The Breast Cancer Ninja- updated

Since this is a blog about workouts and weight loss, and my world is narrowing to talk about a much more focused experience… losing my boobs, I’ve decided to launch a new blog that will center on that experience.

Introducing: http://breastcancerninja.com/ I've registered this as my own, so shorter link!

So why the Breast Cancer Ninja, you may ask?  Last week while I was going thru all of the fun outlined in my posts, my mom, who is new to her Windows Phone, asked me how to find the smiley face that I sent her. I remembered a post from one of the Microsoft blogs that showed a bunch of the new emoticons, and there is was.  In Windows Phone, (J) = NINJA!  As the mother of a 9 year old boy, ninjas are big. And if you’re going to kick some cancer out of your body, why not be a ninja?

I may or may not return here when I kick the cancer’s ass, since from this point on, I will always be a survivor. We’ll see.  A couple weeks ago when I logged back in, Blogger told me it no longer supported my browser.  Internet Explorer 9.  I do PR for the same team that supports IE, and it’s still widely used, so I think that sucks.

When "positive" does not mean good

I’ve decided that the medical community needs to change their terminology. 

When I got the call Thursday afternoon, “Both sites sampled came back positive for invasive ductal carcinoma,” the only real positive is that I have an answer.  Not necessarily the one I wanted, but the one I expected… and still better than endless waiting.

The radiologist actually corrected himself and said that the “in situ” (which means if it’s just in the duct, or it’s invasive and has spread to other breast tissue) had not yet been determined, they were still finishing the pathology, but I have a feeling that again, he was going off of what he’s seeing. He may not be able to diagnose cancer based on looking, but he’s seen thousands of lumps, and knows what cancer looks like.

So really, at this point that’s all I know. 

I will schedule an MRI at some point in the coming days, since I go to Portland for work and then the Oregon Coast for a mini vacation with my boys starting next Thursday. I have an appointment with Seattle Cancer Care Alliance’s Breast Cancer clinic on Tuesday, 7/31 when I will have a 60 min upper body exam (not sure how that takes 60 min… do they use a microscope?) and then I meet my Medical Oncologist, Radiation Oncologist and Surgical Oncologist.  At that point we’ll know next steps, and how we’ll treat it.

The flip side of positive is where I’ve decided to live.  Of course I’m scared. As I said several years ago, still my favorite Gray’s Anatomy line of all time, "Well, we're all scared! I mean, if you're not scared you're not paying attention!"  

But I refuse to live my life in a scared place.  I’m going to kick this thing’s ass. If my mom can beat the less-commonly survived colon cancer at 59, I have NO EXCUSE not to beat breast cancer at 38.  I’m young (in cancer terms J), other than weight and my heart thing, I’m healthy… and I have a LOT to live for. I have amazing friends, family & co-workers who will all be cheering me on.

I plan to be a 50 year breast cancer survivor, with an option to reassess at year 45.  I figure by 83 I’ll have a better idea if I want to live past 88.  But for now, that seems like a solid goal, 88 years old.

So I’ve been working through my friends, and creating a comms plan, because in case I haven’t mentioned it before, my favorite favorite thing to do in PR is crisis communications.  I’ve been working through people who see me on a regular basis, mainly colleagues who this will tangentially effect. I’ll hit a few more of those people as well as those who I feel need to hear from me personally vs. through the grape vine in the next week, and then will start to go more broadly once I know more on the 31^st.

I’m even putting together a reactive QA, that covers many of the questions in my own head, as well as the responses to the awkward conversations I’ve now had over and over…

Me: Found a lump, blah, blah, blah, I have breast cancer.

Them: Oh, no! I’m so sorry.

Me: Thanks, me too.

Them: What can I do?  (See, the problem with being a proactive person like me, is you tend to collect those kinds of friends… who all need to DO something)
Me: Honestly, there is really nothing TO do right now.  I guess try not to smack me too hard upside the head when I seem distracted? Or be there for my mom & boys.  Hubby and mom are at the top of the freaking out list.  I think I’m actually at the bottom.  There is no choice here. I’m planning to kick its ass. I’m going to ninja the breast cancer right out of my breast. 

But on the up side, I’d always planned to get breast reduction surgery… this way insurance CAN’T turn me down, right?

For the moment I’m sticking with the eating part at least of my 20/20 program.  I feel like I was JUST taking control of my body, and now it’s being taken away… but I can control what I put in my mouth. So that’s something.

