Beyond the Bow

When you think of breast cancer, you can't help but think of the pretty pink bow and flowery messages of bravery. I am not brave. I am a mom. The choices I have had to make thus far in my fight against cancer really weren't choices at all. They were sacrifices. That’s what we do as mothers, we sacrifice. When I was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer and the BRCA1 gene, I did not choose an aggressive treatment plan; I needed an aggressive treatment plan. My son is not yet a year old, so it only makes sense to put my body, and potentially my quality of life, on the line to ensure his quality of life. As a new mom, how could I not?

I decided to start this blog as a way to share what I have been through, but also to raise awareness and have a candid conversation of what breast cancer looks like beyond the pink bow. Young women with breast cancer face many unique challenges. As someone who had to begin treatment postpartum, mommy-hood for me has had many unexpected twists and turns. While this initial post provides a synopsis, I envision future posts will explore certain aspects in greater detail.

Flash back to late summer 2014. I found a lump in my left breast and somehow I just knew that it was cancer. With one hand on my breast, my other hand rubbed my growing belly…my baby. I had an “easy” pregnancy and there were no signs that I was sick. But somehow, I just knew…this was the beginning of something big. I was induced after my son was a week late. I was in labor for nearly 48 hours, and after pushing for 2 ½ hours, my beautiful baby boy, Franklin, was finally here! Women don’t often discuss the trauma of birth. Maybe it’s all the chemicals flooding the brain and body that help us to forget. I still remember looking at my husband, crying and accepting defeat. I thought I was going to die, and I told him that I couldn’t do it anymore. He held my leg and said something to the extent of needing to push and that, yes, I could do it. His words aren’t important; it was his touch, his very presence that told me I could do it. I was six minutes away from being taken off to have a c-section, but instead I found the last ounce of strength I possessed and I brought my baby into the world, tearing myself apart.

Wounds heal. With the birth of my son still fresh in my mind, I never second-guessed my decision to undergo a bilateral mastectomy. I was not afraid of the physical pain. I knew I could get through the surgery because after giving birth, I knew I could do anything! Emotionally, I cannot express the feelings of loss that entered my mind leading up to the surgery when I looked down while nursing Frankie. Breast feeding is beautiful and I wish our society were more accepting of nursing anytime, anywhere. While I was devastated that I could not continue, I was also grateful for the three months that we had. Feeding my son from my breast was the most natural, nurturing act I have ever had the privilege of experiencing.

My experience in the hospital after surgery was terrible. Those details will be shared later. What I will share, however, is that despite a successful surgery, I still ended up having necrotic tissue. The skin on my left side was left pretty thin to ensure they got everything, and it ended up dying as a result of lacking blood flow. It turned black. It smelled bad. A week from my mastectomy I was back in surgery to remedy the situation and luckily all went well. The most difficult part post-surgery was not being able to hold Frank. I had two drainage tubes on either side, so a total of four tubes coming out of my body…that looked like toys to him! I was also very sore and the weight of him against my chest was too much. I knew that it would only be temporary, but being a new mom who is not able to pick up and comfort her son was excruciating. They gave me narcotics for the pain, but there was nothing I could take to find relief from the feelings of guilt and longing. Only time.

Not long after surgery, my husband and I received the full pathology report. They found my nipples “unremarkable” to which we both scoffed. I had great nipples! While the cancer hadn’t spread to my nipples, it did however spread to my lymph nodes. Initially an MRI and CT scan would come back negative for cancer in my bones or organs. The cancer markers, though, all came back showing that mine was very aggressive, and we knew that we needed to meet with an oncologist and move forward with treatment asap.

In addition to hair loss and a myriad of other unfortunate side effects, chemotherapy has a nasty habit of putting young women in a post-menopausal state. Some recover, but many are left infertile. My husband, my doctors, and I therefore discussed the option of freezing embryos before I began treatment. This involved daily shots of hormone therapy to stimulate my ovaries to produce eggs. After about two weeks of self-injections, I went into another surgery to have my eggs harvested. While they were able to retrieve 13 eggs and successfully fertilize 9, only one embryo ended up being viable. I was crushed, but there was no time to mourn. I had to get started on chemotherapy and could not delay treatment any longer.

The first round of my dose dense A/C chemo hit me like a truck. I ended up in the hospital for five days with a critically low white blood count. A repeat CT scan was ordered to check for infection, and instead found three new suspicious spots on my liver. I somehow convinced myself that it was a bad scan. I was going to beat this and be a survivor, telling people years from now during some marathon about how I had cancer. When I was wheeled in for a liver biopsy I started to have doubts. 

The procedure is guided by an ultrasound and when the tech put the wand on my body and started identifying the location of each tumor on the screen, I knew. Just like I had known when I found the lump in my breast, I knew it was more cancer. They proceeded with the biopsy amidst my full-on breakdown. I hadn’t really cried up to this point. It’s difficult to explain, but my liver biopsy was the hardest thing I have had to do in my life; I would tell my husband later that it was worse than child birth. There was no pain- they numb the area and the nurses pushed morphine so I would stop tensing up my body. But I was awake and very much aware of being stabbed in a vital organ, repeatedly. The pressure and tugging coupled with my thoughts of little Frankie without a mommy sent me over the edge. My husband was not allowed in the room, so I closed my eyes and I thought of him holding my leg when our son was born. I thought of his eyes and the reassurance behind them. I knew it would be over soon, but this time I wouldn’t be getting a baby out of the raw deal, I’d be getting more cancer, and so I sobbed uncontrollably those big, ugly tears with snot dripping down my nose as the doctor inserted the needle up under my rib cage and into my liver, repeatedly.

With the BRCA1 gene, I knew at some point I would have surgery to remove my ovaries to reduce the risk of recurrence of breast cancer as well as the development of ovarian cancer. When my diagnosis did indeed jump to stage IV, the cancer having metastasized to my liver, we knew we had to act fast and shut down the production of estrogen in my body. I found myself in surgery yet again, this time to remove both ovaries as well as my fallopian tubes. It is usually ill-advised to have surgery while undergoing chemotherapy because of the risk of infection. It was a risk I was happy to take in an effort to hopefully minimize the spreading of this cancer. The procedure was laparoscopic and the recovery period was pretty short. Still, I ended up with three more scars on my abdomen, a physical reminder that I was done making babies. After chemotherapy, I will go into surgery again to complete the hysterectomy and remove my uterus. Part of my treatment plan includes hormone therapy that has an ironic side effect of causing uterine cancer, so the surgery is the lesser of two evils. The doctors explained that at stage IV, the likelihood of ever stopping treatment to get pregnant for 9 months is slim. It could literally kill me. So I decided to trade in all my “girly bits” and the future babies I had dreamt of having, to ensure my health and to live for the baby that I do have.

When people tell me that I am brave, I appreciate the sentiment, but I do not consider myself brave. It’s a very basic, if not animalistic, instinct to protect ones young at all costs. So of course I did not hesitate to sacrifice my appearance or temporary well-being so that I could continue to look after my boy. I have literally been ripped apart, but through this experience, I have been made whole. We are all flesh and bone, and I for one have never been more comfortable in my own skin. I’ve never been more confident in the decisions I have had to make. I am not brave. I am a mom. I wear my sacrifices as scars, some that you can see, many that I pray you’ll never have to know. And I wear them all proudly.

Photo Courtesy of Love Is All You Need Photography

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