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did not show any tumors in my breast. I get a call to see Dr.
Chu the following day at 8:00AM.
I don’t remember anything else for the remainder of the
day. Except Marco asks to sleep with us and falls to sleep
immediately. I lay awake in bed all night because my
nightmares have set in and I’m scared to go to sleep.
Wednesday July 8
Marco never sleeps all night, nor does he sleep in.
Oddly, this morning Marco sleeps in; and I, my mom and
Darin need to go to my Dr.’s appt. We haul Marco over to
Mariluz’s house while her and Mike are still in bed. I know
he’s feeling the aftershock of everything and that’s why he
crashed hard last night and slept. As much as I’ve been trying
to protect him from the mess, I can’t.
I asked Darin to take a different route to the Dr.’s office. He
laughs and says, yes. Everyone who works at the Dr.’s office
seems to look at me sympathetically when we walk in. I
try not to look at people for too long because I am afraid of
breaking down. I am afraid of a lot of things and am trying
to not let my mind get out of control. The Dr. discusses
with us her concern with my ultrasound, even though it
seemed clear, this cancer is still almost always associated
with underlying tumors. In twelve years she has only seen
5 patients with this cancer. She has never seen it in a young
pregnant woman so our conversations are full of ethical
dilemmas and grey areas because of the lack of additional
tests we can conduct and only being able to go off of “what
ifs” and the little information that has been gathered on
Paget’s Disease. My Dr. is very intense, but comforting at the
same time. I am grateful for her and have a strong feeling that
I can trust what she says and that she’s going to kick ass and
take names...my type of lady. After hearing her explanation
of my situation and options of treatment plans, I decide (I
had actually decided on Monday of this week, but had not
really expressed it) to move forward with a mastectomy
first, a possible removal of my lymph nodes second and a
breast reconstruction third. Every step is carefully calculated
because I can only undergo anesthesia for so long until it
poses risk to the baby. Two procedures (mastectomy and
lymph node removal) were too risky, however so was one
surgery, because if the cancer has already spread to my
lymph nodes then I may be screwed if I wait for too long. But,
we won’t know anything until I can send my removed tissue
off to pathology.
I do feel a sense of relief when I actually say out loud that I
want to get a mastectomy and when it comes down to it, it’s
just a boob right? I mean they’re already in bad shape and
if I now have the opportunity to get a newer model I should
jump on it, because after all, it is an opportunity. Darin asks
a lot of questions. He is so smart, but things that are not black
and white he struggles with. I can see him trying to make
this situation less difficult by calculating risks and balancing
statistics, but it all boils down to the fact that I need to make
the decision that is going to bring me peace now and for the
rest of my life. When I speak to the Dr., my mom and Darin
just stare at me. I can’t tell if they think that I am not making
any sense at all because everything seems to be moving in
slow motion. When we begin to discuss my mastectomy the
Dr. says that if she was in my position, she’d make the same
decision, which makes me feel relieved with moving forward.
The medical assistant sends me to scheduling and Darin
keeps asking me if I am SURE I want to do this. When I say
he keeps asking me, I am not over exaggerating. He literary
keeps asking me over and over. I am not answering his
question in hopes that ignoring him will make him stop,
which is such a stupid intervention to use with him because
it NEVER works. It works well with children, but not 33 year
old husbands. He just assumes that I can’t hear him, even
though he’s practically sitting on my lap. With each time he
asks me THAT question, I begin to feel hot and sweaty and
irritated because I feel he is questioning me and downplaying
this whole situation. It was almost as if he was making me
feel dramatic and crazy for opting to remove something
that potentially was going to kill me, if I didn’t kill it first.
This decision has given me the first sense of calm and relief
in three days, actually seven days of terror (I had a feeling
it was cancer since my biopsy). I snap at him in the waiting
room and make everyone uncomfortable, then immediately
feel bad. My mom puts her head down and does what I do
when I feel uncomfortable…pretend like what I am seeing
is not happening. I used to get in trouble a lot in school for
screwing around and whenever I got called out by my teacher
I would put my head down and start working furiously and
pretend that she was yelling at the “other” Allison in class
that was clearly the problem student. I feel like I want to
scream because it’s my body, my breast, my peace of mind,
my psychological wellbeing, my life at risk…then I stop and
remember that this cancer actually belongs to all of us, not
just me.
Just in time for the after Tax Day document purge!
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