Two New Men In My Life

It is a fact that we will meet many people in our lifetime.  People will come in and out of our lives as we come in and out of others.  Some stay briefly, some for years and some forever.  Some come into our lives and their importance may not realized until it is too late, or we understand immediately that they will have a profound impact on who we are and they will change us forever.

I have two of the latter.  These two new men will forever change who I am.  These two men, both incredible in their respective fields, will change me for the better.  The first one, Dr. B., will help save my life.  The second, Dr. D. will assist in making me feel good about myself as a woman.

Dr. B. is  my surgeon.  He met with Greg and I at Prentice a couple weeks ago.  If you have your mammograms done at Prentice you get out of the elevators on the fourth floor and make a left.  I always wondered what would happen if you made a right and now I know.  It is for people like me.  Cancer patients. 

Dr. D. is my plastic surgeon.  He met with Greg and I a short time after we saw Dr. B.  It is strange to go into the plastic surgery area of a hospital. It would be nice to be there for elective surgery, preferable even.  We were given his last appointment of the day so that he could spend as much time with us as we needed.  Greg said he was sure that it also had to do with the fact that it would be difficult to be sitting with people who were having cosmetic changes made whereas I just wanted to stay the way that I am.

My surgery will be the 11th of June.  I need to be at the hospital at 6 a.m. and my surgery will begin at 7:30.  Dr. B. will be operating on me for the first five hours and then Dr. D. will come in and operate the other five.  I will be in the ICU at Prentice for one to two days and then in the hospital for another four to five days after my surgery.  I will then spend another 7-9 weeks recuperating at home.

It still seems unreal to me that this is happening.  I have lost allot of sleep.  I have grown anxious and there are times that I can hear others around me talking and I am sitting in the middle of the life around me, feeling like I am Scrooge.  My life is going on and I am sitting in it watching from the outside.  The sleeplessness makes me feel numb, and I catch myself, saying to myself, "you have cancer".

Ladybugs are flying!

I came home from work to a wonderful sight today.  Ladybugs!!  Some very special friends delivered some absolutely gorgeous hydrangeas, pink of course,  in wonderful turquoise pots to my front door.  They are complete with a welcome sign with a ladybug and darling metal ladybug yard decorations.  To say I am touched cannot even begin to describe how I feel.

I am always amazed at my neighbors.  We started a book club over eight years ago and we call ourselves, "The Ashland Avenue Ladies Book Club".  We meet the third Monday of every month and discuss our newest selection.   Sometimes the discussion lasts ten minutes, sometimes much more.  Our husbands joke that we should call ourselves the Wine Club.  I must say, we do like our wine. 

This group of amazing women has always inspired me.  We have donated time and meals to assist ill neighbors in and around our block, given funds for flowers to others for loss or celebration.  We have collected children's books to start a members library when they have started a family.  We have moved from one block party a summer to two for the families to spend time together. 

Each woman is unique in their own way and each brings something different to our gatherings.  We have lawyers, nurses, managers, musicians, and mothers with children of all ages; all of whom I call friends. 

So Susan, Maureen, Teresa, Melissa, Annette, Sarah, Gina, Stacey, Mary Hope, Ann, Molly and Collette, I am not sure who did this wonderful thing for me but, you are so giving and generous and I deeply appreciate all the kindnesses you have bestowed on me.  Your wonderful words of encouragement, offerings of meals, mowing of our front lawn and now coming home to such beautiful flowers, my family and I are forever grateful to each of you.


Melissa, just read your note on FB.  You and Gina are forever in my prayers!!!  THANK YOU!!!!

I need to see a ladybug.

There are days that you mark in history and whether you are aware of it at the time, they change you forever. Some we share with a few persons. Some, like September 11, 2001, we share with the entire world.  Some, are just our own.

 

 I was a few months shy of being 13.  I answered the phone to find out that my mother, who had in essence not been living with us for some time, was not doing well.  I say that she wasn't living with us, not because of a separation between my parents but she had been in the City of Hope Hospital in Duarte California for some time.  My mother had cancer.

