Fighting Breast Cancer

Tonight my mom and dad flew in to Phoenix to be with me for my big day tomorrow.  My mom has been afraid to fly ever since the 9/11 tragedy.  She swore she would never step foot on a plane again.  That was before her baby was sick.

My mom and dad are staying at a hotel near by.  I picked them up and brought them over to show them my house.  This is the first time they’ve ever seen my home!  Quite exciting for me, as I am very proud of my house.  It was nice to be sit and visit with them and talk about everything.  I’m so glad that they came and could be here for me. 

Tomorrow I start chemo.  I’m not really nervous about it because it doesn’t seem real to me.  I can tell my mom is nervous.  She looks like she’s been crying.  I just hope that everyone will be able to get some rest tonight.

I have an appointment in the Radiology Department of the Mayo Clinic to have a “clip” inserted into the tumor in my right breast.  The clip looks a little bit like a staple, but smaller.  It’s purpose is to monitor how well the chemo will shrink my tumor, if at all.  It will provide the doctor with a “point of reference” when I have another Breast MRI down the road.

The doctor implanting the clip was actually a great guy.  Finally- someone who could crack a smile about good ole cancer!  I laid down on the table after I had changed into my Mayo Clinic robe of choice.  The Doctor first created a sterile environment by isolating my breast beneath some clean tissue and then he gave me “a local”.  He swabbed me with some iodine and prepared to insert the clip.  An ultrasound technician was on hand to help guide the doctor to the correct spot.  He had to push the clip in with a long needle-type tool. 

I confess: I wasn’t watching.  I was a little freaked out, actually.  Again, when in these situations, I tend to try to lighten the awkward mood.

As he was finishing and bandaging me up, the doctor asked if I had any questions.

Me (very seriously):  “Just one Doctor.  Is my career in Playboy over before it’s begun?”

Doctor (he can’t quite tell if I’m serious or not):  “Uh…I’m afraid so.”

Me:  “That’s too bad.  I was thinking of doing a ‘Girls Gone Wild’ type video.  Only I’d call it ‘Girls of the Mayo Clinic Gone Wild’.  It would feature women with Mastectomy and Lumpectomy scars.”

[ Yes, I realize this is probably in “poor taste” by most people’s standards…but I have cancer. ]

Doctor:  “Well, if you ever get featured in a video or magazine like that, please let me know.  I will be the first to buy that issue.”

I could seriously love this man for indulging me.

My husband is very old fashioned with the way that he deals with stress.  He tends to try to drink them away.  Cancer is different though.  No matter how much time he spends pickled, I still have the disease.  This is posing a problem and not just for the obvious reasons.  On top of him being drunk and shirtless all the time (yes, I said shirtless), he has been in an extremely emotional state.  His drinking has been giving way to crying fits and bouts of extreme rage.  He even outran our local police in an episode I don’t care to discuss in detail, because it’s just too embarassing.  (He was “real proud” though.)  Since I’ve been diagnosed, I honestly feel like my husband is losing his mind.  He’s a licensed banker and really good at what he does.  Now, he turned into a shirtless redneck overnight.  All of his acting out is really starting to take it’s toll on me because tonight….my parents arrive from Michigan.

I have been back to Michigan several times in the four years that I have lived in AZ.  During one of those trips Michael came with me (this is a rare event because we are self-employed and one of us has to stay behind to answer the phones) and he was on his best, sober behavior. 

I just don’t know how my Mom and Dad are going to react to this side of Michael.  You know– the crazy, shirtless side.  For a while I told him to sit in a quiet room and chant “cope and adjust” over and over as a calming exercise, until I found out he was bringing a fifth of Captain Morgan in the room with him and passing out.

One thing is for sure:  I don’t want my parents to worry any more about me than they have to.  It’s bad enough that my cancer is turning the family upside down.  Michael had better get his act together quick.

Mary was the name of the angelic nurse who hugged me and helped me to calm down.  I allowed her to put an IV in my arm for the CT Scan and she wheeled me in a wheelchair to CT Scanning room.  I had stopped crying, but I couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling of dread.  I allowed the technicians to help me onto the scanning bed and hook up my IV.  Then I layed there very still while the machine slid the bed into the CT tunnel and took images of my brain.  Soon it was over and Mary was waiting for me with the wheelchair and a warm blanket.

Because of the urgency of the situation, a radiologist immediately reviewed the images of my brain.  For 20 gruelling minutes, I sat with my head lowered in the wheel chair, trying not to cry.  At last, some good news.  My brain was free of cancer! 

It’s amazing how a little bit of good news can make you rebound from the depths of despair to the highs of heaven.  After I processed the relief of having a clear brain scan, I agreed to press on and have the PET Scan.  I was so amiable, that I even agreed to let the nurse have another shot at my foot.  Pun intended.

This time, I was too tired from the seizure to get worked up about the IV in my foot.  She found the vein and popped it right in.  Then, a gal named Melissa wheeled me to the PET Scan Unit.  The scan was located outside in what looked sort of like a giant tour bus for the Rolling Stones, complete with a wheelchair lift.  Melissa pushed me onto the lift and I was raised and pushed inside.  The unit was divided into three rooms.  The main entrance  was the “control center” where the technicians monitored and operated the scan.  The room to the left was where the actual scan was located.  I was led to the room to the right. 

Before the scan could begin, I had to have the radioactive sugar solution administered through my IV.  It was imperitive that I sit very still in the recliner provided for me while the solution ran through.  I don’t know if this was important to the test, but the room they had me in was so cold, I thought I was going to die from hypothermia.  Melissa had wrapped me in 4 warm blankets and I was still freezing.  I tried to doze off but it was even too cold to sleep.