On July 8, when I’d found the lump, but hadn’t yet talked to doctors, I did a workout that involves me walking up and down a REALLY steep hill by my house. It’s on a semi-secluded road, and I composed a little bit of a blog while I was trudging up and dancing down the hill, but with my mind centered on my boob, I didn’t bother to ever write it. 

The gist is that the “Jimmy Eat World,” song, “The Middle,” came on, and felt like a perfect analogy for the being in the middle of changing my body, but since my diagnosis the chorus keeps running through my head, and has become a small addition to what I sing when my son needs a little extra help getting to sleep:

It just takes some time,

Little girl you’re in the middle of the ride,

Everything, everything will be just fine,

Everything, everything will be all right, all right.

Because that, my friends, is the plan. Everything will be all right.  I absolutely refuse to believe anything else.

I found a lump

And honestly, although the diet has been going well, it’s about all I’ve been able to think about since.

Since most people who I pretend are reading this care in my head about the workout & weight loss stuff, I’ll tell you that the first week on 20/20, I lost 8.2 lbs.  And I weigh in again this afternoon think I’ll continue doing well, although I’ve done less working out on my own because I’m in a weird head place. The diet piece has been relatively easy, I just drink a lot of shakes, and can’t eat a lot of stuff. I’ve found things that I like for the other foods and keep eating the same thing because I don’t have the mental energy to be creative about it yet.  But although I WANTED popcorn when I went to the movies the other day, I didn’t eat it. And that was fine.

But today, I feel like my entire existence is centered on my left breast.  I guess it was two weeks ago now, I was showering, and I usually lift each one to wash, but didn’t.  And with the weight down, I noticed a spot that didn’t feel right.  So I felt it again, tried the other side, and felt again.  There it is, a largish (approx. 2 cm) smooth oval.  I didn’t tell hubby, since I was afraid he’d go into panic mode, and I wouldn’t get to go to work, and I had meetings I wanted to get to… but I did a little research online.  What I felt sounded like a cyst. OK, cyst. I can totally deal with that.

Told the hubby that night, made him feel my boob.  First time ever I’ve had to push for THAT! He felt it too.  After the thing that happened with my appendix last year, I didn’t want to see anyone else at my Dr’s practice, so I waiting until I knew she was back from vacation, and e-mailed.  I already have a physical scheduled for next Monday, but wanted to know if she was OK waiting that long.  She said no.  I saw her last Saturday.

On physical exam, she also thought that it felt cyst-like, but wanted to get a full exam.  Mammogram time.

Yesterday, I had the mammogram.  This was actually my second one, I went in 6 years ago at age 32 because I had some milky discharge from my left breast quite some time after I’d quit breast feeding.  It came up clear, but there are a couple of things that I wish I’d remembered.

1)      Wear flats.  I think I’ve mentioned this, but I’m a relatively tall woman at 5’8” and I like to wear heels. Yesterday I had on some really cute Tom’s wedges… which made me approx. 5’11”.   This is not helpful to the techs who must manipulate my massive boob in their machine. Plus, you have to stand there for a while, so flats just would have been smarter. The annoying thing was that I had flip flops in the car & just didn’t change.

2)      Wear pants.  Since it was a warm day for Seattle, I wore a lovely pink dress because I wanted to feel pretty & confident.  Which worked until I got there & they told me to take everything off from the waist up & I realized that all I had was underwear from the waist down.  Not a big deal, the gown was long enough, but still, I would have loved the yoga pants that were also in my workout bag in the car.

My appointment was scheduled at 2:40p, so I figured I’d have plenty of time to make it to my trainer at 6p, even with a 45 min drive.  Not so much.

First, they needed additional mammograms in more specific areas.  On both breasts. Twice.  This started to make me nervous.  By all means, let’s be thorough, but really, mammograms do NOT feel good… WTF?  More than an hour later, it was time to go into ultrasound, and there I saw a radiologist.  They needed the additional pictures because what they saw on the initial mammogram made them suspicious. There was not only the lump I could feel, which is right at the skin, but another in my left breast.  And on more spot that looked different from 6 years ago on my right breast. 

It went on from there, and I ended up having a core biopsy as well as having two little “clips” put in that would be markers for a surgeon. Me: “But my doctor said if it’s a benign cyst, we’d likely just leave it alone.” Dr: “We are doing the biopsy to be sure, but what we are seeing indicates it is most likely malignant and you will need surgery.”

