blogger profile

Sarahthequeen05

I am a spunky 25-year-old living in a suburb of Tampa. I was relocated here with my husband of 2 years from western North Carolina when the Air Force decided that we were needed in sunny Florida! I had almost all the best times of my life at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC, the oldest women's c...

READ MORE

Cancer

Scary Beyond All Reason

Halloween's not until next month, but I am going to tell you something that will scare the ever-living daylights out of you.  Or, at least, I hope it does.

Half of you who are reading this will get cancer in your lifetime.

I'm not exaggerating that statistic to scare you, it's true.  By 2050, half the women in the United States and one-third of the men will have had some type of cancer.

Last year, 7.6 million people died from cancer all over the world.  That is a very large number, so large that it's hard to imagine, so let me help you out a little.  7.6 million was the population of the state of Virginia as of December 2006.  Can you even comprehend an entire state's populace just disappearing in 1 year?  I barely can, and I’ve been thinking about it for a good 5 minute straight.

It seems like we talk a lot about cancer these days, so much so that, in some ways people have become hardened by it.  Cancer is a cliché, something so common that naïve passersby ignore it.

I’m sure a lot of you have planned not to watch the Stand Up to Cancer event tonight because you think it will just be an hour of celebrity soundbites and the requisite teary monologues from survivors and the family members of those who died, and you just don’t have time to hear more of this.  You’re thinking about how there are so many freaking fundraisers these days and we have no idea where the money goes, and if anyone else approaches you trying to get a donation for any sort of (insert ribbon color here) walk that you will scream.

I know this is probably what you thought because I’ve thought it too.  The first time that I heard of this event several weeks ago, I disregarded it as a media-darling, something the networks were doing to dry-clean their karma in time for the new fall season to start.  I figured that there wouldn’t be any real good to come of it, that it might be mildly entertaining, but quickly forgotten.

Then I had a swift mental kick in the ass a few weeks ago during chemo.  I realized, (as if it could ever really slip my mind), that many of the people who sat there with me, dutifully undergoing the toxic treatments that would kill us all if the human body wasn’t so brilliantly resiliant, wouldn’t be there a year, 2 years from now.  Might not even make it to Christmas.

And this realization helped me to understand that even if the Stand Up to Cancer event only touches one person, then it will have succeeded.  This also sounds clichéd as I type it, but I don’t expect you to understand. 

You haven’t had cancer.

No, wait, maybe you haven’t, but your mother/uncle/sister-in-law/neighbor/church friend/postal delivery person/grocery store cashier have.  And you probably felt a literal ton of different emotions when you first found out, when you first saw them, bald and shaking as they were in treatment.  You were sad and angry and frustrated and confused and you... just didn’t understand.

Watch the event tonight at 8 and try to imagine what it’s like to have cancer or to be in remission from it.  Your reaction won’t be spot-on as if you have actually had cancer, but it will give you a slightly different perspective.  A more raw perspective, that is tear-jerkingly fragile but fortified like cast iron.  Watch it and pretend that cancer has changed your perspective so much that it’s like watching the world move upside down, as if an earthquake swapped the North and South Poles.

Because cancer, if nothing else, shakes up your world to a humbling degree.

I know that you Skirt! girls have only known me since my diagnosis, but I haven’t always had cancer.  I know that you knew this already, but cancer is such a part of my identity now that it’s even hard for me to remember what it was like before.

Here’s how it all started:

Before cancer, the biggest illness I’d ever had was mono during fall of my senior year of college.  Ironically enough, the virus that causes mono, Epstein-Barr, is what caused my Hodgkin’s disease.  (Here’s another scary little factoid for you- 95% of you already have this virus, whether or not it’s ever caused you to have mono; you’re just a carrier.  Good news is that only a teeny percentage of those with the virus will ever develop lymphoma.)

I’d been to the doctor off and on since last September with intermittent fatigue, nausea, muscle weakness, dizzy spells, and low-grade fevers.  I was checked stem-to-stern over the course of the next 9 months.  They did blood tests for everything from thyroid disorder, pregnancy (oh, how I laughed at that), and auto-immune disorders like lupus, to arsenic, lead, and radiation poisoning- 36 tubes of blood in all.

