I know it was probably delusional but I was holding out hope that maybe somehow I would be able to skip chemo. See? Delusional. I remember going to my first post op oncologist appointment, it was a beautiful fall day and my bestie Emily picked me up in her new SUV. Still being freshly post op from my boob surgery, I was in rough shape that day and getting in and out of the SUV was painful, the seat belt was painful, every bump and turn was painful. Existing was painful. I was aware of every breath I was taking. But I didn’t care, I was with Emily and we were in desperate need for a catch up and the opportunity to connect out weighed any discomfort. I wanted to talk with my friend, even if it caused pain. I was savoring the moment with her, it was such a treat after days in bed recovering from surgery.
Emily is a nurse with a PHD in nursing, so she’s a Dr. Nurse and I pretty much trust her with all my medical history. I wanted her to be at this particular appointment because she could really listen to what I was being told and then translate it to me later if I got fuzzy on things. The drive was felt like it was taking forever and by the end I was really hurting. We finally arrived at the oncologist’s office and Emily dropped me off at the front door and let me lumber in while she parked the car. I went into the waiting room and informed the front desk that I was there and ready to see the doctor. I had a some paperwork I needed to fill out..there’s always paperwork…so much paperwork. Emily came into the waiting room and we took a moment to look around. Everyone in that waiting room was so much older than me. That’s how it was in all the cancer waiter rooms, I was always the youngest by a couple decades. You get lots of sympathetic looks when you’re the youngest in the room of people fighting cancer. No body really wants to see someone as young as me fighting for their life.
I was called back by a kind and talkative nurse with a pony tail that cascaded down her back and made me laugh immediately with her dry humor. I love to laugh and that broke some of the nervous tension I was feeling. Talking with new people and laughing is always a little healing. I’m not sure what it heals but it heals something in me and births hope. Turns out that particular nurse became a friend of mine and we would have meaningful conversation before most of my oncology appointments. I feel bad because I can’t remember her name but I do remember her laugh. Maybe that’s just as important.
All my vitals were taken and I was asked for the first time of million times if
I was in pain. Yes, I was in pain and would be for the foreseeable future. The nurse wanted to me to rate my pain from 1-10 and I was stumped. How do you quantify pain that you’ve never experienced before. I wanted to say 10 but I said something less alarming like 6. I was struggling with gaslighting myself about how much pain I was in, I gradually got better at not doing that. I learned that if pain is bad, be honest and you’ll get help. After that we were lead into the examination room.
My oncologist is a petite asian woman who is very smart and empathetic but also straightforward and to the point. She came into the room and after a few quick pleasantries she started going over my tumor pathology. I had Stage 3 cancer living in my body, lymph node involvement and the very rapidly growing tumor gifted me that designation. From the time of my MRI to the time of my surgery, which was about the span of a month, my tumor grew from around 5cm to almost 9cm. I was shocked at the rapid growth! Shocked! THAT’S why it felt like the tumor appeared so suddenly and I realized why I had such urgency to have my surgery scheduled ASAP. I didn’t know what was really making me push for an earlier surgery date, I just knew I needed to push for it. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my tumor was growing so quickly that it was about to reached my pectoral muscle and that would have made things a lot more complicated. As it was, the tumor was so close to my muscle that I had to have my implants placed under the pectoral muscle for easier cancer detection. I suddenly realized why I was urgent and I was thankful to past Emilie for trusting her gut and going to bat for me. Past Emilie noticed how she was feeling about the surgery date and let that inform her advocacy for me.
I snapped back to it and found myself being told what type of chemotherapy that I was going to have prescribed, 4 rounds of chemo over 12 weeks, one round of Chemo then 3 weeks to recover. She quickly transitioned to regaling me with what felt like a litany of side effects I’d likely experience. My ears stopped working as I was trying to process, I felt like I had a ping pong ball bouncing around in my head. Before I could actually process things, she was writing me a prescription for a wig because I was definitely going to go bald. A wig prescription? I was in shock. This is when Emily really came in handy because my ears were ringing so loudly. I know I looked like I was involved in the conversation, or maybe I just hoped it looked that way but regardless my memory is blank from the wig prescription to finding myself in Emily’s vehicle rehashing what was said. I don’t remember anything Emily reiterated except for a couple of thing:
- I had stage 3 cancer and was very close to being stage 4.
- The cancer I had was very responsive to treatment
- I would need to get help on the weeks that I had chemo
- We were going to get brunch to ease our woes about chemo
- Emily gave me a wonderful idea by saying “you should do something fun and wild with your hair before you go bald”.
Past Emilie knew I was going to have to do chemo, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to by some strange miracle, or maybe be able to do chemo that doesn’t cause hair loss. If I’m being honest, this was the one of the first times I actually let myself think about the chemo part of things. Prior to this I was focused on the surgery and preparing for that. I let my brain put the chemo on the back burner, I couldn’t deal with the fear of the surgery and the fear of chemo at the same time, I had to take one fear at a time. I was kind of prepared to be overwhelmed by all of it but I wasn’t really prepared for the amount of overwhelm I was going to feel at the appointment or after it. The overwhelm felt like a heavy scarf around my neck – kind of choking me and too heavy for my shoulders to cary. Thankfully I was wise enough to have Emily come with me to help me navigate the heaviness. The heaviness is a lonely feeling and having Emily ther helped my feel less lonely even though this diagnosis and treatment was becoming the one of loneliest experiences of my life. I could feel the loneliness creeping in and I asked for togetherness. Emily gave me togetherness on a day I was feeling very lonely.
As planned, Em and I went to brunch at a cute breakfast place. It was heavy but we were happy and together. I’m sure the food was good because Emily does not go to bad restaurants and I probably got a mimosa because that seems like me. After ordering we were both trying to make it as normal as possible, I needed it to be as normal as possible. We did talk about what kind of support I was going to need during my chemo treatments but the after that we kept it light and discussed all the possible colors I could dye my hair and how I should cut it. It was a toss up between pink and purple. Pink would be fun for breast cancer awareness, if was about to be October, Breast Cancer Awareness month. I wasn’t sure I wanted pink but I was really loving the idea of purple.
I found something to look forward to and that was exactly what I needed. I’m forever thankful to Emily for sharing her idea for me to do something fun and wild with my hair, something I’d secretly wanted to do but just could never justify the expense or upkeep. Since I was going to go bald soon, if I hated it I would just have to live with it a couple of week and if I loved it I could do it again if I wanted when my hair grew back. She gave me something to investigate about myself and indulge in. Sure, I had to do chemo but I GOT to do something fun with my hair first and that was how I was going to take some control back! I know control is just a construct, but for some reason feeling like you have just a little bit of control over your life helps me when everything is out of my control. I was at the mercy of my treatments, I had to keep going now, there was no choice. This is when I realized that I was going to need things to look forward to and I could control what I looked forward to. I couldn’t control what I dreaded, but I could control what I joyfully anticipated.