Oh.

So now I get to wait.  I probably have breast cancer. I will know in the next 12-48 hours. I have an aunt who is a 15 year survivor (so far). As I told my mom, if I have cancer, I will just have to be a 50-80 year survivor.  If I still want to be alive when I’m 118. 

But I can’t help wonder if this Saturday will be the last time I’ll have a birthday party for my son.  And even not, how I will function when the view from the top is no longer my cartoon-like K-cup boobs. And all I can really do is wait. 

I’m not really a very patient person… but stay tuned.  Perhaps this big girl will be trying to beat cancer. Sigh.

DNS, Chubby Chasers, and Wall-E

I always start these things apologizing for not writing in a while, but honestly, people who read them either know me and know what I’ve been up to… or don’t know me and likely aren’t waiting with baited breath for the next installment of my life, so either way it’s a little silly. 

The update since my last post is that I wimped out on both of my 13.1 that I’d signed up for.  I’ve said it before dead last > did not finish > did not start.  There are few things more embarrassing to me than committing to something and not even stepping over the starting line. There are several reasons for my DNS including sore ankles (sometimes I which I had cankles, then I might not roll them quite so easily) the cold from hell settling in my chest so that a deep breath = a coughing fit, but it really all comes down to excuses.  And since this is the one place where I don’t let myself get away with that, we’ll settle for truth. I pulled another pill-bug, and in my self-pity/depression spiral, didn’t got off my butt to train. As discussed before, I can do ANYTHING that I train for.  And when I don’t train I just don’t get as much done.  My husband actually asked me not to do the races, because he was worried that I would collapse along the way.  I don’t believe that I would have, but my self-esteem has been low enough that instead of pushing back I caved.

I’ve decided on a brand new tactic on getting rid of the excuses as well as my butt, and my current plan is to blog it here, since I find it therapeutic, but thought I’d explain how some of the decision came together before getting to what the decision is.  And just so you know, if I don’t share as much as I’d like, it’s not because I haven’t written at least a blog a day in my head… it’s because I have a lot of work ahead of me to get fit, so I’m hoping to have less PC time.

A couple of weeks ago for work, I had to travel to Miami.  I could go into how my job has changed and why I was there and blah blah, but it doesn’t really relate to my story. I was hosting my spokesperson and a reporter, as well as meeting with spokespeople from our customer company, so a total of 6 of us spent around 5 hours together touring the customer’s facility and checking out their technology, and one of the guys from the other company winked at me a few times.  That night at dinner I made a comment to my exec that he was a winker… and she said he didn’t wink at HER at all, so he was probably hitting on me. I always assume that the reason it doesn’t occur to me that someone could be hitting on me is the fact that I’ve spent the last 20 years with the same guy, but my next thought confirmed for me that it goes a little deeper.  When I realized that there was a moment when his hand lingered on my arm, so he could have been hitting on me, my first thought was, “Gee, he didn’t seem like he’d be a chubby chaser.”

I can’t imagine another reflexive thought that would better encapsulate my total lack of self-esteem right now than the idea that a successful, attractive man might find ME attractive, than to deny that he would be a chubby chaser. WTF?! 

Flash to last week, doing movie night with my son, he picked Pixar’s Wall-E.  And all I could think was, if I don’t get off my ass, I’m going to turn into those people on the ship- with no bones or muscles, just fat. 

I’d already decided to try a new tactic, the 20/20 Lifestyles program.  It’s run through one of the local health clubs, and combines physician supervision with a dietician once a week, trainer 3x/week and even a “lifestyle counselor” aka therapist every other week to get to total weight loss. Depending on how much you have to lose, it can range from crazy expensive to obscenely expensive (hint, I fall in the most $$$ range) and is only covered by insurance for ONE local company who I happen to work for as a vendor… so not a part of their benefits program. But I have had clients who have been successful, and after doing a bunch of research online where I wasn’t able to find any negative reviews, I decided to go for it.

So at the moment, I’ve just met with my doctor, and am waiting to meet with my dietician for the first time.  I had my measurements taken last week, and 53.6% of my body is fat.  I’m not sure how that happened, and how I got here, but if I ever want to catch up with my kid when he’s running 5k, I have to do something.  If I want to hold his babies (I know, he’s not even 9 until this weekend so that’s WAY far away, but I like to plan ahead) then I have to do SOMETHING.  And if I refuse to ever, ever have another DNS, I have to do something. 

Being here today is my start.