There is no worse feeling, no situation quite so palpable,  than sitting with your 9 year-old and  7 year-old daughters while your husband  judiciously explains that their Mother has cancer. What does that mean to a 9 year old girl? A 7 year-old girl? Under normal conditions, we would have to explain what, exactly, having cancer means.  Well, as luck would have it, a close friend, with kids my daughters' ages, was battling a hideous terminal brain cancer, called Glioblastoma,  and she was in the home stretch of a the disease that would take her life two months after my diagnosis.  This would be the experience they would draw from when evaluating what having cancer means. So when my daughters heard the word "cancer" they instantaneously thought of Steph, her bright smile, her bald head, and her diminishing capabilities. The fear in their eyes told it's own story. Our lives would never be the same. 

 

On August 16th, 2011, I was diagnosed with Stage IIIc, metastic intraductal carcinoma, or more commonly: breast cancer. It's a shock to get that news. Your life truly does flash before your eyes because every task left undone must now be scheduled for completion. My brand of cancer was not uncommon. It was an aggressive, HER-2 NEU positive, ER/PR positive, grade 3 beast with the added bonus of having not just one tumor but two, nicely tucked up against my chest wall so that no mammogram on the face of the planet could possible see it. It had spread both to the nodes of my armpit and to  the nodes of my chest as if it were racing to kill me by efficiently spreading in two opposite directions to take me over in half the time. I was and continue to be "High-risk."

 

I found it one sunny Friday afternoon at my daughter's soccer practice. I had my arms crossed with my hands tucked into my armpits and I noticed a hardened, oval-shaped mass similar to a peach pit lodged in my left axilla. I was standing next to a friend who was a nurse who told me to go get it checked. Yeah..... On a sunny, Friday afternoon when most health care providers are pushing through their workload so they can get home, have a glass of wine and get started on their much-deserved weekend. I was cynical. It can wait until Monday, I thought. But then, there was that little voice that said, "make the appointment now...." because any self-respecting emergency room nurse knows that Mondays suck. 

 

"I have an opening in an hour."

It was strangely fortuitous. I took the appointment slot and sure enough, got the nurse practitioner who was rushing through her people so she could enjoy what was left of her Friday. "It's probably just a swollen node," she said. She ordered the usual acoutrements of labwork, mammogram and ultrasound, two of which, turned up nothing. However, the ultrasound gave me some very valuable information