The Peaks and Valleys of a Life with Cancer

This space could use a little jolt of happy, wouldn�t you agree?

I had my first post-op appointment with my surgical oncologist yesterday. Remind me to stop scheduling things in the afternoon. Waiting around all day turns me into a strung out lunatic. By the time we were ready to leave, my stress level had surpassed its breaking point. Paul drove. I cried.

Perched on the examining room chair, I fidget with the ties of my pink cover-up. My doctor pokes his head in the door, smiling. Smiling is a good sign. I like smiling.

We talk about how I�m feeling. He takes a look at my incision. He decides it�s time to remove the sutures.

�I�ll be right back. I�m just going to run and grab a suture removal kit, ok?�

Ok. But um, like -- do I still have cancer?

I love my doctor. He�s the best. He�s brilliant. And sometimes brilliant people are�slightly scatterbrained? Or eccentric. So I forgive him for not launching into my pathology results the moment he walked in the door. 

As he�s pulling out my stitches: �So the pathology, it all came back negative. The margins are clear.�

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And you didn't open with that because...?!

But who cares! I am blissed out of my damn mind.

To clarify: when you have a mastectomy, a rim of normal tissue surrounding the tumor is also removed, which is called a "margin." My first mastectomy in July resulted in "dirty" or "positive" margins, which is why I required a second operation.

It turns out there is still one area where the margin is "close," meaning cancer cells were not far from the edge of the removed tissue. This isn't ideal, but my medical team is confident that adjuvant radiation therapy and 10 years of Tamoxifen will be more than enough to make sure this cancer knows it's not welcome and it needs to find another couch to crash on.

I practically skipped down the steps to the parking lot. I was giddy. Like a 50 pound weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

And then we got into the car and headed to our second appointment of the day: Roswell Park's Assessment and Treatment Center.

These are our days: ping-ponging from moments of dizzying rapture back to the unhappy reality of Paul�s worsening symptoms: feverish temps, stomach pain, vomiting.

Right before we had left for my appointment, Paul called his oncologist's office to fill them in on his condition. "Come in," they said. They needed to check him over. To rule out an infection or something worse.

It was the usual succession of tests -- bloodwork, urine sample, x-ray. Most of our time is spent waiting.

I crawled into the small space Paul had made for me in his hospital bed, avoiding the tubing that was pumping sodium chloride into his depleted body. We watched Chopped on the Food Network, and I pressed my face against his bony shoulder. Everything: the flit of nurses in-and-out, the boring cable TV, the rough hospital linens --it�s all so familiar. How many days have we spent in this exact position?

Nothing particularly stood out with any of Paul's test results, so they sent us home with a short-term antibiotic (just in case) and instructions to call in the morning to schedule another blood transfusion.

Which is how we will be spending our day tomorrow.

Highs and lows, man. Highs and lows.