Ok so today is July 1st and I haven't posted anything since May. Sorry, we have been busy! June 1st's event in Madison "Light the Night Pink" was a HUGE success thanks to the generous merchants of Madison and especially my dear friend Andrea Panullo. We raised over $25,000 in a few short hours. Thank you to everyone who came out, it was truly an amazing afternoon!
Thanks to Luis at Quattros for allowing us to have another Ladies Night and thank you to Tom at Rituals for your generous contribution from the sale of gift cards during the month of May.
We are having our next big event this weekend in Guilford. Clam Jam 2008 should be a great time for the entire family. We will have great food (Lobster,steak, steamers, chowder, potato, corn, salad), great music by reggae band INITY, moonbounce, face painting etc.
Jill and I have some exciting meetings coming up at the end of the month with potential producers that have what we have been looking for...we will keep you posted!
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Life After the Storm UPDATE
I will keep telling the story of how my journey led me to this place today but I have to update everyone on our incredible progress. To date Jill and I have met some incredible people and have already raised close to $20,000!! We have not even had one of our main events yet! Our first one is June 1st and I hope all of you attend...more details on the events page of the website. We would like to thank everyone thus far that has helped out and give a big shout out to Quattros and Rituals of Guilford who have been beyond wonderful! We would also like to give a big thank you to Jill and Rachel Eder of the Purple Bear for their incredible generosity. We also owe a lot to the new friendship we have formed with the Mamula's(Mark Mamula and Ann Nyberg)...you two truly are a dynamic duo! Please check out the segment with Ann tonight at 10 and 11pm and her blog on wtnh.com.
For those of you who have personally taken the cancer journey...you know that the story doesn't end when treatment is over...it is for all of us that we tell this side of the story. Jill and I have been blown away by every one's courage, resilience and the amazing way you now approach Life After the Storm.
For those of you who have personally taken the cancer journey...you know that the story doesn't end when treatment is over...it is for all of us that we tell this side of the story. Jill and I have been blown away by every one's courage, resilience and the amazing way you now approach Life After the Storm.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The Journey Continues...
Matt and I put on a smile and went ahead with our Christmas plans as scheduled. We wanted Riley to have a wonderful Christmas and we were so excited to experience it with her. After we opened presents, I cooked Christmas dinner for Matt, Riley, my parents and sister. When Riley left the table after dessert, I lost it. I had been holding my feelings in all day and forcing a smile of denial all the while staring at the large brown paper bag my mother had brought in with the Christmas gifts. Inside the bag were multiple bottles of antibacterial solution, a few boxes of latex gloves (I needed these in order to change my daughter’s diapers) and anything she could think of that I may need in the months to come. People like to do busy things when they can’t fix an actual problem. Although this was appreciated it also overwhelmed me and brought reality to Christmas dinner.
During the holidays it dawned on me that I should get a second opinion. It took a while to reconcile the fact that the lab hadn’t messed up and switched slides with someone else. This was my life, it was happening to me and I had jump into the driver seat. I realized that I needed to pick my medical team, they shouldn’t pick me. So I started researching and calling people for help. My mother and sister also brought up a good point. They both asked “if you were having heart surgery wouldn’t you want a heart surgeon?” Good point…do they have surgeons for breasts? This was a whole new world to me but soon I would feel like I had an honorary degree in Breast Oncology.
My husband and I traveled up to Boston and had a consult at Dana Farber where they told me the same options as the doctors in Connecticut. Choice number one was to receive chemotherapy to shrink the tumor and then hopefully do a lumpectomy. Choice two was to have a mastectomy and then start chemotherapy. Although choice one sounded like a good option because I’d be able to save my breast, it wasn’t. First of all, where my tumor was located (on the top inside of my right breast) a lumpectomy would have left my breast cosmetically undesirable. But the most compelling reason that doing chemo and then surgery didn’t appeal to me was that there was no data to support that chemo during pregnancy would shrink the tumor enough to have a lumpectomy. Many people do not realize how many varieties of this disease there are and that no treatment plan fits all. Every diagnosis is different and being pregnant made my case even more unique. In the end I went with the decision that was in my gut from the minute I was diagnosed and that was take it off and get that F*****’ Cancer out of me!!!
