiage is your top priority.

My mom- who never swears and probably never heard me do it- was too heartbroken to be appalled with my language.  In fact, she had to sit down because she looked like she was going to collapse.  Her face was blank, but that was just the calm before she really lost it.

I turned around to see where the rest of my entourage was hiding.  Michael was on the phone with his mother delivering the news; he was yelling at her- God knows why- and pacing.  My dad was still talking to Dr. N and babbling on about how- when raising my brother and I- he had instilled in us his Protestant Values of no drinking, smoking or drug use (read:  No Fun.)

“So how could this happen?”, he demanded of the good doctor.

Dr. N must have thought we were a bunch of lunatics.  He still may.

My chemotherapy appointment was approximately 15 minutes away at the Mayo Clinic Hospital, different from the Mayo Clinic, Clinic.  We were running late, so I knew that I had to put an end to all the dramatics and get the proverbial show on the rode.  When I was finally able to corral my family together, I herded them to my car.  Dad and Mom sat in the back; Michael in the passenger seat.  I buckled into the drivers seat and drove us all over to the hospital.  Can you imagine?  Mother, father and husband unable to drive?  This was a very traumatic day.