There are two ladies I every morning at 9 am when I go in to get my boob radiated. Sandy and Anne. These are not their real names by the way... they know I blog about them but who knows who is out there on Facebook land. The are both 53 and started about one week after I did in treatment. I give them boob updates and we chat, drink lots of water and flash each other to see how we are doing.
Sandy (not her real name) is very proud of her "girls." She is always super calm and then she told me that whenever she has a really bad morning she has a valium. Her doctor gave it to her when her incision split open during chemotherapy. That was in May. That was also when the doctor told her that she had "black woman's cancer." The doctor explained that many black women get a very aggressive form of cancer. And that's what she was dealt this hand.
Sandy took it in stride. She had cancer in 3 spots on her boob, she elected to have them take the offending tissue and tumor out and then reduce her other girl (she was a double D) at the same time. She also asked them to give her a lift.
Sandy likes to show her "girls" to us. I have to say, they are very good looking boobs. Her scar is angry and still not what it should be, but the girls are proud and high on her chest. One of them is getting very pink, which in Sandy's words is more a regal purple. She also likes to hug a lot, which makes me smile every morning.
Anne is self professed hippie. She wears socks with her sandals and we have long conversation about how to mix western medicine and alternative. She is married with two kids and her doctor told her not to worry about her lump three years ago. She also elected not to do chemo, barely said yes to radiation and probably won't take tamoxifen. She says she doesn't want everything to change now.
On Tuesdays, the OR brings their more advanced patients down the to nuclear basement. That's the day they bring the people with cancer that is too advanced for an operation. Kathleen, the woman I talked about before, is one of those people now. She had a double dose of chemo and radiation every day for 5 weeks. Now, they have to insert tubes into her cervix and shoot little pellets of radiation at the tumor to shrink it. It works. It's fucking painful and everyone I see on those gurney's looks scared and very drugged out. Surprisingly, the survival rate for this treatment is getting higher and higher. And for two days a week, for 3 weeks, that is Kathleen and probably thousands of other peoples normal.
And that's something that no one really explains to you when you get cancer. You will be chasing normal for a long time. Everything changes. For me, there were a lot of really positive changes in all departments of my life. I was actually really depressed before being diagnosed because I like to grip on hard to things when I don't want them to change. I also used to ignore the things in life I didn't want to see. In life, in other people and worse, in myself. It's not how I can live my life anymore. You can't ignore cancer and survive. You can't be victim and be a warrior. So I had to change.
My temporary normal is radiation. And here ere is the thing about radiation... no one can tell you how your skin will react. Last night, the boob was on fire. I'm lucky because I only have little blisters right now, and they are staying little so far. I have steroid creams for the itching, and naproxin for the pain and vitamin D ointment for at night. I won't go into any other detail but I will say this... my nipple is PISSED!
4 more days and then apparently, there is a week where it heats up and it gets much worse. Then, it starts to heal. I have no idea what that means and no one can really tell you. You just have to wait it out, armed with nipple pads, more creams and if you need it, something stronger than naproxin.
And I am a lucky girl. Every morning I see women and men being wheeled down from the OR to get treatment. The other day, there was a young girl about 19 in the waiting room wearing her open from pants. I , being me, left the lounge and then just broke down and cried. I can't complain anymore when I see something like that. I can't imagine being a teenager or a child having to go through this, or much worse that I see around me. And there she sat, being very brave on her first day, reading Elle with her Mom sitting next to her. Every morning I'm reminded how how amazing we humans are. I get a dose of humanity and that changes you. It counteracts anything my boob is going through.
So every morning, five days a week, when I want to curse the world for having sensitive boobs, I stop. Because my normal is pretty okay in the scheme of things here in the nuclear basement. And no matter what happens in the future, I have had an amazing dance for 51 years on this planet and have been loved and had the privilege to love some amazing people. I have nothing to complain about. And if that isn't lucky, then I don't know what is.
