part 3

Maybe you guys have noticed that I have been avoiding getting on with the story of how this all started. Don't get me wrong, it's really good for me to keep this journey fresh in my mind, and it is also a kind of relief to share with you how this has all played out every step of the way - it makes it easier when I run into people I haven't seen for a while. I always feel the need to explain "no, it's not a new hairstyle, but thanks, it is kinda cute"...or "yes I'm happy to be back in Hawaii, but I'm sad for the things I gave up in SF". And it's always a bummer to break the news to someone - just to utter the words, "I have cancer" still gets choked up in my throat, and I feel even worse for shocking a friendly face. I don't mind talking about it, I like to answer any and every question about it, but it's just saying those three little words that is still tough. When my hair was starting to grow out it was nice to just pretend, cancer? What cancer? But since I'm rocking the baby-bird hairdo right now and refuse to wear a wig...excuse me, cranial prosthesis, it's kinda hard to avoid the elephant in the room.

So I took a little break from the story to breathe and relax – It’s Thurs 9/11/08 and I left off with just getting off the phone with my surgeon with the news.

I know that I managed to call my Dad, Brian, and Dina. I went back inside school and found Emma and told her the news and asked that she tell the rest of my professors about not making my exams today and tomorrow. I had told Emma and Liz a week earlier about the lump, so they were waiting to hear the reports too...I'm sure this is NOT what they expected to hear either. Both Brian and Dina offered to come pick me up from school, but I wanted to drive home. It only a 15 min drive and I consciously remember that I drove very slowly and carefully. By the time I reached home Dina was waiting outside and Brian pulled up to the house. They got me inside and I remember saying to them, "this is it. This is what is going to take me." I thought life was over. I thought all my dreams were toast. I couldn't stand to look in the mirror because that shell of a person was no longer the person I was inside anymore. I wanted to cut off my hair and crawl under a rock and just die right then and there. Even little Tigris knew something was wrong - she just sat quietly next to me giving intermittent licks to my legs and face.

The next few days were a blur - I went back in to the surgeon's office that day for a core biopsy. Brian and Dina took me. This was a little bit more of an extensive procedure, but still not that painful. Brian even helped with the ultrasound pictures because Dr. Hiler did this after hours and his staff had gone home. It's a bigger needle thing with a scoop on the end that gets inserted into the lump. Doc took 6 mini chunks of the tumor and put in a marker, "in the hopes that we'll shrink that tumor so much we'll need the marker just to know where it was".

I feel like I'm in a movie on fast-forward but everything is moving fast but me. Appointments being made, dinner to go to, maybe I should shower, sleep doesn't come, walk the dog, do my laundry, everything is on autopilot. When the lights go out I cry silently for hours - scared of chemo, scared of surgery, scared of never going back to school, scared of never having children, scared of unfairly forcing Brian into this world of hospitals, tubes and needles, scared of dying. It’s only Friday – 24 hours since the diagnosis. My Dad and step-mom Phoebe will arrive on Sunday. I have the weekend to deal with. We had previously planned on heading up to Napa to celebrate the launch of a new Folio wine “M”. We decided to go anyway. It was better than sitting around obsessing about things we could do nothing about. It was fun, we laughed and had a good time. Only the family knew what was going on, so it was my last weekend pretending that I lived amongst the humans. Half-alive, half-dead, but nobody needed to know. We had fun in the sun, drank some fabulous wine, played pool, sipped on grappa, and hung out with good friends. A silent good-bye to a life I wasn’t going to be a part of for a long time.

The next day (Sunday) my Dad and step-mom Phoebe arrived. Monday we get a phone call from Dr. Hiler about my biopsy pathology results. It is Estrogen negative, Progesterone positive at less than 10%, Her2 negative, which in all amounts to a Triple Negative diagnosis - the Progesterone is not in high enough amounts to be clinically significant. Anything "negative" sounds good, but for breast cancer it means there is nothing for the drugs to latch onto. For hormone positive BC you can get hormone treatments. For Her2 positive BC you can get Herceptin. For TripNeg BC neither hormone or Herceptin treatments work. TNBC affects about 10% of BC diagnoses, and survival rate...well, we all know how I feel about statistics.

I know that I am gearing up for the greatest fight of my life, so want to ready my body in every way possible to be strong for the fight. I reach out to my Qi Gong instructor Liping Zhu from school. She invited me to join them for free at Golden Gate Park to do a morning group Qi Gong week long workshop that just happened to be starting today. I had always told myself that I wanted to begin the discipline of daily Qi Gong – and now it took my life being threatened to be able to do it. Funny how twisted a path can be to get to your destination.

Tuesday (mind you I had gotten the cancer diagnosis on the previous Thurs, things are moving fast now), I meet my Medical Oncologist Dr. Grant with my Dad. She is a lithe lady whose quiet demeanor fills the room. I like her. She is also Chief of the Medical Oncology department and seems to be a-breast (haha) with the newest aggressive approaches to TNBC. She tells me it is a particularly aggressive tumor that is 3.3cm in diameter with involvement of the axillary lymph nodes. Best approach is neo-adjuvant chemo for 5 months – 4 2week cycles of some really strong stuff Adriamycin+Cytoxan, then 12 weekly cycles of Taxol , called AC+T. Then surgery to remove the remaining tissue, then 6 weeks of radiation to kill of anything that surgery didn’t get. I did the math, 10 months of treatment and in the end they were very confident I would be cancer free, CURED. I was young, I was strong and otherwise healthy. No problem. Walk in the park. Get started today with a Lupron injection to go into chemical menopause to shut off my ovaries in the hopes I might have children one day? Sure, no problem. Schedule to start chemo in 2 days? Sure, no problem. Ready to lose your hair, your ability to eat, sleep, walk, talk for 2 months while on Adriamycin+Cytoxan? Yep, bring it on. Have a Port-a-Catheter inserted into my chest wall to administer chemo? Sure, no time to do it before 1st chemo? Ok, we’ll do it a few days after my 1st chemo so we can do the second chemo in my New Power Port!

So that’s it. I have my appointment to start chemo in 2 days, exactly one week from getting a phone call on a sunny day from my surgeon that would change my life forever. All I want to do is cut off my hair. I don’t want to wait for it to fall out. It is a semblance of control over something I have no control over at all.

Whew. That was a long one. I’ll pick up on the beginnings of chemo next time.

Love always,
Denise