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My Story
Mastectomy versus lumpectomy is the first of many, many treatment decisions I'll eventually make. I'm given a video from Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Center for Shared Decision Making detailing the pros and cons of each option.
After much waffling, I choose the less invasive lumpectomy, figuring I can always cut more off later, but I surely can't go back and cut less off. A chance meeting with Kim Grafton in the produce aisle at the local co-op food store solidifies the choice for me. Kim's preschool daughter twines around her leg as we chat casually about baking, the specter of cancer hanging between us. She finally asks if I've made my surgery decision. I hesitate; I've been leaning toward lumpectomy but haven't decided for sure. Kim softly says she thinks a lumpectomy would be a good choice. That cements it. I tell her to sign me up.
My surgery is set for June 5. Ah, a deadline; familiar territory. Suddenly, cancer is becoming real. It's time to tell the people who need to know, including my teenage son, Nik, a freshman at Hanover High School.
Nik is 15. He's in that unsettled time between childhood and young adulthood—that push-pull period between being a boy and being a man. Before I tell him I have cancer, his world is still safe. I see him venturing from my side, then coming back to familiar comfort, then stepping a little farther away, and coming back less. He still needs me, but he doesn't want to need me.
When I tell Nik I have cancer, I preface it by saying, "It's no big deal." Later, I imagine the stupidity of those words. Of course it's a big deal. He thinks his mother is dying. He has no questions. He shows no emotion. I leave the room, he shuts the door, and a black cloud forms over his head—a cloud that will follow him for the next four years, through high school and beyond. He pushes me away. He wants nothing to do with having a mother. He doesn't want to need me, because he's sure I'll desert him. So he deserts me first.
I know what Nik is doing. I understand that his anger is the first step in letting
After much waffling, I choose the less invasive lumpectomy, figuring I can always cut more off later, but I surely can't go back and cut less off. A chance meeting with my surgeon in the produce aisle at the local co-op food store solidifies the choice for me.
me go. My son is 15 years old. I might die. It's time I let him grow up.
Telling friends
I also tell my colleagues at work. At first I think, Well, I'll just take a day off for the lumpectomy, and that'll be the end of it. No one needs to know. But what if that's not the end of it? What if there's more? Radiation, chemo . . . They're still just words. Evil-sounding, scary words, but not quite real.
Still, I'm a planful person. My husband laughs at me when we travel, because I break out a map for any trip longer than the seven-mile trek to West Lebanon. I figure I'd better have a Plan B, in case I
have to miss a chunk of work, so I tell those with whom I work most closely. Then they tell others, and, of course, within 24 hours the entire company knows I have breast cancer.
The owner of King Arthur Flour—who is both my boss and a close friend—gives me a big, bright smile and asks how I'm feeling. "Fine," I say. "Fine." He keeps smiling as he walks away.
Soon everyone I know is greeting me with a sad-eyed smile, followed not by the usual, rhetorical "How are you!" but by a hesitant "How are you?"
"I'm fine," I say. "Fine." I want this to be an everyday conversation. I want us to talk about kids and car troubles and property taxes. I want the comfort of normalcy. But that's no longer possible. Things aren't normal. I have cancer; my friends don't. I take a deep breath and start down the path—alone.
Having surgery
On Tuesday, June 5, at 6:00 a.m., I present myself at Same-Day Surgery. I don yet another backless gown, slippers, a robe. A nurse puts a blanket over me and asks me what I'm there for. "Lumpectomy," I answer. I'm amused and even disbelieving when she hands me a blue Sharpie marker and asks me to draw an X on the breast that is to be operated on. Malpractice insurance?
Dr. Carter Dodge, the anesthesiologist, looks dapper in green scrubs, nametag, and surgical cap. Carter and I have been carpooling our sons to ice hockey and soccer games for 10 years; I'm used to seeing him at 6:00 a.m. in sweats, not scrubs. He explains the anesthesia to me; tells me I won't remember a lot from the time right before and after surgery. I don't believe him. He's right.
At 7:30, I'm sent down to mammography for an injection of radioactive dye, which will mark the first lymph node that would be affected if the cancer has spread from my breast. I'm having a sentinel node biopsy—a new, much less invasive way of finding out how far the cancer has advanced. Dr. Poplack revs up the ultrasound and guides a needle with a barb directly into the tumor. This metal