But, where the timeline really picks up is at the end of January.  My hubby was doing some super-cool work in Washington DC for a month, and I went to visit him for a week and do the touristy thing.  I’d never been to DC before and I was so excited.  Towards the end of the week, after walking about 10 miles a day in very cold and windy weather, I developed an icky cough.

I came back to Florida and the cough continued, along with some pretty uncomfortable chest pain and a stuffy nose.  By the third week of February, I was diagnosed with mycoplasma pneumonia, (aka walking pneumonia).  Bad, but not so bad that I would have to be hospitalized.  Or so we thought.

After one week of antibiotics, I was back at the doctor’s office because my symptoms weren’t really better at all.  This time they did a chest x-ray, (still not sure why they didn’t do it the first time), which showed some “spots of density” in my lungs.  Now, my doctors conceded, they should probably have put me in the hospital on IV antibiotics for a few days and I would be all better by now.  So, they put me on another round of a different antibiotic for week and the pneumonia cleared up.

But, I started itching.  My boss and another coworker joked that it looked like chicken pox.  I laughed, but in my head I was thinking that, yes, it felt just like the chicken pox I had when I was in the second grade.  Back to the doctor.  Walked out with a prescription for an anti-viral and a chicken pox diagnosis, unable to return to work until they all scabbed over.  This was March. 

I should have  known then that something was up- how compromised did my immune system have to be for chicken pox to break through?

The rest of March and April were pretty boring, just increasing fatigue and weakness.  Also some recurrent chest pain, which I didn’t think anything of at first, since the doctors told me in February that I would have some scar tissue in my lungs from the pneumonia that may cause tightness when I breathed, and it would take up to 2 months to get better. 

Started getting itchy in May and went back to the doctor.  Still having chest pain, and I had a lymph node on the side of my neck that was like an egg it was so big.  Didn’t really think anything of this either, because my lymph nodes always swell when I get sick.  Still, this one had been swollen for a few weeks now,and the weird thing was that it wasn’t sore at all.  Usually they are kind of tender when you mash on them, (because I’m the sort of person who sits around and mashes on her swollen lymph nodes). 

At this point, due to the military healthcare process, I had seen a different doctor each time since the first bout of pneumonia.  The other two were both deployed, so I got a very nice Major.  I should also point out that none of them were actually doctors, they were all PAs.  Still, I trust PAs.

He seemed skeptical that this was the third time I had chicken pox and the second in 2 months.  Still, he gave me a prescription for another anti-viral (which worked).  Coincidentally, I’m pretty sure that the man at the Publix pharmacy just thought I had a raging case of genital herpes.  I thought it was funny that he was so concerned about my swollen lymph node and chest pain.  I didn’t even really mention the node- it was so large you could see a round bump on my neck.

He made me have another chest x-ray in the office that day.  I was leaving his office when he called me.  They had found some more “spots of density”, (what the hell does that mean, anyway?), on this x-ray, and compared to my February x-ray, these were larger.  He didn’t seem to think that it was pneumonia scar tissue.  He wanted me to go to base in an hour for a CT scan.  It is hard as anything to get a same-day appointment, so I figured if they worked me in immediately, something must be wrong. 

February chest x-ray on the left, May on the right.  If you look at the roundish spot just under my sternum, you’ll notice that it’s fatter in May.  That’s where all my lymph tissue in that area kind of grew together in a big, fat mass.

I did a U-turn right there and headed to base.  Had a CT scan with and without contrast.  I waited there for a while afterwards, because the radiologist on base was going to read it right away.  This was another flag that something was wrong.  Especially when the radiology tech came out and told me that they had the results, but that the Major over at the clinic near my apartment wanted to discuss them with me.

It was very surreal driving back to the clinic.  Because they suspected I had chicken pox, I wasn’t even allowed in the lobby.  Cancer patients come to the clinic to receive chemotherapy, and they told me that I could be fatal to them.  I had to wait outside on a bench.  For some reason, this brought me close to tears, though now it’s funny to me in an ironic way.  I have a dark sense of humor.

They brought me in through a back entrance, straight to an exam room.  The Major came in right away.  He looked concerned.  Immediately, I looked concerned, too.  He sat down on a chair across from me and took my hand in his hands, looked me in the eye, and said, “We’re concerned about the possibility of a lymphoma”.