By January 13th I had my incredible team of top notch physicians in place and was very confident in my decisions. I chose to go to Yale-New Haven Breast Center and Yale Cancer Center for my care. It was important for me to be able to talk to my doctors, know that they were hearing me and my concerns and feel comfortable in the decisions we made together. On January 13th 2006 I became cancer free and removed my right breast. My daughter and I made it through the surgery just fine. I was now a uni-boobed, pregnant woman.
After surgery, I had a few weeks before starting chemo. As I healed I remember my mother and I trying to stuff my bra with all sorts of things to make it appear anatomically correct. We failed miserably and it hurt my incision. We decided to road trip it back up to Dana Farber to visit their boutique of wigs and fake boobies. My sister was a nurse at Mass General at the time and we were able to visit with her as well. I remember being in the boutique looking at all of the hats, with a mixture of emotions. On one hand it may be fun to have an excuse to wear different hats and on the other hand I was going to be bald.
I first met with the woman who was fitting me for my fake boob. It amazed me and my mother how heavy these suckers are. So of course because my left one was filling up with milk I had to get the EXTRA large size and come back after the baby was born to be resized. It did feel good to have the prosthesis, not quite natural but as close as I was going to get. It also helped my equilibrium. The first week after my mastectomy, I remember getting out of bed and my whole body would pull to the left! I am serious that is how heavy boobs are and if you aren’t balanced you could be hitting walls!
My next stop was the wig lady. I had started to cut my shoulder length blonde hair to prepare me for baldness and had a cute little haircut but when I looked at all of the choices, I kept gravitating to the long ones with blonde highlights. I wanted to still look like me, or look close to it. I finally settled on a shoulder length one with blonde highlights, but I wasn’t 100% sold on the look. My mom was a great companion and pretty honest but in the end just agreed with what I chose, no matter how ridiculous it looked. This was tough on her. I was her daughter and I had cancer. She was angry and wished, as all good mothers would, that it had been her, not me that had found a lump. I understood these feelings and was just grateful to have her by my side to comfort me. My mother put her life on hold and pretty much moved in with us through this difficult time. My husband and I weren’t used to having another person in the house with us but we all adjusted because it was necessary. My husband and my mother took over most of the caretaking of my little angel Riley who was approaching 2 years old. For this, I owe them the world.
In early February I started chemotherapy. Adriamyacin and Cytoxan were the two drugs that in combination formed a large enough molecule that it couldn’t penetrate the placenta. Since then I have recited this fact many times over and it still boggles me. Okay, when you are pregnant the doctor gives you a list of Don’ts from coffee to salami but I never expected chemo and all of the other pre chemo drugs to be on the DO list. No, no don’t eat that salami sandwich because it has nitrates, but here is an IV of toxic poison to pump through your veins. Medicine truly is amazing!
My first day of chemo went smoothly. Matt came along to hold my hand and I had my tote bag full of activities. I had my magazines, books, a dvd player and my latest Netflix selections, plus my newly loaded iPod. I was ready. Let’s start this.
I had a port placed in my upper left chest when I had my mastectomy and accessing that is one of the worst parts about receiving the chemo. It is at least the most anxiety producing part. The nurse takes a needle and pokes it through your skin with some force into the round disk that is sticking out of your chest. Thank God I had the best nurse on the planet, Karen. Karen used to work in pediatrics so she would come to work wearing Spongebob and other cartoon scrubs and she would also bring her laughter and wonderful sense of humor. I actually looked forward to going to chemo to see Karen.
