June to September

One of my readers expressed curiosity about whether I had any inkling I had breast cancer prior to diagnosis. Were there any symptoms?

No. I felt fine.

We were returning from Greg’s mom’s memorial service in Washington State in mid-June. We camped mostly, but stopped one night for a hot shower and a real hotel bed. After showering, I noticed a very slight irregularity in the curvature of my left breast; a small indentation that wasn’t there before.

I instantly recalled an illustration I’d seen in a medical dictionary of a visible sign of breast cancer. With that in mind, I did a self breast exam.

I had never been good about self breast exams. There wasn’t any history of breast cancer in my family, and besides, I thought an annual mammogram was enough. But I knew how to do a breast exam and what to feel for. There had been a silicone breast, complete with small tumor, in the exam room at one of my mamm0grams. I remembered that finding the tumor in the silicone breast had taken a bit of doing, but eventually my fingertips detected a very hard and distinct pea-sized lump.

And now I found an equally hard and distinct pea-sized lump in my own breast. In Lewiston, Idaho, no less. (It turned out that was the smaller of two masses, but I stopped looking when I found the first mass.) Oddly enough, the lump I detected wasn’t near the outward sign I’d seen in the mirror. I’m still not sure if the visible “dimple” had anything to do with the mass, but it was what spurred the exam at any rate.

I was sure I had breast cancer as soon as I felt the lump. It wasn’t a panicky feeling, just a quiet knowledge that life was very likely going to change, at least for many months. The next morning we called my gynecologist’s office seeking advice about how quickly we should return to Appleton for tests. They scheduled an appointment a week away, so we changed our plans to return home for the appointment rather than spending an extra week camping and hiking in Glacier National Park.

We arrived home on a Sunday. My mammography, ultrasound, and biopsy was Monday morning, June 25th. (I learned that day I had skipped my mammogram the previous summer – so my last had been two years ago.) My diagnosis, extensive invasive ductal carcinoma, came the following day.

I had a left mastectomy on July 31st and another surgery August 3rd to remove more skin and tissue for “clear margins.” Two sentinel lymph nodes showed cancer and several nodes were removed. Chemotherapy began August 22nd. I’m two rounds down, four to go. After that, it’s radiation for 6 weeks – and then I’m down to just the continuing IV antibodies until sometime next spring. The antibodies are given because of my tumor’s HER2 status, whatever that means (Greg can explain it; I’ve given up). After that, there’s recommended hormone treatment because my cancer cells were also hormone receptive – which is another condition I’ll leave to the experts to explain.

It’s been a long summer and autumn promises to be equally long. Before I knew I had cancer, life was passing much too swiftly. I did a lot of running, it seems. Now that the pace has slowed, I can scarcely remember where it was I’d been running to.