Christmas 2014

      It's December 28, 2014, and the beginning of 2015 is just around the corner. Is it just because I'm old, or is time REALLY flying by more quickly?
      This past year took me to at least 9 funerals - old, old friends of long standing, two cousins, (one entirely too young), and more sadness than I can ever remember. My feisty late mother-in-law's voice rings in my ears: "Damned little good I can see about growing old!" A winter in Florida was not to be for last year, nor will it be for this coming year. It's as if Key West has been re-discovered, and rentals have gone through the roof - obscenely!
       And it's probably just as well this time. Just six days before Christmas I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Well, Merry Christmas to me! I'd had this "bump" for most of the summer that came on one afternoon as if I'd been bitten by something. I ripped my clothes off and looked - no bug or tick that I could find, but there was this red bump that itched like fire. I'd just had mammography the month before, which came back clear - and I took myself off to my local doctor to have him examine this "bite," or whatever it was, that just lingered and lingered. He sent me off to the ultra-sound dept. of the local hospital, and the report that came back was essentially that it was nothing to worry about. It resembled cellulitis, more than anything else. (I wondered at the time how one develops cellulitis in breast tissue - but I'm not a doctor, so I sort of dismissed it.) Back to the doctor in the early fall for a general check-up, and I told him my "bump" was still there. He gave it another look and said I was to go back for another ultra-sound - and results might as well have been a carbon copy of the last ones. Then my doctor said he wanted me to see a breast surgeon, just for good measure.  And I did, the week before Christmas. She'd already seen my films and read the radiologists' reports - but when she looked at the bump, she pronounced it "odd," and not what she expected - and just to be on the safe side, she said she was going to do a "punch-out" biopsy - and I'd have results in 48 hours. Except that I didn't. Forty-eight hours came and went, and no report. I called her office, and one of her assistants checked and said the results were "pending," but she'd call me before lunchtime the next day. Lunchtime came and went - nothing - and I called the office, only to get that damnable recording: "Our offices are now closed. We will be back in the office at 9 a.m. Monday morning." There were also some additional directions to call the hospital and have the doctor paged, if this were an emergency. So I called the hospital, only to be bawled out by the receptionist: "We can't do THAT," said she. "We're not allowed to page the doctors during the day. We can only page them at night." I told her I was just following the directions on the doctor's answering machine. "Oh, well," she condescended. "I'll see what I can do."
      "Like hell," I thought to myself - and called the office of my local doctor. His nurse was able to hook into the pathology report, and she said that results were still "pending." So I stirred things up a little and asked the nurse to ask my doctor if he could get through to someone to give me some answers. I'm thinking that maybe, "No news is good news," and  hung up the phone. Within the next 10 minutes, the breast surgeon was on the phone to tell me, "No news is NO news." What she could tell me, however, was that I have ductillary carcinoma - Stage 1, Grade 2 - but she was still waiting for prognosticators and protein inhibitors, and she made an appointment to see  me in the morning of the next Tuesday, just three days away.
          With my sister-in-law as my extra pair of listening ears, we trekked to the breast surgeon's office to learn everything there was to know about breast cancer. I was happy to learn that I qualify for a lumpectomy - and the jury is still out on whether it'll be just chemo, just radiation, or a combination of the two. (We're awaiting Herceptin results, whatever the heck that is.) And the surgery will be same-day, under a local - she'll also take three sentinel lymph nodes (no drain these days) - and if the insurance company will let her, she'll also install a port, which makes the chemo process SO much easier. (And if the port turns out not to be necessary, she'll just take it out.) I've managed to talk her into some Versed for the numbing process - that's the same stuff they give you when you go for colonoscopy - because the needles in my breast hurt like all hell - and I'm not brave enough to just grit my teeth. Surgery is scheduled for January 15th.
           There are many other pieces of treatment to be put together when we find out how aggressive treatment will have to be. I'm on the hunt for an oncologist that specializes  in breast cancer treatment - and it will be he or she who sets the dosages and the "protocol."
           How do I feel? Apprehensive, not terrified. My girls will be with me on the day of surgery - and then it's the old one-day-at-a-time approach. I'm likely to lose my hair, and accompanying sickness will be determined by the toxic chemicals. I have several friends and a couple of family members who have gone through this - and the offers of borrowed wigs have been rolling in.
           And, yes, it's at times like these that I miss the warmth of my husband's arms and his encouraging spirit. But I do feel certain he's watching over me, and he's "with" me in the spiritual sense.
          I've bade good-bye to any fantasies of being a tropical dancer - and the word is out that I won't be nursing any babies. (Of course, I haven't nursed a baby since 1970.) I'm counting on a lot of humor to get me through and the strength of a power greater than I, whom I choose to call God.
          So, it's, "Left foot, right foot, breathe - and, "This, too, shall pass." And by this time next year, I should have my hair back and start to feel half-way human.
         I'm just praying 2015 will pass as quickly as 2014 did!