Game Changer

Five years. It’s a milestone. At least it is in the cancer world. If your cancer doesn’t return after five years, the chances that it will return after that drop drastically. So after 5 years you are considered “cured!”

Well next month is a 5 year milestone for me. Not my “5 year cancer free” date, that comes on March 12, 2024, when what remained of my tumor was removed by surgical mastectomy. No, next month on August 30, 2018 (5 years ago), was when it all started. I went in for my routine annual mammogram and by the time I left Casa Colina radiology that day the radiologist felt strongly that it was cancer and I knew in my heart that it was also. By the time I got to my car in the parking lot I was asking God already, “why me?” That was the day my life really changed!

I was 46 years old. But then I immediately had to ask myself, “why not me?” My maternal grandmother had breast cancer, my maternal Aunt has metastatic breast cancer, one in eight women will get breast cancer, (my mom has even had it since that time), so what makes me so special that I would honestly think I could escape it? I knew I had it, in my spirit. Maybe my lack of denial was the Lord getting me prepared for the answers that were coming, the waiting, the wondering, the diagnosis. How bad would it be? What stage? Will I die from this? How will the kids take it? How much time do I have left on this earth? How much suffering will I have to go through? Who do I tell and when? What will treatment be like? Will I loose my breasts? What will my husband think? What will my body look like?

A thousand questions circulated through my head over those next 8 weeks while answers were coming and decisions were being made? It was almost as hard in the “not knowing” as the treatment itself. I don’t tend to be a worrier. I can’t even imagine what the entire experience would have been like if I didn’t have my faith in Jesus to see me through it. The comfort he brought me, the lessons I learned, and the healing I went through was crucial. The word HOPE became part of my everyday existence and the biggest lesson learned was that of TRUST. Truly hoping and trusting in the Lord in a way I have never completely given myself up to in the past. Even though I thought I had, He took me to all new levels. Trust without borders. Hope anchoring my journey. And then there was LOVE expressed in so many ways. From Him, from my husband, from my family and from so many friends and neighbors and even strangers.

What I can tell the ladies that read this is get your annual screenings. Whether it is mammogram, ultrasound or MRI. Don’t put it off! It literally saved my life that I had it done when I did. One year prior there was no evidence of cancer on my previous scan. 4 months before when I had my annual physical and breast exam by my primary Dr the tumor could not be felt. By the time I had the mammogram on the 30th of August (put off only because insurance would not cover it any earlier due to the date of the previous years scan), the tumor was 2.8cm and growing fast since it was HER2+. By the time I started aggressive chemo in October it had doubled in size and it could definitely be felt! Had it not been discovered when it was it could have easily spread to my lymph nodes and beyond.

So August 30, 2023 is 5 years since the mammogram and the day that changed my life drastically! That brings me to this year!

As I have written about before, when you begin cancer treatment and they start scanning various parts of your body to see if there is any evidence of cancer elsewhere in your body, they find things. So for the past 5 years I have been a regular patient at City of Hope. Not just for treatment, surgeries, procedures and follow up for breast cancer, but for other things that they found.

They haven’t discovered anything life threatening at this point. I will spare you all the details of the things they did find and the many scans, specialists, procedures, tests and follow up appointments I’ve had. If you are interested in those details, I have written about most of it in previous blog posts.

I have spent in total 134 days at City of Hope in the last 5 years for various appointments, surgeries and hospitalizations. This does not include the treatment and dozens of physical therapy appts for a frozen shoulder, resulting from my mastectomy, outside of COH.

One of the specialists I have seen consistently throughout the 5 years is a gynecologist, due to ovarian cysts they found 5 years ago on my various scans. They have been doing regular ultrasounds every 6 months to monitor the cysts because of the close link between breast cancer and other gynecological cancers. Also, because chemo forced my 46 year old body into early menopause and since chemo ended I have had irregular bleeding and periods which have now ceased but have left me with horrendous menopause symptoms and an enlarged and thickened endometrium. I have had 2 uterine biopsies in the past 2 years which have been negative for cancer, thank you Jesus! But due to my thick endometrium and an almost closed off cervical entry. (The NP could not get into my uterus on my last biopsy and I had to go back for a second attempt by the Gynecologist to get a sample). They do not know what is causing the thickening, so the options are continue scans and biopsies every year, do a D&C to scrape the endometrium, then continue scans and possible biopsies every year. Or option #3 a hysterectomy.

Well, due to all the irregularities, painful biopsies and ovarian cysts, not to mention my age, menopausal status and history of cancer in my family and myself, I opted for #3. So I will be having a radical hysterectomy (they take it all) on, you guessed it, August 30th! 5 years to the date that all of this started. What is left of my womanly reproductive parts will be removed. Good riddance!

My womanly parts served me well in the task of birthing and nursing 7 babies in my younger years. But I no longer need them or care to carry the risk of a future cancer diagnosis of those parts within my body. It’s the reason I opted for a double mastectomy with reconstruction (no actual breast tissue), and it is the primary reason I opt for them now to take not only my uterus, cervix and tubes but also my ovaries. I am 51, the age that it becomes safer to remove the ovaries. I am in menopause, so my ovaries no longer produce the hormones they did previously. So out they come. Goodbye to risks, ultrasounds, biopsies, Pap smears, all of it!

It is by divine appointment or maybe just coincidence that both surgeons, involved in my surgery, first available date is August 30th. But I choose to believe that it is a God wink, a little sign from the Lord that the choice I’m making is the right one, a completion date. A beginning and an end to reproductive cancer within my body.

So I approach this surgery with confidence and thankfulness. Thankful that I had healthy reproductive organs that gave me 7 beautiful children when they were needed for that purpose and thankful that the removal of said organs will diminish my chances of cervical, uterine, and the deadliest of the three, ovarian cancer, to nothing. I would say that’s a game changer!

There is hope beyond this. To God be all glory!