While I figure out this wordpress site and learn how to bedazzle it a bit more, I thought I’d at least get my first post out.  So many have asked how it was that I found out that I had breast cancer.  I can tell you it was not routine.  I wish I could say that I found it during my dedicated, monthly self breast checks but nope.  I have never been good at doing those.  I’ll be honest when I say that I did them maybe twice a year.  Maybe.  Kind of sad since if that maybe is not accurate, it means that I did it one time a year!!  But, c’est la vie, right?  I am not one to live in the past.  You just can’t.  So, moving on.  Back in February, I noticed that my periods had changed.  They were normally very regular.  On time.  No issues.  Until about February.  They became very frequent and uncomfortable and heavy.  I wasn’t yet 41, but I looked at some research that suggested that I might be going through something called peri-menopause.  And I was like ‘wooooo whooo’!!!  The sooner the better!!  After several visits to my local health care clinic which is very limited due to our location, I was referred to our larger home base medical center in Landstuhl, Germany.  Due to the number of patients they were seeing, they were already overbooked so I was denied an appointment.  It took some more persistence but I was finally referred to an OB/GYN specialist in Soignies, Belgium.  So, five months after initially taking my menstrual concerns to a doctor, I had an appointment.  On the day of my appointment, the doctor did a regular OB/GYN check but she also did a breast exam (THANK GOD)!  I am certain she found the lump.  She didn’t say anything to clue me in, but she did walk me from OB/GYN to radiology and schedule a mammogram for two days later.  I thought it was just routine in this country.  Two days later, I went in for a mammogram (dreading it after hearing so many horror stories).  I think it’s both a blessing and a curse that there is very little English spoken at the hospital I was at.  There isn’t a patient liaison there either so there was a lot of very simple communication.  During the mammogram, it was communicated to me that I would need an ultra-sound.  They brought me into another room where a doctor (I assume – but there are no introductions here and no name tags and everyone wears white coats to include the cleaning staff) did an ultra-sound.  He said one word “biopsy” to me and right then and there, they did a biopsy.  Everything felt so fast but to me, they were just being overly cautious.  In my head, I was zero risk for breast cancer.  No one on either side of my family has had breast cancer.  Actually, I don’t think anyone has ever had any cancer in my families.  Which tells me that we might have been due, but that’s besides the point, right?  That happened on a Friday and I went home and just forgot about it. In my mind, there was NO WAY that I had breast cancer.  I wasn’t concerned at all.  About a week later, I plugged in my dead phone (story of my life!) and when it charged, I had missed several calls from the OB/GYN office.  The last call was a message at 9 p.m. at night that said ‘We got the results of your biopsy back and called Dr. Watkins who is on vacation but we are scheduling an appointment for you to come in and talk with a doctor about your results’.  Again, my first thought was that it didn’t seem good because why would they call a doctor on vacation if the results were good?  The second thought was that the results must have been inconclusive and it probably meant I had to go in and do it all again.  I know!!!  How delusional can I get??  I got up the next morning and went for a run and when I came home, my cell phone was ringing and it was my local clinic.  They had been called regarding my results and wanted me to come in asap, now if possible to discuss the biopsy and encouraged me to bring my husband if I wished.  I knew then.  It was like all of the air left my lungs.  I had a hard time taking a deep breath as we walked to the clinic.  We sat down and were given the news that the biopsy came back showing cancer.  They identified it as Invasive Ductal Adenocarcinoma, 5 cm, HER triple positive. All of that just means that it is a very aggressive, invasive type of cancer and the triple positive, while it sound like it should be a good thing, is actually one of the things that you don’t want to hear.  The triple positive is sometimes a cancer that doesn’t always respond to treatment.  Or it will respond, but it can become immune to it within the first year.  We can talk later about this, but I’m not scared of that because I have a doctor who knows what he is doing.

