Two Years Ago, Today

Two years ago, today, I got the call from the doctor that all people really dread.  One that I certainly wasn't expecting at 37 years of age.   The call that I was waiting with dread for, the call that had the potential to ease all my anxieties and put me back in to normal land. 

But the call didn't do that at all.  It started with the Dr. asking if my husband was home. He wasn't.  But then Dr. P told me to sit down.  I did.  I knew that it wasn't going to be good news after that, and it wasn't.  I was told that I had cancer. 

I sat on the floor in my bedroom with the air conditioner humming away in the window.  My sweet baby Jonah sleeping inches away from me, in his pack and play.  All seven weeks of him.  I knew my spaghetti and meatballs that were simmering on the stove needed a good stir. 

Some moments are so etched into your mind, that you can still smell them.  This is one of those moments for me.

How do you greet your husband, arriving home from work, with that news?  Do you just blurt it out?  Wait until he has showered and changed and had a glass of iced-tea?  Will he know just by looking at me?  I remember that I felt some peace about the whole thing.  I felt that at least we know what we are dealing with.  That day, the first phone call, had us believe that I had DCIS, which is stage 0 cancer, and very, very treatable.  If you are stuck getting breast cancer, that is the one you hope you have.  The phone call, again Dr. P, very sorry about overlooking a part on the report.  A very small word, but a very devastating word:  invasive.

Around the time that I found out I was expecting Jonah, I realized a small lump that I had felt before, was still there.  It nagged at me a bit, when I thought of it, but I was really busy homeschooling and caring for the other eight kids, and beginning another pregnancy. 

During my pregnancy I called it to the attention of two doctors and a midwife.  They all thought it seemed very much like a cyst.  That eased my mind, and left me wondering if breastfeeding would be affected by this "cyst".  I do understand why the doctors all thought it was a cyst.  It was round, smooth movable and I was expecting and relatively young.  I had never had a mammogram even. 

I went for my six week check up and mentioned to yet another doctor that the lump was still there.  That I was concerned.  He set me up for an ultrasound, to show that it was truly a cyst. 
The day after the big, fun first birthday party for my sister's little girl, I headed in to the women's center for an ultrasound.  I was alone.  I didn't need someone with me for that.  I distinctly remember sitting in the parking lot.  My Chris Tomlin CD was just turned off, and the heat from outside was invading my cool interior.  I knew that coming back out from the appointment, I could be under completely different circumstances. I prayed for peace, and for good results. 

"Don't worry so much", the nurse told me after wards, as I sat in her office in a part of the center I never expected to be. " I should be next door. In the obstetrician's office.  You know with my newborn baby," thought I.
      "Most women, with a tumor, will have it proved to be benign.  85-90 percent of such tumors are benign." She said,   She showed me a bead on a long strand of ever larger beads.  "The mass you have is this size", she said.    I was set up for a biopsy a few days later.

I was glad that Joel came with me for the biopsy.  He sat in the waiting room as I had the procedure done.  After wards, I had my very first, and oddly, my last, mammogram.  That is when things quickly escalated.  Joel and I were called back to a dark room.  Two radiologists and the surgeon were in there.  Pictures of the mammogram were up on those glowing walls.  They showed me the problems.  It was obvious, even to me, that it looked really bad.  They sent some tissue for a quick test, I fail to remember what for.  I sat in the dark room, rocking the baby car seat back and forth, tears flowing down my face and tried to understand what the doctors were saying.   So then we entered the bright lights of the waiting room, and the even brighter sunshine of the parking lot.  We buckled our newborn in the car and started for home. 

And waited for the call. Dani


-this was written by me a few years go.  I never had the heart to publish it. I preferred to see Jonah's birth story of I ever looked at my blog.  But I miss writing. So I got publish, and maybe I will get back into this.  Dani