I attend the appointment with my surgeon armed with every intention to save my breasts, and just my luck he’s a young, bronzed Adonis of a man. Ack, so awkward! I turn into a confusion of competing thoughts; flirtatious concern about how I look, embarrassment at the need to talk with him about my breasts and bullish determination to fight for them.
He angles the laptop on his desk and I manage to focus; “I’ve received all your results, so this is what we’re looking at.” He shows me imaging of my enlarged lymph nodes and the masses in my breasts. I get to see with my own eyes what is inside my body; I don’t have to take anyone else’s word for it anymore. He carefully describes what he sees and gives me time to take it in.
“Thank you for showing me. Now I know what I need to shrink so you can simply do a lumpectomy on me. I’m just not interested in a full double mastectomy.”
“I understand that. And you have 4 months of chemotherapy before we need to book you in, so come and talk this over with me anytime. I wish I could offer something less drastic, but you know, honestly, it’s a pretty straightforward surgery, physically, and the recovery time is relatively short.”
In fact, a well-meaning acquaintance had already informed me that given the breast is simply a gland under the skin, it is a procedure somewhat like removing two fried eggs off a pan. Not reassuring, thank you.
So I hold to my conviction in spite of what they all continue to say. On one visit I prepare to ask him the classic question; “What would you do if this was your wife?” (Right?)
But he beats me to it,
“Emma, honestly, I know it is really hard but if this was my mother’s report, I’d tell her to have the full surgery.”
Shit…
I’m old enough to be his mother!
-::-
HOW CAN THIS BE HAPPENING?
I eat my greens
I avoid aluminium chlorohydrate in deodorant
I eat hormone-free, grass-fed, non-intensively-raised meat and fresh farm eggs.
I don’t use sunscreen
I don’t microwave food in plastics
I did the lead test on all my lipsticks.
I don’t use Teflon or Saran Wrap
I don’t wear underwired bras
Nor drink water from bottles left in the car in direct sunlight.
I wash my fruit before eating.
I breastfed my kids.
I haven’t smoked in forever.
I get regular exercise.
I’m neither tall nor of Ashkenazi Jewish descent - both considered higher risk by the Canadian Cancer Society.
I’m not on HRT, nor the contraceptive pill.
I don’t often eat junk food. I buy milk in glass bottles. I generally avoid soy protein.
I DON’T EVEN TURN ON THE FREAKIN’ LIGHT IN THE BATHROOM WHEN I GO TO PEE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT — apparently that messes with your melatonin levels.
Perhaps I drink too much wine.
Or is it because I had my children later in life?
Have I not been eating enough anti-oxidant-rich berries? Or the latest super-food; is that cranberries? Pomegranates? Goji berries or black raspberries, now?
1 in 8 women and rising. But why me?!
-::-
My first emotion on getting this diagnosis was shame. Shame! I’ve done something to get this; my choice of where I live, the food I eat, my way of being.
There are whole shelves in bookstores dedicated to cancer - and don’t get me started on how much you can find on the internet. So I spend endless hours researching potential causes and, of course, treatment options:
I read-up on the heavy-dose Vitamin C cure, Cannabis oil, fasting, going on a raw food diet, juicing, eliminating all sugars, starches and alcohol.
I research Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Integrative medicine, Atavistic Chemotherapy, the Chinese herbs brought all the way from Hong Kong by a dear friend, the Essiac tea my cousin recommends, Ayahuasca medicine, spiritual healing and meditation, the locally harvested Chaga mushrooms, brought to my door by a kind man I barely know.
One morning as I am trying to explain to Roland what I have read, I finally see why I’m obsessively filling my wakeful nights with research. I am desperately trying to find the one, sure thing that will stop me from dying. It is an understandable, but exhausting and futile quest for control. There are no guarantees. There is no one, perfect solution. No simple, direct cure for my cancer.
For the first time in my life I am willing to sit face to face with death and surrender to its inevitability. Certainty, actually.
Instead of busying myself with cures, I become more present to my day-to-day, moment-by-moment choices. I tap in to my feelings and desires. I write poetry. I learn about Buddhism, the female Christian mystics, Sufi poets and I tap into the wisdom of others who grapple with life and death.
Life is right here, not in some perfect future. Whether I live or die from this, what truly matters is how I am living right now in this moment; what I am choosing to put my mind on and who I am choosing to share my heart with.
I make peace with knowing that my body won’t go on forever. And I find solace in knowing that my love will.
Against all my rationalizations, I listen to my intuition for the next small step to be taken. Against all my expectations, chemotherapy feels right. And in those 5 timeless days before it is scheduled to begin, I make peace with that too.
Thank you for sharing your experience and writing it so vividly!
Powerful writing Emma. Telling you it's a 'straightforward' surgery seems to completely invalidate the emotional and psychological aspects of removing a part of the body so symbolic of womanhood. I wonder would that male doctor consider it 'straightforward' to remove a penis??!!