So, that’s it.  I went home and told my kids who were probably as equally shocked as we were.  I called my families.  And, I posted a note on my Wet Hen website.  For those just catching this, The Wet Hens is a sailing organization in Hawaii that I belong to with a tradition of teaching military women how to sail.  When I was in Hawaii, I went through the course as a student and had the honor of becoming an instructor and to this day, those have been some of the best days in my life.  Those ladies were and still are like family to me so when I thought to tell my family, the Wet Hens were in that group.  The next morning, when I knew that my kids would need their friends to rely on for support and news would be getting out very fast in this small community, I posted a status on my facebook.  I deliberated about that because it just felt too impersonal.  There were so many faces and names of people I just wanted to tell either in person or a phone call or a personal e-mail… but in our fishbowl of a place that we lived in, by the end of the week, I would be HIV positive and on my deathbed in a German hospital if I didn’t get the word out the way it really was.  A true game of telephone – subject line; my health and it felt important enough to just spread the word as best as I knew how, through the power of social media.  In the upcoming days, I was so touched by so many warm, thoughtful, caring messages, I was glad I did it in the end.

I am incredibly blessed that our family doctor is also our friend.  The incredible I. family with Dr. Dan at the helm have always been special people to us.  But, Dr. Dan jumped in and made himself so available for anything and he researched and talked to oncologists and called around and found a couple of places he recommended for treatment.  I feel a little bit bad because I think I was still overwhelmed.  I didn’t know the right questions to ask, I didn’t know if I really wanted to hear any more news.  I just wanted someone to tell me what to do and where to go.  Poor Dr. Dan ended up talking more to Mark about all of this.  In the meantime, another Dan in my life is my performing arts centre theater director, Dan L.  He was calling me several times a day and e-mailing me and urging me to check out a breast cancer doctor named Professor Patrick Neven.  Apparently this guy is the rockstar of the Belgian breast cancer world.  He works in a University Hospital in Leuven etc. etc. etc.  I was not an advocate for myself at this point.  Again, I just wanted someone to tell me where to go and what to do to get this treated.  Dan L. persisted and we asked Dr. Dan to check it out.  After getting the thumbs up from Dr. Dan, we decided on a treatment center and proceeded to get an appointment.  If you google Professor Neven’s name, you will find pages of information and interviews.  I truly felt like I was meeting a celebrity the first time I met him.  I feel so fortunate because I honestly think that to get a doctor of that quality in the states, I’d be on a very long waiting list.  I can’t say enough about how confident I am in my choice and I have two very special Dans to thank for their role in that.

The next couple of weeks were scary.  Heart pounding, blood draining out of my face, hot/cold sweats scary, panic inducing scary.  Because of the type I have, I truly think that the doctors anticipated that it had spread.  We asked about my statistics and were given the big “IF it hasn’t spread… BUT we’ll have to see other test results first”… kind of speech.  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit here that there were days that I couldn’t look at my kids in the eye.  Or that I wasn’t cataloging my closets to see what I could rid of now so my family wouldn’t have to.  Or that there weren’t a couple of nights that I drank vodka tonics until I could finally sleep.  None of that is positive or good, but that’s where I was.  Sheer panic that my time on earth was coming to an end sooner rather than later.  That, the grandchildren that I so desperately want (NOT THIS SOON!!) would never meet me.  Complete panic.  But, test result after test result came in and things were looking up.  First the lung x-ray and liver ultrasounds were clear.  I hugged that lady so hard, I think I hurt her.  Then, Professor Neven called and said my blood work came back clear.  Later the lymph node would be identified as a spread but bone scan, PET scan, MRI etc… all would be clear for spread.  I felt like this was a miracle given the type of cancer I have and the size.  Professor Neven said it could have been growing in my body for 10 – 15 years.

Needless to say, I’m a week past my first chemo treatment and doing awesome.  I’m absolutely sure that while this may be a shitty and boring year (I have to give up sugar, red meat and alcohol and I have to sleep a lot!) I will be done with this and it will be behind me.  I’m not excited about losing my hair.  Some people say that there is a chance that I won’t, but for me to believe that feels like false hope.  I have been told by each doctor and each nurse that the type of chemo I am getting will cause my hair to fall out quickly.  And, I have real hope for my future so I’ll just have to deal with the temporary hair loss when it happens.

My blogs will develop and hopefully be funnier and more entertaining than this first one, but just to get started, here it is.  Now…  all of you women out there reading this!!  SELF EXAMS!!!  MAMMOGRAM APPOINTMENTS!!  If there is ONE person who either can sleep peacefully knowing they were checked and cleared or one person who gets detected so early this isn’t going to be a big ordeal in their lives, I’d be so happy!!  Lots of love from Belgium.  Signing off.