“ I just came in because I found a little knot…”
“The doctor will see you now…”
“It won’t aspirate, we’ll have to do a biopsy…”
It was all perfectly routine. There really wasn’t anything to worry about. Everyday more women go through this than buy handbags at department stores. I was determined not to borrow trouble. I wasn’t going to let fear get the upper hand. I didn’t even tell anyone that I was going in. I’d all but forgotten about it until the next morning.
I was standing in the kitchen when my phone rang, and I knew. Not with a half knowing but with a jolt that seized me so hard liquid spilled out of my eyes before I said hello. I listened to her voice asking me to come back and I wrote something down with a crayon that was lying on the counter. I smelled leftover bacon from breakfast.
“Thank you for calling.” I lied through my teeth as I broke the crayon in half, and then I completely lost track of everything. I guess I fainted—I’m not really sure what happened. But the next thing I knew they were all standing over me--my daughter, my son, my husband, my neighbor…and a paramedic.
Mom? Mommy? Honey? Kathy? Lady?
I thought I was dead. Actually I thought I might as well be. Breast cancer?
“I’m fine.” I said, lying for the second time that day. I felt stupid as I got up off the floor. Now what was I going to say? No one knew about the call I had just gotten. No one knew I had even gone to the doctor. I literally wished I were bleeding so there would be something to show what was going on inside me.
Finding out I had cancer was like going to sleep in my own bed and suddenly waking up in the middle of a boxing ring. Out of the clear blue I am standing toe to toe with the Heavyweight Champion of the World, the crowd is looking on, and I am in my pajamas and don’t even know how to throw a punch.
At first I was angry. I mean angry. People don’t like you to be angry, but it’s totally appropriate. Cancer is a terrorist. That dawned on me on September 11th, 2001. I sat in front of the TV with my family and the rest of the nation watching the twin towers fall and crying my eyes out. But hours into it, I knew a lot of my tears were coming from a deeper place inside. I was angry for New York, and I was angry for myself. Cancer is a foreign invader that unexpectedly attacks and cruelly changes the landscape of a woman’s body. New York is still New York, but it has been changed forever. And so have I.
On the inside I’m all I ever was—but we live in a world where the outside matters so much, too much. I’ve never had great breasts, but good enough I guess. They seemed to please my husband; they fed my babies, and definitely made my stomach look smaller. I didn’t want to live without them—that’s not true. I didn’t want to have to live without them. But I also didn’t want to die in order to keep them. This is not a hard choice intellectually, but when were breasts intellectual?
Everything in me wanted to go back in time to the moment before I got that call—but it’s not possible. The bell sounded and Round I was already over. The only choice I really had was whether or not to go forward. I headed to my corner to rest and to prepare my strategy for the next round of my fight.