Cancer in the time of Corona

Last Monday, May 18th marked my last chemo treatment! The first part of this marathon is over. I packed my “chemo bag” the night before, placed my port numbing cream on the bathroom vanity, laid out my chemo outfit and set my alarms.  On Taxol, I have to take a high dose of steroids 10 hours  and 6 hours before treatment. This time, it meant taking a dose at 12:45 a.m. and 6:45 a.m. The morning of the 18th, the weather was gorgeous and I blasted my music in the car as I drove to treatment. I saw a white egret on my way, and it felt like a happy sign from the universe. I left treatment at 2 p.m. and it felt surreal.  I expected to feel elated, but I felt a myriad of emotions. For sure, I felt happy to be done with chemo and lucky and proud for how I’d handled it.  I’m lucky that my body handled chemo relatively well. I’m lucky for all the love and support I’ve received from family and friends. I’m proud that I ran more miles in the last week than I’ve done in year...

I'm sitting here listening to my kids chattering to one another in their shared bed through the baby monitor. I can hear my daughter say something and my son parrot it back and the both of them start laughing. Sometimes all I hear is giggling and shrieking, an interspersed cry, and muffled words in between. Slowly the chatter and laughs will wane, and hopefully they'll fall asleep without R coming up once or twice. As I listen to this, I'm thinking about how to write this post. I'm now writing about my chemo journey almost entirely in retrospect and it feels overwhelming. Let me start by saying the idea of having to go through chemotherapy terrified me. Surgery felt tangible and familiar to me, having gone through two c-sections to deliver each of my two children. I had read online about what I would need for surgery and started buying feverishly on Amazon to prepare. Then came the change in my diagnosis from Stage I to Stage II, and the corresponding addition of ch...

“Mommy, why is that woman bald?” Reese asked while I was looking online at mastectomy tattoos shortly after my diagnosis. At this point, I expected to have surgery first and hopefully avoid chemotherapy altogether.  I explained to Reese that the woman, like mommy, had cancer, and she lost her hair because of some of the medicine the doctors gave her to fight the cancer germs. Regardless, I knew that I wanted to normalize the idea of a bald woman fighting cancer, and take the fear out of it for Reese, in case I did need chemotherapy. Shortly after Christmas, I decided to get highlights in my hair for the first time in my adult life. They were super subtle and I spent more on them than I usually spend on my hair in a year. Following my cancer diagnosis, I decided to go more bold with the highlights (I was thinking I may avoid chemo at that point) and went back to the salon.  I loved the combination of highlights, some blonde, some more auburn, against my naturally very dark br...

This is going to be more or less a "just the facts post." The two weeks following diagnosis were filled with appointments for additional testing and follow-up  including 1) a lymph node biopsy on my left side to see if the cancer has moved out of the left breast into the lymph nodes; 2) a biopsy of the right breast to check some suspicious masses; 3) consultation with the reconstructive plastic surgeon who will work in tandem with my surgeon who will perform the mastectomy; and 4) a follow-up with my surgeon to discuss treatment plan and test results. With a lot of self-advocacy, we were able to have all these appointments completed within a very short time. I also had genetic testing done, and the results showed that I'm positive for a BRCA2 mutation. This means that my ovaries and Fallopian tubes will have to come out before I'm 40. In short, we found out that the cancer had moved to my lymph node on the left side, which changed the treatment plan and also mea...

In my last post, I talked about my father, and how my thirteen year old sister told me he was missing via AIM. I will never forget that night. I was two months into my sophomore year of college and sitting in my dorm room, the night sky dark outside my window. Suddenly an AIM message popped up from BB. It read: "I CAN'T STOP CRYING."  Immediately my mind raced.  Had our family dog, Coco been hit by a car? Had he run away? Had Coco died? The next message from my sister blew my world apart. It said: "DAD IS MISSING." I found out from BB and my mom that police had come because my father's car was found in the parking lot of his favorite hiking spot after the park had closed. I got on a bus the next morning to make the journey home. In trying to keep hope alive, I purposely did not pack black clothes- funeral clothes.  It took two agonizing days to find my father's body. The search involved police, search and rescue teams, dog teams and a whole slew of o...

My sister, BB, and I are very close. We are often asked if we are twins, despite our nearly six year age difference. I'm the older one. We share, with our mother, very expressive and animated faces, and a somewhat unexpected goofiness.  My father too had an expressive face and could be a goofball, so I suppose we all have that in common. We also share the same humor, which includes some gallows humor. While my ultrasound, mammogram, and biopsy appointments were happening, I had been texting with my sister and keeping her updated. After I received the cancer diagnosis and B and I were whisked to the counselor's office, BB texted me to ask for the results and also to tell me a story about how she had felt like an asshole for honking at a car who had, unknown to her, been stopped waiting for an old lady to cross the street.  All I could text back was "I have cancer." She texted me back a question, which I no longer remember. I replied "The cells are malignant....

January 17th, 2020 was a Friday. I was scheduled to have an ultrasound of my left breast at 8 a.m., and planned to be done in time to start my workday a bit late, but more or less uninterrupted. I'd been anxious about this appointment for a week. In mid-December, my 18 month old son, L, had elbowed my left breast in a rambunctious bout of cuddling and playing.  To my surprise, it hurt. As a mom who has breastfed two kids, my boobs feel pretty impervious to any type of knocking, hitting and general children-related rough-housing. (I often joke that as small as they were to begin with, after performing their motherly duties, my breasts had fully retired). I did a self-exam and felt a lump, but it felt like a clogged duct and I didn't think too much about it.  As the weeks went on, I noticed that the spot was still tender to being touched, so when I had a routine physical exam on January 10th, I had my doctor perform a breast exam, even though I'd had my annual GYN visit a few...