Who thought I would hear those words again on the day of my diagnosis twenty-seven months ago - "annual mammogram and check up with my surgeon"?
Also, because I'm in the midst of a little "tift" with Verizon, I've used up all of my Verizon minutes talking with doctors the past couple of weeks. Trust me, Verizon, the great sub-contractor of the Anti-Christ, can soak you and then some, when you run out of minutes and you are unwilling to renew your contract....
Since I am having this little tift with Verizon, I am pretty much off the grid for those days on the road. Oddly, I can post a picture to Facebook, but not read posts. Or more than one page of posts if I can get past the *security* warnings.....
Emails are much the same way. I still have over six hundred waiting for my indecisive brain to deal with in my in-box, and more pile up the longer I am away.
I'm at what is hopefully the tail end of another virus which has lasted going on three weeks now, and with this virus that has targeted my throat and chest a new symptom popped up -- a hurtful, hold-the-left-side-of-my-chest-with-a-pillow-when-I-cough pain.
Every time I coughed or sneezed or got up from a laying down position - I had to hold my chest because it *hurt*. I was able to get in quickly at a quick-doctor-place they have now, and because the pain was only on my left side - my cancer side, he did a chest xray. Because I had just had my port out two weeks before, he did blood work to make sure it wasn't a blood clot. He did an ECG to make sure it wasn't my heart.
It felt like my heart, or a cracked rib I had thought to myself, and was relieved when those all showed "normal".
The pain starts at my fifth rib sternum and continues across my scar tissue to my underarm.
The same fifth rib with the little spot that is too small to biopsy or diagnose.
My feet were getting a little cold and my hands a little clammy.
The Urgi-Care physician gave me a Z-Pack which relieved half of the symptoms and made the pain feel much better.
When the Z-Pack ran out and the pain came back worse, I called back, and he obviously was way over our relationship. He didn't want to touch me. Not with a stethoscope, not with a needle, not with a script, not with a ten foot pole.
I told the lady who was taking and relaying messages that it felt like inflammation in my rib cartilage maybe - the kind of pain I felt after I finished radiation for a few weeks - could that be possible?
She didn't know, all she knew is that I was supposed to call my oncologist.
"Could I get one more script of antibiotics to see if that helps before I call?"
"No, call your oncologist."
The rational part of my brain was saying - "it's inflammation in your rib cage - leftover damage from radiation that the virus has flared up".
The bat-shit-crazy part of my brain was saying "why won't he treat me for one more week at least - what is he suspecting?"
***
Since I had been "virusing", again, for almost three weeks, I was told it was by now probably post-nasal-drip, and to treat those symptoms and that I was not contagious.
So I went to my *now* annual mammogram and appointment with my surgeon.
At the Stephanie Spielman Center, they send you in for your mammogram, then a radiologist looks over it while you wait in the large mammogram waiting room to give you the "all clear". When you get the All Clear, you are sent to another private waiting room while still in your nice thick white robe awaiting your appointment with your surgeon.
It's all set up pretty slick and very protective of your modesty, even after half of Columbus has seen me half undressed the past couple of years.
Only, I didn't get the All Clear from the radiologist while I sipped my complimentary bottle of water in the large mammogram waiting room.
I got called back in for another mammogram.
After the second round of films, the radiation technician just told me to wait in the mammogram room while she went and talked to the radiologist that was reviewing my films and deciding my future with one word.
She came back in and took another set. Then another.
***
The mammogram waiting area is one of the most populated, loneliest places I have visited. It's a room full of women in white robes and we're all there for the same reason, but suddenly the ones who have obviously been through treatments, are the biggest fear in the room for all others awaiting their annual good news.
It was a blessing she didn't send me back out to wait - I didn't want to sit under everyone's gaze. I was the only one that I had noticed getting the 'return call'.
She showed me the black blob inside the white circle on my chest wall that the radiologist was concerned about. I could see all of my scans - she had four, maybe more screens in front of her with old views, new views, and circled views.
She kept telling me she had to "press it out" - and it is just what it sounds like. It was hurting like crazy as she was needing a picture of my chest wall muscle included in the scan and it was pulling on my scar tissue on the other side to do these, but by the third go-around I told her I didn't care - just "press it"!
It was a long two hour interval. I texted a couple of friends that I think have the gift of healing and asked them to pray.
If you wonder what does one think when one is confronted with the fact that you look like you are going back into treatment?
My brain had quickly connected the dots that could be happening - I've had a cough since Christmas - could that be lung mets? I've had pain in my bones - both rib and lower back - could that be bone mets? My immune system seems low again.......
So my first thought was? "what in the world am I going to do with all that fabric I've been collecting and cutting?"
Honest.
Because, I can't let my brain go farther or I would sit and weep in a lonely room, with a radiation technician that is younger than my daughter who wouldn't know what to do or what to say to me.
Because, I know that recurrence of this disease means either a "local recurrence" or a "metastatic occurrence" for the most part, one treatable with a possible remission, one treatable with no remission.
