Vocabulary & The Garden State

The first meetings with my surgeon and oncologist were yesterday. I knew this, and kept saying, “finally, I can’t wait, I want to get the plan of attack, let’s do this.” But the night before, I left work and was struck by a wave of terror. Without the prospect of my job to distract me, the proximity of the appointments and what that meant suddenly struck me. Shit got real.

Because I spend a lot of time being anxious and worried anyway, one of my first lines of defense is to remind myself that I’m worrying about something very unlikely, and sometimes very trivial. If the worst case scenario isn’t that big of a tragedy, why spend time worrying? That coping strategy is sort of useless here, because the worst case scenario is not trivial. It’s the boogeyman. We are reminded of him every day in the news and on social media.

So yeah, working on some other coping strategies. I know I have an anxiety book here somewhere… or maybe some old Cathy comics… surely mindful breathing punctuated by the occasional AACK! will help. And as my boyfriend’s aunt wisely advised me, don’t go borrowing trouble. And she’s right – attack what’s in front of you.

The doctors are great. Both are smart and compassionate and didn’t talk down to us and gave us lots of info. They are aided by friendly smart staff. They want to do chemo first, while we’re waiting for the results of some more tests and then we’ll do surgery in about six months. Reason being that if the tests show a high risk of recurrence, we’ll go to the full-on Angelina Jolie (which is technically called a bilateral mastectomy, but I like my term better). Also, its helpful to know that the chemo is having an effect on the tumor, which you can’t test if the tumor was removed.

This is the appointment where they start referring to the lump as a tumor. Well, duh, but I wasn’t thinking about that until she said it and for a split second I thought, “What tumor?” Oh, right. They also talk about cell replication and other things that make it sound like your breast has been invaded. Which, of course, it has. But, I plan to continue to refer to mine as Lumpy, as my ode to Scrooged and because let’s face it, that’s way less scary.

They are still ascertaining if my cancer is what they call her2 positive or triple negative. The docs are leaning towards triple negative, but my family decided that’s a terrible name. My sister suggested that instead we call it “executive” breast cancer, a decision completely validated when we found out that the prescribed chemo treatment for this type is called “platinum.”

The order of operations surprised us all, I think because we were planning on showing Lumpy the door and then treating the rest of the body after with radiation or chemo or whatever. But, the docs pointed out: the chemo gets rid of the tumor, too, it just does it by shrinking instead of removing.

The other thing that, frankly, freaked me out about this appointment is that they’re still looking for stuff. They need to do full body MRIs and wanted to do an ultrasound and then a biopsy on my lymph nodes (under my arm) to see if this sucker is trying to escape and establish outposts from its current position.

One of my best friends keeps giving me war metaphors to use, which I actually find super helpful, along with all the kind words of support I’ve received. Imagining all of us standing together in a movie style battle (rap, medieval, 90s stand-up-to-the-bully, whatever) makes it way easier to face the fear.

As they did the ultrasound, I alternated between staring at the ceiling and watching the weather map pass by on the ultrasound screen. I tried to process some of the day, but mostly I was thinking things like, “I’m glad I shaved my armpit” and “Hey, one of my lymph nodes looks like New Jersey.”

During this process I think so often of my grandmothers. They both had young kids when they were diagnosed, in a time when the prognosis was never good. My maternal grandmother played a large role in my life after beating breast cancer in the 70s. She was very good to me and loved her family, but no one would disagree that she could be stubborn. A novel writer would say she possessed a “steely resolve”. Our family anecdote describes her refusing to stop hanging up her laundry on the clothesline in the back yard in Queens during recovery from surgery, which actually ended up serving as a type of physical therapy. She and I share our worrying nature and tall stature and love of mysteries. Now we’ve both had breast cancer and I’m trying to tap into that steely resolve.

I have to go defend New Jersey. #tovictory