It is December 18th, 2020 and two days before my 73rd birthday. I am at the Ackerman Cancer Center and the small room feels cold as Dr. Skuderi and her two technicians lean over me on the examination table. I turn to watch the ultrasound screen where I see a long biopsy needle inserted into my breast and begin to pierce one of three lumps discovered in a routine mammogram. Click, as the needle inserts a prognostic marker and then another click and finally one under my arm in the lymph node. These markers will help the surgeon find the cancer: invasive ductal carcinoma.
Dr. Skuderi has taken time to explain what type of cancer this is and the various options for treatment. But I have already made up my mind: take it off. All of it! It is a ticking time bomb waiting to invade other parts of my body. I feel like the guy in Alien who has a creature in his chest waiting to explode out and slither over the floor to morph into a full-blown monster. The breast must go!
That ductal carcinoma invaded those same ducts that fifty years prior had provided the breast milk to nourish my two children. I had been a late bloomer in the breast department, but eventually at seventeen I moved from undershirts to a bra. After the babies, my breasts became formidable! I mean, I wasn’t ready for the DAR, but I had a shapely figure. When I moved to Greece at age forty, I unleashed “the girls” on the beaches there amongst the other free spirits and Germans. Soon I had no strap marks; my breasts were as brown as the rest of me. So, these breasts had a good run and have served me well. They could go into retirement without a glance back or regret.
Time moves very slowly. It seems longer than the two months it has been before I am finally being prepped for surgery; on the day after Valentine’s Day 2021. I have great confidence in my surgeon, Dr. Jasra. She is a Delhi-wallah; I tell her I lived in New Delhi for three years and we exchange some stories about India. She is soft-spoken and gentle, explaining the procedure and what to expect in the weeks that follow. I come through it with flying colors. Of the ten lymph nodes removed, only the initial one that had been biopsied was cancer. I am wearing a post-surgical bra that looks like something I imagine the nuns might wear. Thick white cotton, lots of fabric, wide straps, and attachments for drainage tubes. A far cry from my drawer full of Victoria Secret!
I don’t mourn the loss of my breast. I had no desire for reconstruction, and I eschewed radiation and chemotherapy. There was nothing there, so what would be radiated, I reasoned. Life expectancy in this type of cancer is five years. I didn’t want to spend any of that time feeling sick from chemotherapy and the research on that treatment showed a negligible benefit in my case.
All of this happened during the Pandemic. It felt comfortable to be isolated during my healing process. Even in isolation I felt connected to a world that was also in the process of healing. One year later, repeat tests show I am cancer free. I dodged a bullet!
As far as being a “Survivor”, I personally feel that we are all survivors of the crazy stuff life throws at us. The past years have been particularly hard for all, and the future seems uncertain. But let’s remain optimistic and choose not just to survive, but to thrive.