So now I was off and running, the first thing was pre meds to get you ready for the chemo. Then Karen approached with this big syringe of red Kool-aid looking liquid and pushed that into my IV. This was the adriamyacin. Being pregnant I naturally had to pee a lot and the first time I got it, Karen neglected to tell me that adraimyacin will turn your pee red. This was a bit alarming, to say the least. I also bought into all the little tips everyone gave me and chewed on ice chips while this was entering my system to prevent mouth sores.
That first day I barely looked at any of the activities in my tote bag because I was busy talking to all of the other patients to find out how their chemo affected them. I needed to know everything! Plus I made some friends.
When I went home, seven hours later I was tired and that fatigue got worse. I stayed in bed all the next day but then started to feel better again. An added bonus was that because I was pregnant the white-blood cell boosting shot they normally gave wasn’t approved so for eight days after chemo I had to inject myself with Neupogen. This wasn’t too bad until I got to the sixth day and started to run out of injection spots. I couldn’t reach my own arm, and couldn’t inject my belly so I would do four in one leg and four in the other. This got tiresome but it protected me and kept my immune system strong.
As my second chemo was approaching and this was a tough one because I knew after this one my hair would start to fall out. To prepare, I went on line and bought about 20 different hats. I also wasn’t confident with my choice of wig. The day before, I lost it…I broke down. It wasn’t completely out of vanity but more because now everyone would know I was sick. I had cancer. It was also that now even with clothes on there will be a reminder when I looked in the mirror or caught my reflection in a store window that I had cancer.
My husband was patient and understanding and took me to another wig store and together we picked out a sassy little red bob. It was cute and manageable. It also made the idea of losing my hair okay again because I was prepared.
The second chemo came and went and within days of this appointment my hair started to fall out. I finally had my hairdresser come by and cut my hair as short as she could. It actually physically hurts and it falls out and it hurts emotionally as it comes out in clumps in the shower. As silly as this sounds whenever I showered when I was bald, I always shampooed. It felt strange to take a shower and not shampoo…it was like I was skipping a step. I finally came to the realization that I was not a wig girl or a scarf girl. I was a baseball cap girl. More specifically I was a pink Red Sox baseball cap wearin’ kind of chic and I became comfortable with my perfectly round bald head.
Chemotherapy numbers 3 and 4 came and went pretty uneventfully. I had become increasingly more fatigued and my red blood cell count dipped a bit but I was also seven months pregnant. The little baby girl inside me was a busy one. She was full of kicks and punches but I didn’t mind because it meant she was hanging in there with me. She was my constant companion throughout this leg of the journey and a reminder of why it was important to fight this battle with everything I had.
During the holidays it dawned on me that I should get a second opinion. It took a while to reconcile the fact that the lab hadn’t messed up and switched slides with someone else. This was my life, it was happening to me and I had jump into the driver seat. I realized that I needed to pick my medical team, they shouldn’t pick me. So I started researching and calling people for help. My mother and sister also brought up a good point. They both asked “if you were having heart surgery wouldn’t you want a heart surgeon?” Good point…do they have surgeons for breasts? This was a whole new world to me but soon I would feel like I had an honorary degree in Breast Oncology.
My husband and I traveled up to Boston and had a consult at Dana Farber where they told me the same options as the doctors in Connecticut. Choice number one was to receive chemotherapy to shrink the tumor and then hopefully do a lumpectomy. Choice two was to have a mastectomy and then start chemotherapy. Although choice one sounded like a good option because I’d be able to save my breast, it wasn’t. First of all, where my tumor was located (on the top inside of my right breast) a lumpectomy would have left my breast cosmetically undesirable. But the most compelling reason that doing chemo and then surgery didn’t appeal to me was that there was no data to support that chemo during pregnancy would shrink the tumor enough to have a lumpectomy. Many people do not realize how many varieties of this disease there are and that no treatment plan fits all. Every diagnosis is different and being pregnant made my case even more unique. In the end I went with the decision that was in my gut from the minute I was diagnosed and that was take it off and get that F*****’ Cancer out of me!!!
