The past three days have felt a bit like trying to surf a tsunami. I have felt myself carried on the force of something way bigger than myself, but I couldn't tell which direction I was even going.
I can't grok the sense of scale. I just know I have to stay on the board.
The last (and incidentally, first) time I posted I had just seen my surgeon for the first time. It was a generally reassuring visit, though clearly just the beginning of a string of procedures and meetings that were going to constitute the "figure out the first step" of my plan. What I knew coming out of that meeting is what I wrote previously: I had this cancer, and it didn't seem terribly worrisome on the scale of cancers, though it required treatment.
After meeting with the surgeon, I got sent over to radiology to do another ultrasound for my armpits, which had been felt on by others but had not yet been scanned. During this, a lymph node was spotted that looked a bit enlarged, and it was biopsied. Apparently it is quite common for a lymph to react to a previous biopsy (three weeks before). Additionally, in July I had a boil or furuncle (my furry uncle, as named by mildly disgusted friends who I told about it) that had been infected for a couple of weeks on this same breast, something that could easily have irritated a lymph. The radiologist did not seem impressed with this as being worrisome, considering how small my known area of cancer is.
So imagine my dismay on Friday afternoon, just as I was headed to meet my boss and some colleagues for a drink, when my surgeon called with the news that this lymph, too, was cancerous.
Reframe.
Okay. So it's no longer "a little cancer". This means that it's 1) been hanging out there awhile and/or 2) it's precocious for its size in getting its little partners in crime to go talk to other parts of the body or 3) the "little cancer" we found is not the whole story lurking in my very dense breast tissue. Note that I had a negative mammogram and had this little bugger been deeper within the breast, this whole thing might not have been revealed at all until I felt it or it was big enough to register on a mammogram.
Thankfully, I was able to come right home and tell Sawyer and we huddled and had a good cry. It all of a suddenly seemed very, very bleak, especially because of the delta from three weeks ago with the first, erroneous press release. (Long story short here: some of you who I talked to first heard I had DCIS, not the invasive ductal carcinoma which is my actual diagnosis. Because at this point I had only talked on the phone to a nurse about my diagnosis and wasn't scheduled to see my surgeon for three weeks, I was willing to let Sawyer interpret the lab for me. Let us humbly acknowledge the intense power of the mind for a moment, as my lab was read literally dozens of times by *a professional*, who happens to be my partner. Though clearly there on the two-page report, he did not see the part of my diagnosis that said "invasive" and "moderately differentiated". I mean, he swears it was like it wasn't there when he read it. Needless to say, it was intense to see him looking gob-smacked when, during our meeting with the surgeon, it came to light that we were talking a much different game than had it been just DCIS. Moral of story: let the MD who isn't your beloved clarify your diagnosis well before you start talking about it. End sidebar).
In the course of 30 hours I went from having something very manageable, almost a zero on the cancer stage to a invasive, spreading stage 2 cancer. A whole heap of new news to process.
Meanwhile, over the weekend, as previously planned, we went here:
It was a good idea.
I sat with my news and worked up a sweat and lay on the earth and let her just hold me.
Not sure if it would work for everyone, but there is something very specifically healing about looking at rock formations that are billions of years old, the paths of glaciers, and thinking about the magnitude of time that all seems to make even your own suddenly horribly, graphically tangible mortality feel just a bit more manageable as a concept. Bigger cycles eclipse smaller cycles. The rebelliousness of my cells is its own cycle within the larger cycles of my body. Something triggered a little bit of disorder, and now I have to counteract it. As I learned in systems thinking class, one cannot prevent a system; one can only disrupt it.
I managed to stay in this frame of mind for most of the trip, certainly aided by the fact that it requires some continual effort to carry a pack, navigate sometimes sketchy trails, jump streams, keep your dog from barking at horses/moose, etc. I am my mother's daughter in this: when it all goes to shit, get busy!
Never the less, the fact remains, I am now 2:2 for turning up the joker when educated, observant folk wager what I have is "probably nothing".
Cue. The. Freakout.
As Sawyer and I descended 2,000 feet in elevation from the cirque where we camped, I literally felt my spirits sinking with every step. In the car, I asked him to talk to me and keep me from spinning into a terrible anxiety loop. As we came out of the Uintas and back into the built environment I felt worse and worse. By the time I was at home showering of two days of dirt, it happened.
Most of you who have enough baseline Hilary experience would know melting down is a rare occurrence. Eclipse rare. I'm a frustration-cryer, and even that is pretty unusual. But it felt real and raw and desperate and I let it happen and I just went there, playing out the worst case scenarios.
That I would never see Alaska, play duets with Sawyer, have a huge garden, own a company, fetch little socks out of a small dresser.
and so on.
Sawyer, champion-saint-eagleScout-snuggler, was there for it and he did the exact right things and the waves crashed and crashed and petered out and we were on our way to a lovely dinner with a very generous friend in 20 minutes, laughing and telling stories and having delicious pork loin.
I am a resilient bugger.
I'm on the verge of tears.
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