Unexpected Beginnings, Part 4: Aftershocks

 

It begins when we get home on surgery day. A dear friend has left a full-on Iowa comfort meal:  meat loaf, corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, pull-apart rolls and a stick of butter. It is sitting neatly on a tray, each container labeled. We almost cry because we are hungry in the way that long hours out of routine make a person. How does doing nothing make a person hungry? I am still a bit loopy, a whole lot tender, and really longing for this  nourishment of starches. It is perfection. We eat in silence and then sigh. Thank you friend for giving us something we didn’t know we needed.

The days that follow are a blur of sleeping and shifting so I don’t notice the scar. I wear the tube top for 3 days straight. I am scared to change it because, honestly, I don’t want to look at what is underneath. I look around enough to see there isn’t a lot of blood. I see bruising from the former biopsies and a purple marker tattoo. I tear off all my wristlets. No one but me will keep track of myself now. People call and wonder how I am. People bring flowers and my writing group sends flowers and money for food and I am overwhelmed. What? Other people bring meals and it’s all odd because it wasn’t a big deal. I am writing this to say that and writing to implore myself to believe it wasn’t a big deal. As the anesthesia wears off, I will wonder over and over and over again: was this a big deal? I am so tired on these three days. I can’t believe that all I did was lay about and then only wanted to lay about some more. A nurse friend tells me it’s normal. Bob tells me it’s normal. The surgeon’s nurse tells me it’s normal. I think, “I have never felt normal.”

Time passes and on day 5,  I begin to feel like myself, like someone who did not have surgery. I look at the shape of the scar framed by the steri strip. Three inches long, a thin line, dark blood underneath. It’s tender under there, but I am starting to lose my internal tenderness. I wade further and further into this diagnosis:  atypical ductal hyperplasia.  As I do I learn that officially, they got all the bad cells and nothing new was lurking. This is good except I don’t feel good, exactly. I start to doubt what just happened. Not just the surgery but everything from my first mammogram in early January until today. It makes me think of my sister and this terrible accident she had while traveling with her dog in Montana. She had to drive herself from Montana to Minnesota after falling down a ravine to catch her dog who had gotten away in the mountains. She got help getting up the mountain and to an ER. She was stitched and cleaned up and sent on her way. I think of how long it must have taken her to process all of that, how none of us understood with clarity what was going on until we saw pictures of her bloody pants and the remaining scar. I finally think I get it. It’s likely she didn’t know what was going on because she was in shock. When you are in a state of shock or trauma, it’s hard to be clear about the severity, the impact, the distress you are feeling. Listen, this was not severe but it has been distressing.

In women’s health, early detection for breast cancer  has been blasted and preached for as long as I have been aware of mammograms. Find it! Stop it! But there is a whole lot more about the process that does not get discussed with great detail until you are in it. Breasts are weird and the potential for strange things inside them is great. There are infinite reasons to biopsy them. But a biopsy is a thing! It is invasive and disturbing and yet nowhere in this journey did anyone prepare me for what it would entail. I tell a good friend (who happens to be a therapist with a special interest in trauma) that I know I am sensitive and aware of all the stuff. Maybe I am being a baby. But she says, “No. Stop.You were disoriented. Bodies, whether they are aware as you are, or not, get startled. You had no way of orienting yourself to this experience because you weren’t fully informed. Bodies know and remember things and what happened felt traumatic because it was.” People will wonder, why didn’t your hubby tell you? Well, first, he’s not a woman and second, he’s not had a biopsy, and third, in the chain of medical care, it gets recommended and then the orders are put through and there is no face to face contact until you are getting shuffled through on biopsy day. So currently, today, this is what is on my mind. How could I make this experience better for someone else? To whom in this chain of experiences could I say, how about a little more direct education on the biopsy experience? Time for the patient to absorb and ask questions? And writing this on my tiny blog feels like a good first step and reminder that this matters to me.

It begins as I think back to early January. Bob and I had a disagreement after the diagnosis. I was fixated on, “It’s not cancer” and felt, honestly, almost nothing. He, by contrast, was down, sad. I tried to needle it out of him. What was he putting down that I was not picking up? I know now that what he was processing was my future:  being on surveillance for the rest of my life means more mammograms and MRIs, maybe some drugs and well, his understanding of how getting to the doctor for me is a thing. So he’s disappointed for me and future worries we will carry. And then there was this: “Your cells have announced they are friendly for making breast cancer.” I am angry at this, his word choice. We like to argue about words. As a writer, I have to work towards what I mean, I dig in and flesh out and delete and rewrite and question and revise. As a doctor, he doesn’t have time and so he’s precise. As an introvert, he is even more precise. So he means what he says though I hear it as, “I am friendly towards breast cancer.” After giving up the fight, I admit what I am really angry about is I don’t want to hear this. 

It begins as I note how we’ve flip-flopped, me moving into what just happened and him away from it. He’s not not compassionate but I have taken the action steps, there is a plan. What else is there to do? I laugh because my favorite thing to do has only just begun! I shall ruminate. 

It begins by taking stock of what I can control: eating well, movement, writing for joy and sanity, relationships (many I have put on the wayside during all of this). And then what I can’t control:  my breasts. I study the statistics of my now increased chance of getting breast cancer (30% greater over my lifetime) and think about getting hit by a car or crashing in a plane or whatever else may ensue. Some days I shrug and others, well, I breathe deeply and remember to stay present.

It begins as I think about the traumas people endure and work hard to settle into mine without deflection. This is hard uncomfortable work. I think about my body and all she has endured. I have lost many babies and given birth to two thriving babies who are now young adults. I have walked bean and corn fields in August Iowa summers. I have climbed mountains and paddled rivers and walked and walked and walked. I hauled rocks and bricks and pulled weeds and placed my toes in warm sand and stretched my arm high into trees looking for ripe apples. I have fallen off horses and carried baby piglets to their mamas. I have run around our big lake once despite throbbing varicose veins and criss crossed my way through the snowy backwaters of the Mississippi. She has often not liked physical labor for all the sensory distress she felt in it. But no matter her size, she has pulled herself through it because she is strong. I want to keep remembering this.

It begins as it started. In January I had no clue and it would be safe to say, this is still true.

It begins with the one common denominator, me doing things as only I can. I will not change who I am in this new medical chapter of my life. In fact, I may just lean a bit further in. I might say to this or that doctor. “Can we just pause here? I have a few more questions.”

It begins. 

Each day, as cliche' as it may be, really is a new beginning. I am infinitely more aware of time as I have less left than more simply because of my age, but this experience gives me a bit more oomph to not wait on things. My focus isn’t on big plans but just paying even more attention to what’s around me. More sunrises and sunsets and clouds. I hope I never stop noticing those. Last night, I noticed my son hasn’t been shaving. The pandemic masking has made him a bit errant there, and I noted the slight red tint to his scruff. I smiled. It’s just like his dad’s. My throat sort of hitched when he asked me if I would help him sort out his college acceptance stuff. He’s made his decision and it felt like a moment. He razzed me with, “Every moment is a moment, mom!” But he let me hug him and give him a high five. He fought a bit against the smile playing on his mouth and then gave up because maybe he too realized it was a thing worth noting. And that’s just it. It begins when we understand in our bones that our lives are really just what we chose to see. Sometimes it seems we are given opportunities and little nudges that say, “Hey are you really paying attention?”

Yes. 

I want my answer to always be yes.