By January 13th I had my incredible team of top notch physicians in place and was very confident in my decisions. I chose to go to Yale-New Haven Breast Center and Yale Cancer Center for my care. It was important for me to be able to talk to my doctors, know that they were hearing me and my concerns and feel comfortable in the decisions we made together. On January 13th 2006 I became cancer free and removed my right breast. My daughter and I made it through the surgery just fine. I was now a uni-boobed, pregnant woman.
After surgery, I had a few weeks before starting chemo. As I healed I remember my mother and I trying to stuff my bra with all sorts of things to make it appear anatomically correct. We failed miserably and it hurt my incision. We decided to road trip it back up to Dana Farber to visit their boutique of wigs and fake boobies. My sister was a nurse at Mass General at the time and we were able to visit with her as well. I remember being in the boutique looking at all of the hats, with a mixture of emotions. On one hand it may be fun to have an excuse to wear different hats and on the other hand I was going to be bald.
I first met with the woman who was fitting me for my fake boob. It amazed me and my mother how heavy these suckers are. So of course because my left one was filling up with milk I had to get the EXTRA large size and come back after the baby was born to be resized. It did feel good to have the prosthesis, not quite natural but as close as I was going to get. It also helped my equilibrium. The first week after my mastectomy, I remember getting out of bed and my whole body would pull to the left! I am serious that is how heavy boobs are and if you aren’t balanced you could be hitting walls!
My next stop was the wig lady. I had started to cut my shoulder length blonde hair to prepare me for baldness and had a cute little haircut but when I looked at all of the choices, I kept gravitating to the long ones with blonde highlights. I wanted to still look like me, or look close to it. I finally settled on a shoulder length one with blonde highlights, but I wasn’t 100% sold on the look. My mom was a great companion and pretty honest but in the end just agreed with what I chose, no matter how ridiculous it looked. This was tough on her. I was her daughter and I had cancer. She was angry and wished, as all good mothers would, that it had been her, not me that had found a lump. I understood these feelings and was just grateful to have her by my side to comfort me. My mother put her life on hold and pretty much moved in with us through this difficult time. My husband and I weren’t used to having another person in the house with us but we all adjusted because it was necessary. My husband and my mother took over most of the caretaking of my little angel Riley who was approaching 2 years old. For this, I owe them the world.
In early February I started chemotherapy. Adriamyacin and Cytoxan were the two drugs that in combination formed a large enough molecule that it couldn’t penetrate the placenta. Since then I have recited this fact many times over and it still boggles me. Okay, when you are pregnant the doctor gives you a list of Don’ts from coffee to salami but I never expected chemo and all of the other pre chemo drugs to be on the DO list. No, no don’t eat that salami sandwich because it has nitrates, but here is an IV of toxic poison to pump through your veins. Medicine truly is amazing!
My first day of chemo went smoothly. Matt came along to hold my hand and I had my tote bag full of activities. I had my magazines, books, a dvd player and my latest Netflix selections, plus my newly loaded iPod. I was ready. Let’s start this.
I had a port placed in my upper left chest when I had my mastectomy and accessing that is one of the worst parts about receiving the chemo. It is at least the most anxiety producing part. The nurse takes a needle and pokes it through your skin with some force into the round disk that is sticking out of your chest. Thank God I had the best nurse on the planet, Karen. Karen used to work in pediatrics so she would come to work wearing Spongebob and other cartoon scrubs and she would also bring her laughter and wonderful sense of humor. I actually looked forward to going to chemo to see Karen.
So now I was off and running, the first thing was pre meds to get you ready for the chemo. Then Karen approached with this big syringe of red Kool-aid looking liquid and pushed that into my IV. This was the adriamyacin. Being pregnant I naturally had to pee a lot and the first time I got it, Karen neglected to tell me that adraimyacin will turn your pee red. This was a bit alarming, to say the least. I also bought into all the little tips everyone gave me and chewed on ice chips while this was entering my system to prevent mouth sores.