 

 I remember some things.  I remember driving with my mother and little sister in the car and I remember a big lump, like a golf ball, on my mothers left arm.  That night, when my mom and dad were talking, was the first time I recall hearing the word cancer.   I remember my mom laying on the couch in our front room.  My mother wanted a fruit salad and we were all preoccupied with our own activities to walk to the market around the corner.  A short time later I answered a knock at the door to find Mrs. Butler, a neighbor at the other end of the block, with a bowl of fresh fruit salad for my mother.  I remember my mother starting to cry and quietly say, "He always knows", when I gave it to her.  It took me a long time to understand what she meant.  

 

I remember July 30th, 1977.  I remember sitting on a swing porch in my Aunt Barbara's backyard with my dad and sister.  I recall hearing the words and wondering why God didn't like me.  I prayed the entire night, crying and begging Him, and He didn't listen.  "She's gone", my father repeated to me.   

I don't recall how it started.  Somehow ladybugs became synonymous with my mother and my need to know she was watching over me.  It started years ago and continues to today.   When my girls were little, I don't recall what was going on, but I was having a really bad day.  I had taken the girls to my local grocery store and was feeling anxious, it had been a bad day.   When we got to the cashier at the front of the store, she looked kindly at the girls and asked me if she could give the girls some stickers.  I said sure and the next thing I knew, I was looking at my daughters and found myself smiling.  The cashier had placed ladybug stickers on their foreheads.  

 

I haven't seen a ladybug yet.  I'm waiting.  I know it will bring me comfort, and for me, it will make me know that my mother is taking care of me.

My joy

I thank God every day for two of the most amazing people in my life.  They are my daughters.  As every  mother surely says,my daughters are my pride and my joy.  I am blessed to have these two in my life.  I became a mother and my life changed forever.  

Amanda and Ali, I love you both more than I can say.  You two make me so proud that I am your mother. I am so lucky to have such a wonderful relationship and bond with you both and I am always amazed by each of you and the direction your lives are going.  


I love you, all the way up to the stars and down to the bottom of the ocean.

Sometimes I hate my phone

As a wife and mother, there are several phone calls that you dread.  The call that something has happened to a parent, the call from your teenager that they have been in a car accident, the call from your daughter six hours away in college crying in pain.  I have received all these calls and they are terrifying.  It is in our innate self of being that we worry for the ones that we love.  But, when I got the call, the call that I somehow knew I was going to get, I was calm, cool and collected, ready to hear and understand all the information that was going to start being thrown at me.

It came two days after my biopsy, as promised, from the very resident that performed the biopsy.  I was walking up my front porch and unlocking the door when my cell started to ring.  Ali, my youngest was following close behind.  When I saw the number on the phone I told her that I had to take the call having recognized the number from the day before when the doctor called to check up on me.  

The doctor calmly waited until I got into the house and as I walked in the door I dropped my keys on my desk in the foyer and grabbed a pen and paper.  I walked over to the kitchen table and sat down, perched on a stool waiting to hear the word.  Malignancy.  It really is an  ugly word.

She told me that she doesn't like to call and give bad news, apologizing for what she was about to tell me.  Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, grade 3.  As I was scribbling this down on the paper I realized that Ali was standing behind me, watching me write the three little words that would change her life as well.  She came around and looked at me with tears in her eyes and went upstairs while I finished the call.  Grade 3, not the grade you want.  Not like an A, more like an F.  3 equals aggressive, fast growing.  

I finished the phone call, and I think I thanked her.  Not for the diagnosis, but for the care she displayed with me for the last three days.  She was genuine and nothing she said felt rehearsed and it was comforting in an odd way.

I called Greg.  He was on a bus coming back from visiting with Amanda, our oldest.  She is finishing her sophomore year in nursing at Case Western.  When he answered, the first thing I said was, "I have cancer".  I think hitting him with a baseball bat might have had less of an impact.  Sadly he spent the next 6 1/2 hours by himself, on a bus, contemplating the future of us.

I went upstairs to check on Ali.  Amazing girl that she is, and it probably explains why she is the Valedictorian of her graduating class, she was sitting on her bed doing her math homework and preparing for the upcoming IB exams.  We talked a few minutes and both vowed that there would be nothing kept hidden, even our tears would be open.  

