It was another trip to the oncologist. About 3 months ago, I was checking out my fake breasts and found something that hadn’t been there before. Now, before everyone starts to worry, don’t. I felt it in the right breast — like a hard, flat piece of scar tissue. It was located directly below the scar line on that breast. I didn’t find anything like it on the left breast. I did a little check on the internet and discovered that yes, there is a kind of cancer that can feel like hardened scar tissue in an implanted breast. It is rare and usually what you are feel is exactly what it is: a hardened piece of scar tissue.
I thought about it for a few weeks. Finally, I decided to see my oncologist. I’m seven years past my original cancer. Anyone who has had cancer knows you are never “cured” of cancer. You can be in remittance for a lifetime, but it can come back. Anytime, anywhere in your body.
If you come from a cancer-prone family, you could get an entirely new type of cancer in some other organ. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that successfully dealing with one disease doesn’t stop you from getting another.
I’ve also learned to not trust how I feel. I always think I’m fine. This is probably a survival mechanism. I will probably die while being convinced I’m suffering a mild and temporary setback or maybe a weather-related allergy.
So, I wasn’t worried about this turn of events. I hadn’t been concerned about what turned out to be bi-lateral cancer. Back then, I was sure it was just a benign cyst. It turned out to be cancer in both breasts.
Essentially, my prior record on guessing what’s wrong with me (I was also sure my heart was fine) has proven 100% wrong, so I went to see Dr. Tahir in May. He agreed it’s probably nothing more than hardened scar tissue. If I want to be absolutely sure, we could run a CT scan. I’ve gotten so much radiation over the years, I’m hesitant to allow more radiation. Also, the co-pay for a CT scan is $450 which I don’t have. So I declined. He suggested I come back in a couple of months and see if anything had changed.
This was that followup visit.
Waiting at the Dana-Farber
Nothing had changed as far as I could tell … or as far as he could tell. He did encourage me to call him if anything bothers me at all, no matter where or what. I know this is for my benefit because he doesn’t believe I will call unless I think I’m actually about to croak. Still, the urgency of his tone — CALL ME ABOUT ANYTHING ANYWHERE, ANYTIME — made me edgy.
Some of this is probably about money. For want of $450, am I putting my health at risk?
I’m fairly sure (probably, maybe, or at least I think so) that if I thought this was life-or-death, I’d get the scan and figure out how to pay for it later. But, it’s also possible I want to avoid more surgery — even if it is life or death. I’ve had far too much surgery. Far too many hospitalizations. Far too many close calls with death. It’s not that I want to die. I vastly prefer life to the alternative, but I’m tired of being sliced and diced. I’m tired of years of recovery and being told how great I’m going to feel … later. I’m still waiting to feel great.
Meanwhile, all the blood work came back normal. Normal, normal, normal with a slight elevation in liver enzymes,. But that was true last time, so maybe that’s the new normal. Blood pressure normal. Weight up a little. No one except me seems worried about it. The blood levels are a pretty good indicator that nothing major is going wrong. Something would show in all those tests … right?
Sometimes I feel like a potato being slowly grated.
Every year or two, doctors remove a piece of me. Sometimes a little piece — a couple of bad heart valves, for example. Sometimes a couple of breasts. Once, a piece of bone in my leg and they added two implanted breasts, two replacement valves and a pacemaker. I believe that makes me two new pieces above my initial out-of-the-factory model.
Approximately 75% of me works almost as well as the original bits. That’s what my memories tell me, but normal is so distant in mental time, I have to work from memorized tidbits of what “normal” felt like. Of course, the rebuilt me isn’t quite the same. The individual pieces look okay, though — if you don’t look too closely. And I keep my clothing on.