That first day I barely looked at any of the activities in my tote bag because I was busy talking to all of the other patients to find out how their chemo affected them. I needed to know everything! Plus I made some friends.
When I went home, seven hours later I was tired and that fatigue got worse. I stayed in bed all the next day but then started to feel better again. An added bonus was that because I was pregnant the white-blood cell boosting shot they normally gave wasn’t approved so for eight days after chemo I had to inject myself with Neupogen. This wasn’t too bad until I got to the sixth day and started to run out of injection spots. I couldn’t reach my own arm, and couldn’t inject my belly so I would do four in one leg and four in the other. This got tiresome but it protected me and kept my immune system strong.
As my second chemo was approaching and this was a tough one because I knew after this one my hair would start to fall out. To prepare, I went on line and bought about 20 different hats. I also wasn’t confident with my choice of wig. The day before, I lost it…I broke down. It wasn’t completely out of vanity but more because now everyone would know I was sick. I had cancer. It was also that now even with clothes on there will be a reminder when I looked in the mirror or caught my reflection in a store window that I had cancer.
My husband was patient and understanding and took me to another wig store and together we picked out a sassy little red bob. It was cute and manageable. It also made the idea of losing my hair okay again because I was prepared.
The second chemo came and went and within days of this appointment my hair started to fall out. I finally had my hairdresser come by and cut my hair as short as she could. It actually physically hurts and it falls out and it hurts emotionally as it comes out in clumps in the shower. As silly as this sounds whenever I showered when I was bald, I always shampooed. It felt strange to take a shower and not shampoo…it was like I was skipping a step. I finally came to the realization that I was not a wig girl or a scarf girl. I was a baseball cap girl. More specifically I was a pink Red Sox baseball cap wearin’ kind of chic and I became comfortable with my perfectly round bald head.
Chemotherapy numbers 3 and 4 came and went pretty uneventfully. I had become increasingly more fatigued and my red blood cell count dipped a bit but I was also seven months pregnant. The little baby girl inside me was a busy one. She was full of kicks and punches but I didn’t mind because it meant she was hanging in there with me. She was my constant companion throughout this leg of the journey and a reminder of why it was important to fight this battle with everything I had.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
How the journey began (Part 1)
All of my life I have struggled to find a purpose. I tried everything from counseling to wedding planning. Who knew it would take a cancer diagnosis to give me a passion.
For me my diagnosis was an unexpected mixed blessing. No one ever wants to be diagnosed with the “big C” and believe me when it all first started in December 2005 I did not look at it as a blessing at all…it felt like a punishment, an isolating punishment. But while I was being treated I met some of the most wonderful people I had ever met and they have changed my life. I soon realized I was not alone, but part of the most amazing sisterhood.
Let me back up some and tell you how I became a member of the club
Unfortunately some of what follows will be sad but that is life, right?
.…
I met the man of my dreams in March of 2000, when I was 27. Matt and I married in October 2002 and were busy planning our future. Matt was in technology sales and I was selling bridal gowns at the time. We had two boxers, Clancy and Sully and were soon expecting our first child. We built our home on the Connecticut shoreline while I was pregnant with our daughter Riley and in April of 2004 she joined us in our new home. Life was good. We were happy, excited and still had that newlywed glow.
In November Matt’s mom was not feeling well and we were helping her get a battery of tests done. She had stomach pain and elevated sugar levels. The doctors diagnosed her as diabetic while running further tests. The final diagnosis was determined to be AML…Leukemia. This was a huge upset for us as a family. Matt’s mom Mary was a wonderful woman whoas a mother of eight had always put others needs before her own. She had nursed her 34 year old daughter who passed away from Multiple Myeloma and Matt’s father who had passed on from lung cancer. She was truly one of the kidest, most gentle souls I had ever met. The pain of losing her was unbearable. Mary lasted four months after her diagnosis. She left us peacefully with all of her children around her. This was February 2005.