Several  more calls were made.  My parents were waiting nervously.  It was not an easy thing to say, especially to my father.  I couldn't call Amanda until later as she was working at Cleveland Clinic.  I texted her to call me when she had time.

The funny thing about calling Amanda, the future nurse.  She was the only one that I called and gave the medical terminology.  "I have cancer", was what everyone else heard.  "Invasive Ductal Carcinoma" was what I told her.  Her reply, "so you have cancer?"  It sounded so simple when she said it with her sleepy voice.

So yes, sometimes I hate my phone.  Sometimes it is the bearer of bad news and sometimes it makes me give bad news.  That day, April 19th, it was both.

Remember to check "the girls"!

As women, we are taught in the earlier years to always check our breasts for anything out of the ordinary.  What is out of the ordinary?  No one ever tells you that part.   We are all unique, which means that as such, our breasts, "the girls", are unique to us.  Some of us don't feel anything out of the ordinary.  Some women are "lumpy", if you will.

I was one of those that never feels anything.  I was a good girl last year and went for my yearly diagnostic mammogram at Northwestern.  I have the diagnostic type due to my family history and a previous tense moment about three years back. Nothing was found in April 2011.  When I got to Prentice Hospital and checked in I also scheduled my next mammogram for April 20, 2012.  I canceled that appointment three weeks before I was to go.

On Sunday, March 25th, while I was relaxing in a hot bath, I remembered to do my check.  It isn't easy to remember when to do this.  Most women, the women that routinely check themselves, use their cycle to know when to check.  Being as I don't have cycles from a previous hysterectomy [will get into that at another time] it is sometimes difficult to remember to check.  Or, it is being just plain lazy, who knows.

Usually I check like I was taught, and, usually there is nothing to feel.  But not this time.  I felt a bump, quite big really, by my own standards, and I felt a panic inside.  I didn't say anything, just thought it might be due to stress.  By the next afternoon I was calling my gynecologist to get an appointment.  I got an appointment the next afternoon.  While he checked my breast, he asked if this was what I was feeling as he was in the same area I felt the lump.  I checked where his hand was and was surprised that he had to ask.  It is a big lump.  He told me he was not going to worry.  He is a very upfront man who I have been with since Amanda was born.  His wording threw me and I quietly listened as he told me again that he was not going to worry but that I should get it checked out.  He stated that they would probably also do an ultrasound and likely a biopsy.  He thought that it was probably a fibroadenoma. I, of course, asked him to repeat the word three times so that I could google it when I got home.

 I called Prentice that afternoon and scheduled a mammogram for the 10th of April.  The best thing about Prentice, they don't let you leave.  If there is something of concern that needs further looking, you stay and they take care of you right away.  I guess you could say I had several mammograms that day.  I went in for the usual work up.  I was asked to sit back in the waiting room while the radiologist checked the films and then went in for more, and more, and more, and more.  I was then taken for an ultrasound.

After having an ultrasound on both breasts I was left to wait in the room while the test was checked.  A few minutes later the doctor comes in.  She tells me she is now going to do my ultrasound.  This was when I knew something was wrong.  I am sure that it is normal for a doctor to come in once in awhile, but that womans intuition was in the back of my mind and in the pit of my stomach.  She found the lump right away and then proceeded to talk to me and show me the lump, the inside of my body.

She showed me the lump which presented as a large black mass in the ultrasound.  She then showed me the gray matter that was all around the lump and running inside of it.  Then, she used the word disconcerting.  The mass along with the gray matter running around and through it were disconcerting.  Well, if they were to her, they were terrifying to me!

I went back to Prentice for a ultrasonic core biopsy the following Tuesday.  Surprisingly, I was not nervous.  The staff at Prentice is genuinely caring and it helps to alleviate the worry.  I was directed to the room and laid on the cushioned table.  I was wrapped in warm blankets and given plenty of pillows to prop myself up in a way that was both comfortable for me and helpful to them.

The test was surprisingly painless and in about 45 minutes I was done.

Now, came the wait.  I was told that I would get a call the next day, regardless of results being in, to see how I was and then if they were not in, I would get the results the next day.  And, so I waited.