The C word...

A look into my sister's battle with breast cancer...

Chapter 1

I stand in the doorway looking into the doctor’s office my heart is beating so fast I fear it will burst through my chest.  I dread coming to this place.  Every week I sit in the waiting room looking at all the anguished faces of parents, spouses and the patient’s themselves.  Like always I carefully make my way through the waiting room, careful not to make eye contact with anyone.

I see a seat far enough away that I can keep to myself.  Today I don't feel like holding pleasant conversation with anyone. I am not in the mood for the whole keep the faith pep talk or the a miracle could happen bull s**t or even better, God lets everything happen for a reason. If that’s the case I wish he’d chosen someone else.  Billions of people in the world and I get chosen to be cancers playground. 

I quickly situate myself in my seat.  After a few minute I glance briefly over at a young girl no more than 16 sitting with her parents, they are wearing brave faces but you can see the fear poking its way through.   God this sucks I hope they call me in soon.

 

Just one year ago I was enjoying life.  For the first time in years things were going my way.  I finally met a man that made me happy. That was a miracle in its self.  I was finally where I want to be at work and financially I was set.  Then one day I went for my physically and my entire world was turned upside down.  The doctor found a lump in my breast.  He gave me the speech, “Oh it could be nothing lets just get it checked out any way”.  Yeah, one minute I am on top of the world and in the blink of an eye I am skinny, bald, unemployed and living in the spare room of my sister’s house.  The man that made me happy dumped me when I told him I had cancer.  The jerk, I really can pick em.

 

The doctor said that the cancer spread to my lungs. The first thing I think is O’ God I really can use a cigarette right now. 

I sit there listening to him but after he said that it spread I sort of went numb.  I am staring at the doctor and I see his mouth moving but I can’t hear what he’s saying.  The only thing I hear is my heart pounding in my chest. 

Why won’t he stop talking?

Can’t he see that I’m not responding?  

When I leave the doctor’s office I feel over whelmed.  The last time I went through this battle I had my mother to help me through it.  Now I don’t know how I’m going to get by.  Don’t get me wrong I love my sister, but she is my big sis and she’s a bit bossy and opinionated.  There are some days I wished she’d just shut the f**k up.

 

Chapter 2

I don’t know why these doctors can’t spring for better quality hospital gowns.  I hate these giant paper towels that they try to pass off as gowns.  I tore the dam thing trying to get onto the exam table and now my a*s is hanging out.

Just as I am trying to tuck myself back into my gown in walks a twelve year old with a stethoscope. 

He introduces himself and jumps right into the medical lingo, Metastases, stage IV and mastectomy.  I couldn't understand a word coming from his mouth.  When he finally shut up I asked him what   my chances?  Again he starts with the doctor speak.  Finally I scream just tell me in English.  There was a brief period of silence. Looking at his shoes he says, “You have plenty of options”.  One of his options was to remove my ovaries.  His theory about this procedure was that because my cancer was Estrogen sensitive, removing my ovaries would deplete my body of Estrogen.  The Estrogen sensitive tumors would then shrink. 

However, six month later, that theory was blown out of the water.  Not only did my tumors not shrink, they grew even more and spread to my brain.  One day while I was playing with my god children I

noticed that I was having trouble skipping.  I just could not get my left leg to lift up.  I immediately began to freak out, because I was always able to skip.  I called my doctor and he told me to go to the ER.  I sat there for 8 hours waiting for the results to come back from my CAT scan.  When the doctor came into the room he had this stupid expression on his face and I knew I was not going to like what he had to tell me. 

Basically he told me you cancer has spread to the brain and he had to remove the tumor.  Just like that, cold and lifeless. No compassion or empathy. 

I just stared at him and asked what are you telling me? 

Are you saying that I am going to die? Again, no answer, all he would say was we have to act quickly; we’d like to schedule your surgery for tomorrow.

I looked to my sister for help.  I didn’t know what to do, she was older and always helped me make major decisions and this was pretty major.

She convinced me to get the surgery, I trusted her judgment.

Chapter 3

Where am I?  When I open my eyes there's a haze, it's like looking through a frosted window.  I hear voices, but they are distorted, Where am I?  Then it begins to become apparent that I am in the hospital.  I am out of surgery; soon the pain in my head makes its presence known.  What the hell…

The surgeon give me the once over asking me questions and I am still fuzzy.  The one thing I do notice is that my left arm won't move.  I have feeling in it but it won't move.  The surgeon

assures me that it will take some time for the swelling to go down in my brain and then the movement will return in my arm. 