While my husband Matt and I were grieving his mother’s death we decided to start trying to conceive our second child. In March I bought and used a pregnancy test and the result was positive. We were thrilled and looking forward to delivering some good news to the family. Sadly I started to bleed at 8 weeks and when I went to the obstetrician I was told I’d had a chemical pregnancy. This is where there is a surge of hormones and a fertilized egg bit it does not implant. This was sad new for us but it did not discourage us from trying again.
In May I again got a positive result on a pregnancy test. Unfortunately this too was another chemical pregnancy. We hadn’t had these problems with our first pregnancy so as you can imagine this was causing quite a roller coaster of emotion. It was for this reason we decided to put it off for a few more months.
After a summer of ice cream cones and carousel rides with Riley I bought an ovulation kit to begin trying again. I never had the opportunity to use it because unbeknownst to me I was already pregnant! This time it was a real viable pregnancy and we were over the moon excited!
From the start this pregnancy was different from my first. I was experiencing terrible migraines and was vomiting as a result. I had no cravings and actually had very little appetite. I would cook a full dinner for Matt and then I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly. I also had a terrible case of laryngitis and seemed to catch anything that was going around. All of this wasn’t of great concern to me because I was busy planning for my second child and had a precocious 18 month old to keep me occupied. I was also the organizer extraordinaire of playgroups, babysitting co-ops and Girl’s Nights Out.
Thanksgiving passed and the Christmas rush had begun. Matt and I were filled with excitement in anticipation for our daughter’s 2nd Christmas. One night after putting Riley down to sleep for the night, I was in the shower, washing up as usual when I ran my soapy hand over my breast, and that is when I felt it. There was a lump.
Huh, where did that come from? I wasn’t overly concerned because of the changes the breasts experience through during pregnancy. I decided I’d mention it at my next baby appointment. Outwardly I wasn’t very concerned but once you find a lump it is like your hand has a magnet attached to it and you HAVE to touch it.
At my next baby appointment I was lucky enough to have the senior doctor in the office as my guy that day. We talked baby and I was given a positive report and at the end of the appointment I said “oh and by the way, I found this lump in my breast”. After he felt the lump things started to take on a more serious tone. He quickly scheduled an ultrasound and a core needle biopsy. I still wasn’t worried because many of the women I had talked to before going to the doctor had had lumps that were benign.
During the ultrasound, the technician was very friendly and she looked at the image and said “ it doesn’t look like cancer. Cancer looks more like a hamburger patty”. The doctor came in and agreed that it didn’t appear cancerous and I heard the word Fibroadenoma. I walked out breathing a sigh of relief.
Next step was a core needle biopsy to be safe. When I met the general surgeon who performed this procedure we instantly clicked. We joked and swapped stories. When she performed the biopsy she commented on my dense breast tissue and said that the lump in question was behaving like a “Fibroadenoma”, meaning when the needle went in the lump would push away. So again I left feeling relieved and with a clear mind. That was December 19th.
My “D” (diagnosis) Day was December 22, 2005. I had just put Riley down in her crib for her after lunch siesta when I received a call from my surgeon’s office. The voice on the other end stated that the results of my biopsy were in and the surgeon would like to see me that afternoon. The surgeon would like me to see her at her city location not the quaint office in the town next to me where I’d had my biopsy. I immediately felt the urgency of this meeting but was still in denial until that voice on the other end of the line said “Oh and can you bring your husband?”. This is when I knew I was in trouble, I was sick, I had cancer. It was all I could do not to barge in my daughter Riley’s room, wake her up and hold her close to me. I was scared and as I looked down at my bulging belly, full of questions.
My husband Matt came right home. We dropped Riley off with a friend and drove to the surgeon’s office. Fear and uncertainty hung in the air but so did a thick blanket of denial. We still hadn’t heard the words yet so it still wasn’t real.
