Day Before Tests

I started this blog or journal as a way of getting everything out of my head. I don't want to burden my husband every night when he comes home, by telling him every little thing I read or learned during the day. And I haven't told my mother about my breast cancer. My dad passed away in December, and my mom is all alone in the house where he died. We had moved far away only 6 months before. She is hanging on by a thread and that is only because I do all her paperwork and bills. I just don't think she can handle hearing this right now.

In any case, I found a lump in my left breast in February 2007.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I didn't have any insurance.

By researching the net, I found a place in the hospital nearest to me, which offered a grant to women who could not afford the testing. So I used the grant to get a mammography, an ultrasound and a biopsy. At that point, you could almost hear the screeching of tires as the grant dried up.

The biopsy showed Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma. Cancer. I was told over the phone, and I was alone. I don't recommend either.

The strange thing is my very first thoughts were of my husband, cat and mother. We have no children, so I'm thinking, my husband will be alone in our beautiful new house, my cat is attached to me at the hip and would be lost, and my poor mom; losing her husband of 50 years and her daughter, all within a few months. Isn't it funny you don't automatically think of poor poor me?

I'm getting off track.

Tomorrow, which would have been my dad's 74th birthday, I am having CT Scans of abdomen, pelvis and chest, plus bone scans to determine if the cancer has spread. I am stage 2 right now, but after tomorrow I could find out I am still stage 2 or I could jump to stage 2b, c, d, stage 3a, b, c, d, or of course the dreaded stage 4. I must drink barium for the scans and it will be an exhausting day. Nothing in comparison to the walk to the gallows I will have on April 4, wherein I visit my oncologist to find out the results. Or when I start chemo and start losing my hair and spitting up everything I eat, lose my eyelashes, eyebrows and I am supposing every piece of hair on me.

But all that is worth it, well, I will get free wigs from the cancer center, so that's an incentive, but it's all worth it if I know I will live. I don't have the greatest life in the entire world; I'm not rich, famous, a star, gorgeous, and loved by millions. It wouldn't be breaking news on MSNBC. I am just a woman in NY, who has a husband she loves, a cat she adores, a mother she loves, a beautiful house to enjoy and a peaceful life. We don't have money, I don't even have insurance to pay for all this. But as my husband and I said, we'll spend the rest of lives paying the bills. GLADLY. In return for my life.

Since being diagnosed I am now experiencing panic attacks and need Lexapro and Xanax to get out of bed. The happiest time of my day is when I get into bed and I can escape to the unconscious space where I don't have cancer and I'm still experiencing my new house in the mountains of Adirondack in New York.

And it IS true what they say. Your true friends rise to the surface; others fade away as if cancer is contagious by phone or email. C'est la vie.

Recommendations -
Why I Wore Lipstick To My Mastectomy
Any support group where there are other women with BC
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I am the sky and nothing can stick to me. The sky is open and vast and stays unchanged no matter what; it is always the sky. A storm can roll through it, an airplane can roar through, and it is always the sky.