I am a two-time breast cancer survivor—and extremely grateful to be able to call myself that. When I made this SoulCollage card tonight that I called “The Survivor,” a thousand memories flooded me. I've made three other cards for breast cancer over the years, but they were grim. This card is joyful. Bear with the long story the process of making the card triggered, but I want my experience to hopefully bring strength and hope to someone who is going through treatment now.
There are so many awareness days and months in our calendar, but the one that no one can miss is Breast Cancer Awareness Month—October. When I bought my eight-pack of paper towels this week, they were part of the month’s promotion—as have many other purchases I’ve made in the last several days. Avon, Revlon, and lots of other organizations have had remarkable success in bringing about awareness and commercially marketing the awareness with proceeds going to research.
As a survivor, I feel very, very grateful to be here and to be healthy as far as I know. All my adult life I have had fibrocystic disease and have had several biopsies, all the early ones benign. Breast cancer runs in my family. Then in 1989, even though I had been given an A-OK after a biopsy, later in-depth pathology proved that I had an invasive intraductal carcinoma, stage one. I was only a few years out of my long-term marriage, I had bought my townhouse at the beach in Redondo in 1988—and whammo! I got laid off from my university job. Then cancer. Yikes! It felt like my world was falling apart. My husband and I had taken care of his mom in our home for a year in 1973 as she slowly died of breast cancer. My close friend Eloise had died a few years later at age 47 and I saw breast cancer when it gets out of control.
To say I was scared would be the understatement of the year and I was dating someone who was what I was later to call “a suck-it-up-kind-of-guy.” He tried to be supportive, as did my children and family, but most everyone’s reaction when a cancer diagnosis has been made is to assure the person they are going to be OK. They are frightened and I admit that I tend to personalize bad news. My then boyfriend cut me no slack, but that was probably a good thing in the long run. I got a second opinion from a well-known breast cancer surgeon/oncologist at UCLA, Dr. Armando Guiliano and I decided to have my surgery there. (Dr. Guiliano is now the head of the John Wayne Cancer Center Breast Center at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica.) The weeks of pre-testing and biopsies seemed endless and I was commuting to my new job in Santa Monica at the Center for the Partially Sighted. Fortunately, I was still carrying insurance from Loyola and had coverage from CPS as well so I didn’t have the expense of the treatment to worry about.
I had a partial mastectomy on my left breast and the lymph glands were removed from beneath my arm. My margins in the breast were good and my lymph glands were clear, thank God. I was in the hospital four days and I was home only a few days when I got very, very ill. A return to UCLA showed that I had a strep infection in the incisions, I was re-hospitalized, and I really don’t remember a lot about this period. UCLA is a teaching hospital and it seemed like there were endless med students, interns and residents and lots of different antibiotics. I was in such pain and ultimately I went back to surgery for a debridement. Two weeks later I came home and two weeks after that I began daily radiation for six weeks. Because of the debridement, I had little mobility of the arm and not only was a body mold made for me during radiation, but another mold was made to keep my arm up and away from the breast during the treatments. Somehow or other I managed to drive from Redondo Beach to UCLA at 7 a.m. and was usually at work by 10 a.m. Though one of my two opinions recommended tamoxifen, which I declined, I did not have to have chemo. I was a very lucky person and I made many new friends in the process and my old friends were phenomenal during my hard days. The South Bay Daily Breeze did a story on me that October of 1989 where journal entries were used as I went through treatment.
I always knew I was one of the “lucky” ones, but I dreaded my mammograms and subsequent biopsies, but I transferred myself to local Torrance doctors after that. UCLA is a great hospital, but it is a huge place, deep in the city. Years passed. Then in a routine mammogram in 1997, a suspicious area was found again in the opposite breast. I thought I was going to be there a half hour and Cookie was actually out in the car, but there had been a cancellation and my doctor was able to do a core biopsy--a lot less traumatic than going under anethesia in the hospital. I drove myself home and the following day I found that I had another stage one breast cancer, but it was a very early detection, thanks to Torrance radiologist Dr. David Stone. Also, it was not considered a recurrence of the other breast cancer, but a new diagnosis, which was in my favor. I used a local surgeon for my lumpectomy, and Dr. Nora Ku, my oncologist, actually took my case to the hospital tumor board. I again had six weeks of radiation and took tamoxifen for seven years. The past few years I have taken an aromatase inhibitor, Femara, which I will take the rest of my life.
When I am unclothed, my breasts are extremely assymetrical—the left one very small now both from surgery and the shrinking that radiation sometimes causes. Both breasts look like a roadmap from biopsy scars, but hey, I’m here--and "my girls" are here, too. My last biopsy, a few years back, was benign. And for that I am grateful! My oncologist moved to Florida last month and I feel bereft without her, but my case has been transferred to a doctor who has a child in my school. I hear he is an excellent doctor.
So, do your breast self-exams, get those mammograms, and stay on top of the latest treatments. We have a male parent at our school who is struggling through breast cancer treatment now, and I’ve known a few other men who are survivors. How fortunate we are to live in a time and place where the breast cancer survival rate is high.