We sat in the exam room and when the surgeon that had been friendly and full of jokes during my biopsy walked in,her demeanor was the complete opposite. She sat down on a round stool in front of me and said that she was surprised when the results came back as malignant and that I had cancer. In her second sentence she said she was recommending an immediate mastectomy. All of a sudden I was in a bubble. It was like I was in a movie, I could see the doctor and my husband’s lips moving but all I could hear was distorted voices. Maybe that was because I was mumbling my mantra of “holy shit” and “oh my god” over and over again as I rocked back and forth on the exam table. It was all too much to take. First you said I had cancer…understood. But you want to take my breast off too?? The hits just keep on coming!
As my initial shock fog lifted, I was able to start concentrating on the baby and what this would mean for her. The surgeon stated that since I was past my first trimester, surgery and chemotherapy, if needed, should be safe. Chemotherapy? Ok, I needed a breather. Matt and I left with an appointment with a medical oncologist ( cancer doctor) for the following day. I immediately called my mother who got in her car and drove down for the night to help with Riley and to comfort me.
The next day, December 23rd we met with an oncologist who laid out options and suggested treatment plans, all of which had chemotherapy included. Which meant to me that I had cancer, they were going to chop off my breast and I was going to lose my long blond hair, all while still pregnant. Wow, bald and pregnant, now there is a look you don’t see everyday.
For me my diagnosis was an unexpected mixed blessing. No one ever wants to be diagnosed with the “big C” and believe me when it all first started in December 2005 I did not look at it as a blessing at all…it felt like a punishment, an isolating punishment. But while I was being treated I met some of the most wonderful people I had ever met and they have changed my life. I soon realized I was not alone, but part of the most amazing sisterhood.
Let me back up some and tell you how I became a member of the club
Unfortunately some of what follows will be sad but that is life, right?
.…
I met the man of my dreams in March of 2000, when I was 27. Matt and I married in October 2002 and were busy planning our future. Matt was in technology sales and I was selling bridal gowns at the time. We had two boxers, Clancy and Sully and were soon expecting our first child. We built our home on the Connecticut shoreline while I was pregnant with our daughter Riley and in April of 2004 she joined us in our new home. Life was good. We were happy, excited and still had that newlywed glow.
In November Matt’s mom was not feeling well and we were helping her get a battery of tests done. She had stomach pain and elevated sugar levels. The doctors diagnosed her as diabetic while running further tests. The final diagnosis was determined to be AML…Leukemia. This was a huge upset for us as a family. Matt’s mom Mary was a wonderful woman whoas a mother of eight had always put others needs before her own. She had nursed her 34 year old daughter who passed away from Multiple Myeloma and Matt’s father who had passed on from lung cancer. She was truly one of the kidest, most gentle souls I had ever met. The pain of losing her was unbearable. Mary lasted four months after her diagnosis. She left us peacefully with all of her children around her. This was February 2005.
While my husband Matt and I were grieving his mother’s death we decided to start trying to conceive our second child. In March I bought and used a pregnancy test and the result was positive. We were thrilled and looking forward to delivering some good news to the family. Sadly I started to bleed at 8 weeks and when I went to the obstetrician I was told I’d had a chemical pregnancy. This is where there is a surge of hormones and a fertilized egg bit it does not implant. This was sad new for us but it did not discourage us from trying again.
In May I again got a positive result on a pregnancy test. Unfortunately this too was another chemical pregnancy. We hadn’t had these problems with our first pregnancy so as you can imagine this was causing quite a roller coaster of emotion. It was for this reason we decided to put it off for a few more months.
After a summer of ice cream cones and carousel rides with Riley I bought an ovulation kit to begin trying again. I never had the opportunity to use it because unbeknownst to me I was already pregnant! This time it was a real viable pregnancy and we were over the moon excited!
From the start this pregnancy was different from my first. I was experiencing terrible migraines and was vomiting as a result. I had no cravings and actually had very little appetite. I would cook a full dinner for Matt and then I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly. I also had a terrible case of laryngitis and seemed to catch anything that was going around. All of this wasn’t of great concern to me because I was busy planning for my second child and had a precocious 18 month old to keep me occupied. I was also the organizer extraordinaire of playgroups, babysitting co-ops and Girl’s Nights Out.
