In 2002, I am diagnosed with invasive lobular breast cancer. The cancer has spread to my lymph nodes. After surgery and cancer treatment, tests reveal I am cancer free. In 2010, one month before my eighth year cancer survivor anniversary, I find a new lump.
For the first five years after my cancer diagnosis, I do not recall taking a deep breath. Five years without a cancer recurrence is an invisible milestone in the probabilities for long-term cancer survivorship. Until then, the fear of its return filled me with a persistent terror.
In 2007, I celebrated my five-year anniversary as a cancer survivor.
The cancer specialists and statisticians who gave me a 50 percent chance of surviving cancer five years had been half wrong. I was still here. The physician who silently gazed at me with pity when I naively stated cancer would not kill me had been wrong. I was still very much alive and as far as the tests revealed, still cancer free.
From the fifth to six year of cancer survivorship, I began to breath deeper. I felt a reprieve from the nearly constant torment of the five-year shadowy figure of cancer recurrence hovering in the peripheral vision of daily life. For the first five years, every ache or pain heralded a potential warning of cancer returned. By the end of the sixth year of cancer survivorship, aches and pains were aches and pains. Transcient in origin, not foreboding doom.
The seventh year of cancer survivorship was a true turning point. I rarely thought about cancer. I certainly did not worry about cancer. Yes, I had been diagnosed with cancer, but by 2009 the memory held as one historical fact in a decades old life containing many historical facts.
One month before the celebration of my eighth year anniversary as a cancer survivor, I found the lump. Two inches below my armpit, one inch left of my left breast area. I reasoned I might have pulled a muscle while gardening. However, to be on the safe side, I made an appointment to see our family physician.
“It appears to be a capsulated mass about the size of a golf ball deep in the muscle. Given your history, I think we need to send you to see a surgeon.” I had been hoping he would tell me it was innoculous, something that an ice pack, aspirin and time would heal. He did not have to say the word cancer because after all, it is my history.
In those first few moments, all the initial emotions and thoughts I had experienced eight years before when first diagnosed with breast cancer came flooding back as if I had never left that place and time. There was stunned shock; the I cannot quite catch my breath; then anger; and mostly concern for my family.
As a mother, I have spent my life as most mothers do — mothering and protecting my children. Once again, as I had done eight years before, I would be the one bringing fear and an all-consuming sense of terror into their lives. The guilt was overwhelming.
The surgeon diagnosed the lump as an enlarged lymph node and scheduled surgery within the week. I asked him if he thought it was cancer. His reply was much the same as the family physician’s had been: “Given your history …”
There were many thoughts that ran through my mind in the days before surgery and a potential diagnosis of cancer recurrence. Had I only managed to overshoot the statistics predicting my death by three years? Had the physician’s look of pity for what he believed to be my delusional proclamation that cancer would not be the death of me lo those eight years ago been more accurate than my certainty of living a long life? Had all the organic, nutritional, physical, mental, spiritual lifestyle choices in the last eight years been for not? I felt healthier now than I ever had and yet, were the researchers all wrong and the future is in fact determined soley on genetics? I do not know how to change my genetics.
The tumor was benign. Eight years ago, when I found the lump in my breast, the physician waved it off without much worry predicting it could be any number of things. The lump was an aggressive cancer. Eight years later, the physician and surgeon were not certain it could be a number of things “given my history”. This time the lump was not cancer.
The cancer scare did shape my thoughts and feelings regarding cancer different now from the first diagnosis of cancer. Am I still certain cancer will not be the death of me? Not as certain as I was eight years ago. I can become as educated as possible into the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical lifestyle choices that might add time to surviving cancer and hopefully living long-term as a cancer survivor but beyond that, there is little I can do. The rest, as they say, is in God’s hands.
Am I terrified of a cancer recurrence as I was before the second lump? No, because I know if cancer returns I will face the cancer head on and do whatever I can do to survive. Before the cancer scare I was terrified of the possibility of a cancer recurrence. Now that I have faced a cancer scare, it is not as frightening. The daily haunting of the shadowy presence of a cancer threat that lingered in my daily consciousness is gone.
Back to beginning of the story: Cancer survivors: a breast lump