After about 45 minutes, Melissa retrieved me and removed the IV from my foot.  Then she wheeled me back inside the Clinic so that I could pee out the excess radiation in my bladder.  Then, it was back up the lift and into the room on the left where the scan was located. 

This scan was a lot like the others:  I had to lay very still on the bed while the machine moved from top to bottom.  This took approximately 20 minutes.  At long last, I was free to go. 

Mary, the nurse who cared for me after my seizure, asked me to sit and stay for a little while longer to make sure that I was okay to drive.  After about 30 minutes, I convinced her that I felt “worlds better” and was capable of driving myself home.

On my drive home, I listened to the messages on my cell phone.  There were 5 missed messages, all from my husband.  I called him back and told him about the PET Scan, the brain scan and, “….oh yeah.  I had a seizure today.”

By the time I got home, Michael was sufficiently inebriated.

Today I went to Mayo so that I could have a PET Scan done.  A PET Scan is the most sensitive cancer detecting scan available.  If you have a cancer cell in your body, the PET Scan will find it.  In order for it to be effective, I was not allowed to do any strenuous activity or lifting for 24 hours.  I also had to fast.  I hate fasting, because I get really edgy and cranky.  Anyway, I was given an information sheet that explained how the PET Scan worked.  In a nutshell, it said that I would be given a radioactive glucose solution intraveneously.  Cancer is a sugar feeder, so it “feeds” on the sugar solution faster than any other cell in my body.  (Think about that the next time you have a piece of cake.)  As the cancer ”eats” the sugar, it absorbs the radioactive element.  Once this step is complete, I will be led to the scanning machine.  The areas on my body with cancer will glow yellow and orange on the scan’s image.

PET Scans are great, but a lot of times it’s difficult for cancer patients to have one because the machines are so expensive that many hospitals do not have them.  In fact, the Mayo Clinic’s PET Scan is a mobile unit that they lend out to different hospitals around the valley.  Each PET Scan costs approximately $5000…at least, that’s how much they charged me.  Could be more or less somewhere else.

Anyway, I went to the Mayo Clinic early that morning for my appointment.  I was really cranky because I couldn’t eat and I had to drive in rush hour traffic.  I was probably also a little cranky about dishing out $5000 that morning- on the spot.  By the time the nurse called me, I was starting to feel really antsy because I wanted to get this test over with so I could eat. 

I was led to a room with several vinyl reclining chairs.  This is when I learned that the nurse was going to have to put the IV in my foot.  She told me it was because the Doctor needed the dye fed at the opposite end of my body.  Since the cancer was in my right breast, the IV needed to be inserted in my left foot.  I had a real problem with that.  I do not like the thought of needles being dug into my feet.  Still, I didn’t have a choice.  The nurse reclined me back and began to look for a vein in my foot.  She wasn’t having much luck.  When she thought she had finally found one, she began to dig the needle in.  She kept missing the vein so she had to keep digging.  It was very painful and I started to feel like I was blacking out.  My ears started ringing and I broke out in a cold sweat.  Slowly the blackness washed over me and I passed out.

When I woke up, I was confused.  Then I felt embarrassed.  There were nurses standing over me talking to me, but I couldn’t figure out what they were saying.  I thought I had fallen asleep when I wasn’t supposed to.  Then I noticed something really strange:  I was fully reclined in the vinly chair, I had an oxygen mask on, and I couldn’t put my arms down.  They were clenched straight up in the air, and I kept thinking to myself, “Now that’s weird.  Why won’t my arms go down?”  I was too dizzy and confused to formulate this question to one of the nurses (who was now yelling at me, but I still couldn’t hear what she was saying through the ringing in my ears) so I just looked at her, kind of smiled and said, “Hi!”

The moment I spoke, the ringing in my ears began to fade and my arms relaxed enough so that I could rest them on the chair.  Then one of the nurses explained what happened.  I had passed out, and I had had a seizure.  That was why I couldn’t put my arms down.  I hadn’t noticed before, but two nurses had been holding my legs.  The nurses had called for a doctor to come in and examine me quickly.  Once he reviewed my history, he looked at me and told me that he wanted me to have a CT Scan of my brain, right then and there. 

“Why?”

“Considering that you have cancer and you just had a seizure, we need to see if [the cancer] has spread to your brain.”

I felt crestfallen.  The idea of the cancer spreading to my brain made me feel so depressed and dejected that I started to cry.  I couldn’t do this.  Who the hell am I to think that I can handle something as big as cancer?  I was all alone at the hospital, sobbing like a baby.  It was all too much.

I just wanted to take a moment to reflect back on my previous post.  If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll see that my doctor told me that “countless doctors” have looked at my file.  This is the difference between going to a ”learning” hospital that specializes in cancer- like the Mayo Clinic- and just seeing your local oncologist, who probably makes all of the decisions on his own.

The Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale has teleconferences with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Florida- all the best breast cancer doctors in the U.S. discussing my file with faxes and television monitors and maybe even heated arguments- who knows?  Like, maybe Dr. House was there, telling all the other doctors that they are wrong and that I am definitely lying about something.

But I digress: Think about that.  Please, please, please don’t go “just anywhere” if you are ever diagnosed with cancer– and I hope you never are…but if you are ever in my shoes, think Mayo Clinic; think Northwestern University; think University of Michigan; think Harvard; think M.D. Anderson.  Going to your local hospital is just nuts- unless one of your local hospitals is known as one of the best in the world. 

This is your health.  This is your life.  This is cancer.  Do it right the first time.

“Steve McQueen without hair?  It’s a blessing he died young.” ~ Dr. House

See, that’s one way to look at cancer…