Thanksgiving passed and the Christmas rush had begun. Matt and I were filled with excitement in anticipation for our daughter’s 2nd Christmas. One night after putting Riley down to sleep for the night, I was in the shower, washing up as usual when I ran my soapy hand over my breast, and that is when I felt it. There was a lump.
Huh, where did that come from? I wasn’t overly concerned because of the changes the breasts experience through during pregnancy. I decided I’d mention it at my next baby appointment. Outwardly I wasn’t very concerned but once you find a lump it is like your hand has a magnet attached to it and you HAVE to touch it.
At my next baby appointment I was lucky enough to have the senior doctor in the office as my guy that day. We talked baby and I was given a positive report and at the end of the appointment I said “oh and by the way, I found this lump in my breast”. After he felt the lump things started to take on a more serious tone. He quickly scheduled an ultrasound and a core needle biopsy. I still wasn’t worried because many of the women I had talked to before going to the doctor had had lumps that were benign.
During the ultrasound, the technician was very friendly and she looked at the image and said “ it doesn’t look like cancer. Cancer looks more like a hamburger patty”. The doctor came in and agreed that it didn’t appear cancerous and I heard the word Fibroadenoma. I walked out breathing a sigh of relief.
Next step was a core needle biopsy to be safe. When I met the general surgeon who performed this procedure we instantly clicked. We joked and swapped stories. When she performed the biopsy she commented on my dense breast tissue and said that the lump in question was behaving like a “Fibroadenoma”, meaning when the needle went in the lump would push away. So again I left feeling relieved and with a clear mind. That was December 19th.
My “D” (diagnosis) Day was December 22, 2005. I had just put Riley down in her crib for her after lunch siesta when I received a call from my surgeon’s office. The voice on the other end stated that the results of my biopsy were in and the surgeon would like to see me that afternoon. The surgeon would like me to see her at her city location not the quaint office in the town next to me where I’d had my biopsy. I immediately felt the urgency of this meeting but was still in denial until that voice on the other end of the line said “Oh and can you bring your husband?”. This is when I knew I was in trouble, I was sick, I had cancer. It was all I could do not to barge in my daughter Riley’s room, wake her up and hold her close to me. I was scared and as I looked down at my bulging belly, full of questions.
My husband Matt came right home. We dropped Riley off with a friend and drove to the surgeon’s office. Fear and uncertainty hung in the air but so did a thick blanket of denial. We still hadn’t heard the words yet so it still wasn’t real.
We sat in the exam room and when the surgeon that had been friendly and full of jokes during my biopsy walked in,her demeanor was the complete opposite. She sat down on a round stool in front of me and said that she was surprised when the results came back as malignant and that I had cancer. In her second sentence she said she was recommending an immediate mastectomy. All of a sudden I was in a bubble. It was like I was in a movie, I could see the doctor and my husband’s lips moving but all I could hear was distorted voices. Maybe that was because I was mumbling my mantra of “holy shit” and “oh my god” over and over again as I rocked back and forth on the exam table. It was all too much to take. First you said I had cancer…understood. But you want to take my breast off too?? The hits just keep on coming!
As my initial shock fog lifted, I was able to start concentrating on the baby and what this would mean for her. The surgeon stated that since I was past my first trimester, surgery and chemotherapy, if needed, should be safe. Chemotherapy? Ok, I needed a breather. Matt and I left with an appointment with a medical oncologist ( cancer doctor) for the following day. I immediately called my mother who got in her car and drove down for the night to help with Riley and to comfort me.
The next day, December 23rd we met with an oncologist who laid out options and suggested treatment plans, all of which had chemotherapy included. Which meant to me that I had cancer, they were going to chop off my breast and I was going to lose my long blond hair, all while still pregnant. Wow, bald and pregnant, now there is a look you don’t see everyday.
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