Day 1: Sunflowers, Tattoos, and Breaking the News

Day 1: Sunflowers, Tattoos, and Breaking the News

It took about two weeks from the first symptom raising it’s irritating head until the moment Dr. JLC walked into the exam room with my final results.

It started with mastitis. Yes, a 53 year old single woman who’s never had children got an infection generally associated with nursing mothers – and before you ask, no there wasn’t a boyfriend hanging on there either. Odd, but not entirely unheard of. My right boob turned as red as the corner traffic light, as hot as a Texas sidewalk in August, and as painful as a jellyfish sting in the hoo-ha (which thank goodness I’ve not experienced personally). Trust me at that moment, a bra is not your friend not matter how soft it is.

I called my brand spanking new-to-me Primary Care Physician and trotted over to the office for a prescription, which after the requisite poking and prodding of affected area I received – 2000 mg of Keflex a day for 10 days. Well, all righty then. Anything that was remotely considering setting up shop in my body ought to be annihilated at that dose, even my road flare boob. I was also sent for an ultrasound, just to be safe.

How many times have you ever had the actual radiologist walk into the room to talk to you after reading your test results? I can tell you that even after two prior phyllodes tumors, knee surgery, infectious colitis, and four spine surgeries with all their associated scans, X-rays and whatnot, it hadn’t happened once – until that day. Clue #1 – Things Are Not Going to Go Well. “If you’re not better by Monday, you need to be checked again. There’s a rare, very aggressive form of breast cancer that looks exactly like your results and we also found a lump.”

Great…wonderful…Google: rare…breast cancer…like mastitis

Inflammatory Breast Cancer.

Shit.

Called my friends K/M in California since K had already survived breast cancer. Talked to a couple of other friends. Monday morning scurried my butt back to my PCP doc. It sounded paranoid and a long shot (90/10) even when I said it out loud, but thank goodness they sent me to Aurora Oncology for a breast MRI – the only boob MRI in this part of the state.

Naturally Blue Cross wanted a mammogram and another ultrasound before authorizing a $3200 MRI. The Oncologist (now there’s a word to give you the willies!) saw me on Monday, and the two tests were set for Wednesday. No problem. Take a couple hours from work, pop over to get the tests, go back.

Not quite.

June 24 – Clue #2 It Is Going To Be A Bad Day – When the mammogram tech is walking down the hall with your results in hand, the Oncologist who is NEVER in this particular office on Wednesdays is following her, and she tells your ultrasound tech to put you in an exam room for few minutes. Odds changed to 50/50 that there was something that had to be dealt with.

June 25 – MRI – Ever want to know what a cow about to be milked feels like? Try lying face down with your boobs hanging through holes in the table.

Biopsy – Even less fun. Just think how it would feel to get shot in the boob with a nail gun. Oh and Clue #3 – because of the Fourth of July holidays there wasn’t an open appointment until Monday, July 6. Someone cancelled and the clinic called me at 8 am on 6/29 (Monday – an entire week early) to see if I could be there by 10 for the biopsy.

Follow up appointment set for Thursday, July 2. 72 hours (more or less) to wait…..

Me, being me, naturally tried to think of the positives:

1 – My hair was long so I could always get a wig made from my own hair.

2 – My butt is big enough that my body could feed off the fat for months during chemo when I didn’t have an appetite.

3 – I’d have lots of time to catch up on reading and movies.

I talked to K/M a lot those three days – particularly K since she’d been in my shoes. Meanwhile, M has really gotten into tattoos a lot the past few years and has occasionally tried to convince me to get one. My standard response has always been there’s nothing I want to still see on my body when I’m 70 and saggy. Wednesday night, silly me decided to ignore Clues 1, 2 and 3 and made a bet. If the news was bad the next day, I would go to California either before or after the procedures and let his tattoo genius Justin, put a pink ribbon and sunflowers (my favorite flowers) on the back of my neck. It would show up clearly when I had little to no hair from the surgeries and treatments.

July 2, 2015 8am – Clue #4 aka Sledgehammer #1– Leaving the house for work the first two songs on my random iTunes setting were Sick by Evanescence and I’m Alive from the Avengers soundtrack. Yes, really.

Since I was having to be out so often for appointments, and I’m never out, I’d had to tell two people at my office what was going on. When I was leaving that day, the signal was that if everything was fine I’d come back and we’d open the gift bottle of wine that has been lurking in my desk waiting for a reason to celebrate. If it was bad, they’d meet me at the restaurant bar across the highway for raspberry mojitos.

July 2, 2015 2pm – Clue #5 aka Sledgehammer #2 – Signing in at the receptionists’ desk at Aurora and the new page for July on the calendar behind her desk was a photo of sunflowers.

Is it any wonder that I was somewhat prepared when July 2, 2015 at 2:30pm my Doctor’s first words on entering the room were “Okay, it IS cancer.”

Text to K/M: We need to figure out when I can get an appointment with Justin [tattooist].

Text to my office: Ready for those mojitos?

Time to start making the phone calls….