My eyes must have been very big and shiny because he handed me the kleenex box.  He explained that they’d need to biopsy a lymph node.  I jokingly offered the large one on my neck, since it was so visible and readily accessible.  He didn’t smile back.  I gulped.

He made arrangements with a surgeon, whom I met with the next week.  He was very tall and gruff, but he was kind, so I decided to like him.  As Hubby and I were sitting in his waiting room, I took note of the others waiting there.  Two women were talking openly about their breast cancer.  Another woman was bald.  A man was reading “Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips”.  I turned to Hubby and whispered, “This is a holding room for cancer people.”  There was no humor this time because I was scared.

Right away the surgeon was concerned about my lymph node.  He explained that it would be outpatient surgery instead of a needle biopsy.  They were going to take the whole node.  I’d never even had stitches before, let alone surgery.  The date was set in another week and a half.  May 21st.

I got the CT report and read it, not really understanding any of the medical jargon it was written in.  There was one word that stuck out, one that I understood.  Massive.  They were describing what was going on in my chest as massive.  I decided that couldn’t be good at all. 

My mom flew down the Thursday before my surgery.  Hubby was out of town doing military stuff, and wouldn’t be returning until 2 days before my surgery day.  I’m so glad that my mom came down so I wouldn’t lose my mind with the waiting.  On Friday, I broke down crying at work.  My boss was nice about it (she’s the only one who knew), but it perturbed me when she said “Why are you crying?  You don’t know anything yet.  You have no reason to cry.”

Waiting and not knowing is the worst part.

Surgery went ok, but I got so sick from the anesthesia that I was throwing up the whole rest of that day and the next.  I was supposed to return to work 2 days post-surgery, because I had missed so many days already that I didn’t have any left.  I was still sick that morning and felt so guilty that I wasn’t at work.  It was Memorial Day weekend, and I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting an extra day to get the biopsy results.  I called the surgeon and pretty much insisted that we come in.

Hubby drove me.  First the surgeon took off my bandage, leaving 3 steri-strips.  He was pleased at how well it was already healing.  He wanted to finish talking in his office.

“What we have here, Mrs. Davis-Harwood, is a Hodgkin’s situation.” 

Then he immediately launched into how it’s so curable and how he would be installing a port for my chemo, even pulled a demo port out to show me what it would look like, told me that he had a friend who was an oncologist who was conveniently located next door and who agreed to see me as soon as we were done.

At least, this is what Hubby told me that he said.  I didn’t hear anything after that first sentence.

We saw the oncologist, whom I adored right away for his Hawaiian shirts and impeccable resume.  He explained all the nitty gritty details and told me that he’d be scheduling a PET scan to determine the stage. 

I didn’t really say anything on the way home.  It was our second wedding anniversary.

The next day we went to see a movie and went out to Olive Garden because it was near the cinema.  I don’t remember much except that everything looked different, like cancer was a whole new set of lenses through which to see the world.  It was very strange.

That’s my story.  There are millions more, like my mother-in-law who is currently in remission from ovarian cancer after being diagnosed the week of Valentine’s Day, when I was sick with pneumonia.  There was my great uncle, who died a few weeks ago from lung cancer and was diagnosed early this spring.  There was my grandfather, who had chronic lymphocytic leukemia that turned into acute lymphocytic leukemia and also developed myelodysplasia, who was too old to receive conventional treatments.

But, you’re not going to watch Stand Up to Cancer for any of us.  We’re beyond groundbreaking research.  You’re not.  You’re going to watch it for you and the people you know who haven’t been diagnosed yet.

So, pop your popcorn and invite people over and have a cancer party.  There’s no reason that you can’t be happy and joyful when discussing cancer.  I know that I scared you silly earlier, but that was to make you sit up and pay attention. 

I don’t live in fear every day.  That wouldn’t really be living, would it?  In many ways, I’m not any different than I was before, except then I didn’t know what was wrong with me and now I do.  We’re all going to die, and I’m not going to do it any faster than the rest of you.

Just to give you some perspective, here’s a pic from my sister’s wedding.  Still terribly sick, haven’t started chemo yet, and I’m happy.  Completely and wholly happy.