Because - on the Triple Negative Breast Cancer page I am on, we seem to lose women every week that have recurred and sometimes quickly lose the battle.
So when my brain said "what to do with the fabric collection?", I tried to think that one out.
The other trails would take me down paths I couldn't go yet.
If you are in the market for six inch wide strips of cut fabric that can be sewn into strip quilts or cut again and used for crocheted rag rugs, let me know. I might think on you next March while I am sitting in the mammogram waiting room.....
***
She finally came back in and said "that last one did it - you're clear!"
She showed me the scan.
I love it that they show me the scans. I love it that they discuss them with me instead of leaving me in the dark "until I talk with my doctor" like most technicians do.
I love it when I see a black blob finally "pressed out".
I was sent to a late appointment with my surgeon and he told me the "good news" of my scans again, then I told him the "good news" that I'm sure most noted surgeons love to hear - that he, of all my medical people - was the one left to deal with me and my virus, my chest pain, my issues that most surgeons haven't dealt with since their residency.
He thoroughly examined me, we chatted a little, he ruled out pneumonia, "bad" chest sounds, and the more we chatted, the clearer the picture became and he gave me a word for that pain - "costochondritis".
It's an inflammation in the cartilage in between the ribs, due to radiation damage.
Hmph.
After washing his hands, then dousing his hands with sanitizer, he stood at the door, pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose to keep away any possible wayward germs, and left me with a final word, a warning, that if the pain didn't clear up in two weeks I was going in for a CT scan.
***
So today, I am holding a warm compress to my chest pain, and slurping NSAIDS.
Scott kindly made me the same kind of warm compress that our son had made for him last year with his gall bladder pain - a sock filled with rice, warmed up in the microwave.
Only, I didn't realize he had closed it with a twisty-tie when I put it back in the microwave for two minutes.
It came out on fire. Our whole house smelled like burnt popcorn.
And burnt sock.
Honest.
Scott put out the little fire, salvaged any rice he could, put it all in a new sock THAT WE TIED SHUT, and warmed it up again for me. I slept with it all night, smelling like leftover burnt popcorn, and it feels better.
Today, I am thankful for good news, for life, again.
There are so many problems, so many bills, so many things stack up that it is possible at times to lose sight of the fact that God has blessed you with another day.
I hear drips in my roof in the morning and worry. I watch Scott shovel the driveway and worry. I look at our checkbook and worry.
Has not God shown me over and over and over and over again how He can and did take care of me in miraculous fashion and yet I fall into that daily "crap-trap" time after time after time and don't remember it all until I stare at a black blob with a white circle around it.
***
I've been listening to Jesus' parables of late, as it is noted that through those He taught great things not known since the beginning of time.
Because of this, I've heard the famous Beatitudes as the church calls them, time after time and I heard words I had memorized years ago, which are now foggy:
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Matthew 6:25
"Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" Matthew 6:27
And then, there is this of course..........
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Philippians 4:6
Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7
And, this.
I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily. Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots; Hosea 14:5
Yet, all those good words, good knowledge, good food for my soul, I pushed aside finally while trying to assimilate back into what we call "daily life". With daily life comes daily angsts, and with daily angsts comes daily forgetfulness of God's hand in my life.
Until I see that black blob. Then it all comes back into focus.
***
I'm not accusing God of giving me a "wake up call". I'm not accusing God of "making me sweat" so I will remember Him more clearly, better.
Remember Him foremost.
With this disease, I would be sitting in that room with these kinds of results, this kind of cage rattling, with or without God.
So I sit there with this image popping up on my radiation screen, not angry, not surprised necessarily, not horrified, but trained to go to a hidden place, a deep garden, a place in a desperate wilderness where I see God burning before me more brightly than I can see Him during the day to day things that seem to cloak our awareness of a God that burns in our lives.
While I wait in a lonely room for the worst possible news maybe, I can sit beside a spring that never fails, no matter which way the wind is blowing, which way the storm screams around me. I can sit in the middle of a desperate wilderness, with the likeliness of finding water and food and shelter looking grim, and in that hidden place find myself sheltered, and fed and refreshed with a water that tastes like no other.
It's not easy. It's not what I want. I don't like those dark moments of the soul when all around you is bleak and horrifyingly difficult.
But I am thankful, that God is in the midst of the wilderness, that I camp under his cloud, with His fire burning bright in the darkness.
It's possible with this disease that one day either that radiation technician or another doctor will probably come back into a room and give me different news.
As I said, I don't like it. Hell, I don't like anything about this disease, this continual reminder that I am mortal, frail, not in control, not able to be or do what I would like.
I. don't. like. it.
But I don't blame God, don't walk away from Him, don't fret that He is doing this to me for some unknown reason, some unknown discipline I need to learn.
When I sit in the midst of black blobs surrounded by pointed white circles, I simply, humbly, open up the door to His garden, and know He is there, and whatever the situation in the desert, He will be a fire burning brightly before me.
Always.
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