After a few weeks, some movement returned but not all, my leg was heavy and I had to drag it.  The good news is the tumor was completely removed.  I was willing to deal with the paralysis for that reason only.  As for the rest of the cancer it was there and I had to start Chemotherapy.  The same chemotherapy I should have started six months ago, but thanks to the quack I had for a doctor I sat for six months letting this tumor grow in my head.  He had the nerve to tell me that because the tumor went into the brain the cancer was far too aggressive and would give me drugs to keep me comfortable.  This a*s was giving up on me.  He used me as a Petri dish and now that his experiment failed he was putting me out to pasture.  I wanted to slap the s**t out of him.

I demanded my medical records and my sister found another doctor for me.  This doctor didn't promise me a miracle but she said, "Stick with me girlie I got a lot of tricks in my bag".

One month later I began to see some results.  The tumor in my brain was still gone, the tumors on my lungs showed some shrinkage, not a lot but some, for me that was better than nothing.  Life was looking up for me.

Wigs, that was m y past time.  I would go on shopping trips with my sister to by a different wig almost every week.  When I first found out that my cancer had come back I went immediately to     

the wig store and had the specialist make me a wig out of real human hair that was styled exactly like my own hair.  I did this so that people would not know that my hair was falling out.  Call me vain but I like to keep my issues private.  My sister doesn’t understand this about me; she thinks I am being silly for not wanting people to see me bald.  It makes me angry when she make light of my feelings on this matter.

As my treatment progressed so did my hair loss and I would wear my wig all day and night.  My sister would harp on me about letting my head breath, but she did not understand that I just wanted to wake up and feel normal.  I just wanted to wake up and see myself with hair.  I did not want to wake up and look in the mirror and be reminded everyday that I had a time bomb ticking away in my body.  She just didn’t understand because it wasn’t her that had to look in that mirror every f*****g morning.

 

Chapter 4

I begin to feel confident that my cancer may be on its way into remission for once I feel confident going to the Oncologist for my checkup.  In walks my doctor, but this time she is not wearing her usual smile.  I was not prepared for the news she gave me.  She told me that the cancer had progressed and that my lung tumors had grown.  She looked me dead in the eye and

 

said I give you three months max.  The air in room became heavy and I could hardly breath, my eye began to sting, tear wanted to rush to the surface but they couldn’t.  I was dreaming, I had to be, wake up I kept telling myself, but it was real, she was telling me that I was dying. 

When I left her office I was put on a medication that she said would make me comfortable and she set me up for Hospice. 

One month later I went to see my doctor for my check-up.  I thought to myself, I am dying anyway why do I need a check-up.  I went through the motions getting the Cat scan, MRI and blood work as usual.

I was not prepared for the phone call that came one week later.  My doctor called me to come back into her office to discuss my results.  First I thought what now, is she going to tell me that I’m going to die tomorrow. 

I sat in the waiting.  My doctor walks in with a smile on her face and she said that the medication that she put me on actually has some affect on my tumor growth.  There was significant tumor shrinkage and the fluid in my lung was almost completely gone.  I didn’t know where to scream, cry or both.  She also took me off hospice because it looked like I was going to be around for awhile longer.  She turned to me as she was walking out the door and said, “See I told you I had a lot of tricks in my bag”.

 

 

Chapter 5

Three years later and my time was up again.  I had a seizure and tests showed that my brain tumor was back.  My breast cancer and lung tumor were still unchanged, but the brain tumors refused to stay away.  I was a candidate for gamma knife which was better than getting another brain surgery.  The results were good and all seemed well, until I began to lose more of my mobility, walking began to get more and more difficult for me.  Eventually I had to use a commode because going to the bathroom was getting dangerous for me.  I hated that commode I was able to get around for a while in my desk chair and scoot into the bathroom and pull myself onto the toilet.  One day I fell and that was the end of that.

My cancer was still at bay but I began to lose my appetite and because I was unable to move around I developed bed sores.  It was because of these two problems that my doctor put me back on hospice.

The story ends here because my sister died June 9, 2007 after battling Breast cancer for five years.  She went to sleep on June 8^th and I said good night to her for the last time.

 

Kimberly Ann Merry

(c) May 2, 2009