Anne SG and the Big C

Cancer.  Cancer. Cancer.  I have cancer.  I feel like I have to keep repeating it because, where I come from, no one ever says cancer.  It’s always “The Big C.”  I’m reminded of that scene in St. Elmo’s Fire where the character’s mom always whispers the scandalous or unpleasant words.  It’s very much like that for me.  Yet, in order for me to really accept my condition, I feel I must own the word by saying it–and spelling it–in full.

 I began this blog as a means to communicate the process and treatment of my illness for those who are intersted, have questions, and/or just want to know how I am–since so many of my family are far away.  Also, I am hoping it will be a little therapeutic to write about the experience.

I received my diagnosis Friday, November 30 after a weeklong series of tests.  On the 11th I noticed a lump in my right breast which had not been there before.  I called my OB/GYN and my PCP to see if I could be fit into the schedule.  My OB/GYN, Dr. Suzanne Roberts, fit me in within a day or so.  She sent me for a mammogram; after calling around I found only one place that could do the test within a week (most folks wouldn’t see me before mid to late December!).  Immediately after that mammogram the “Nurse Navigator” (aka the Bearer of Bad News) informed me that I had not one, but four questionable places that needed biopsies. All this the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

My inlaws, being proactive people and involved in the medical field, had an appointment secured for me at the Mayo Clinic by 9am the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the Monday following I found myself in Jacksonville meeting my new doctor who would serve as my contact while there.  Several tests later and there I was on the 30th with the diagnosis.  Breast cancer.  To be exact, infiltrating ductal carcinoma–the most common kind, apparently.

And here I am.  Waiting to hear from the Mayo on my schedule for the next round of tests and to find out when my breast will be surgically removed.  Right now I have very little awareness of where I will be on any given day in the future, or what my life will look like. I don’t know what “stage” my cancer is, or when I will be operated upon, or whether I will have chemo/radiation/hormone therapy afterwards.  Not knowing doesn’t particularly bother me–I find that I can’t focus on too much at once right now anyway, and to ask, when I am faced with this deadly disease, seems to ask too much. Do I really want to know?