10 years cancer free!!
And this is my story. This is my daughter Gracie’s story, too, for it was the day Gracie broke her leg that I went in for my biopsy…
This is a story of victory.
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I am thankful it is a happy one… that is, 10 years still cancer free for me – and Gracie all mended up!
I run in to the front room to find my daughter, Gracie laying on the floor screaming in pain. She was 6 at the time. My other daughters were trying to explain to me what happened — she was running and had slipped on the floor. We had our cleaning people here and Amelia was mopping the tile floor. Gracie ran chasing the cat and stopped at the end of our couch — one foot on the tile floor, one foot on the carpet. But the tile was wet, which sent Gracie’s foot and body sliding in a very weird twisted position.
It wasn’t making sense to me at the time. Gracie wasn’t in the kitchen, nor was she on the carpet by the end of the couch – rather she was a ways into the family room. My brain couldn’t figure out how she had fell and got where she was. Days later I found out that my oldest daughter, Elizabeth, had tried to carry her to me, but Gracie was screaming in pain so she laid her back down and came to get me. She thought when she tried to move her that she made it worse, so the poor girl didn’t tell me until days later. It was then, too, that Elizabeth told me that she heard Gracie’s leg crack when she was falling. A big *SNAP*. Had I known that, I would never have tried to move her myself, as I thought she just ripped a muscle or ligament or something.
I tried to move her but she just screamed. I didn’t know what to do -so I just quickly packed her up and laid her on the bench seat in the van – she was in so much pain.
Every time I had to brake, every bump, every little movement made her scream in pain. I went to prompt care (which was closest to my house). I ran in to get someone to help me, but no one would come out to the car to see her. They told me they had a 2 hour wait and I would just have to wait or take her to emergency. I was so upset — at that point I should have called an ambulance. The thought of now driving another 8 miles was just unimaginable. But I got back in the car and headed for emergency with Gracie screaming in the back, trying to use calming words to comfort her. I tried to call Steve at this point to let him know I had to go to emergency instead of prompt care, but my phone was dead, and my car battery charger had to be bent in the cord just right to make it work. So there I am trying to drive on the freeway, trying to hold the cord just right, while trying to call him and keep Gracie relatively calm. But my phone would NOT work!
Up to this point, I was holding myself together. I pulled up in front of emergency, came around to the side of the car and opened the van door. I was telling Gracie that I needed to leave her for a moment so that I could go in and get some help – obviously she’s screaming for me not to leave her. Just then two doctors were walking by and they stopped to ask me what had happened. I told them she hurt her leg and then I lost it…I just looked at them with tears. They sent the guard in to get a wheelchair. I couldn’t even squeak out a word to say that she was so hurt she couldn’t sit in a chair. So out came the chair, finally now getting a hold of myself, I told them I needed a bed. When they went back in the bed, the guard asked me if I needed anything – I told him I needed a phone so I could call my husband. He gave me his — sweet man — one act of kindness that will forever stick out in my mind — a sweet mercy God blessed me with.
No one wanted to be the one to move her to the gurney, so I just did it quickly her screaming the whole time. Once in emergency they gave her some morphine, but it didn’t really help. The Dr came in and just looking at her leg said in amazement that she had broke her femur. I guess femur breaks are unusual and they maybe see one in a year. The xray confirmed it. It was all a great trial of my strength as every time they had to move her, weigh her, you name it, she would be screaming out in pain.
Gracie was hungry after a while and we tried to feed her but she just got sick. She was sooooo miserable!
We needed to wait until the pediatric orthopedic dr came to talk to us about what needed to be done. We waited for hours. Finally it came the time when I need to go do my biopsy (called a stereotactic biopsy), which was just across the parking lot from where we were. So I figured I might as well go do it as we were waiting.
That was an ordeal. It was bizarre — a specially designed examination table where I lie face down, and then the table is raised and the double needle biopsy procedure is performed by the doctor and a nurse beneath the table. I cried through the whole thing, not so much for what was going on with me, but because I finally had a moment away from Gracie where I could release all my stress emotionally without upsetting her.
The Orthopedic Dr came while I was at the biopsy. He said that the best thing would be to have this external fixator put on her leg surgically. That surgery was set for 7am the next morning.
THE NEXT MORNING????????? Are you kidding me?? I was so upset. She had to spend the whole night in pain??? She was admitted into the hospital and we braced ourselves for the long night a head… and what a horrible night it was. We were in some overflow area of the hospital, not even in a room, so when she screamed it just echoed everywhere down the hallways. I was so exhausted by the next morning. Gracie would get upset if I got upset and would not let me leave her side — so a night of trying to keep myself in check and come up with comforting words stretched me to my very limits. Praise God for His strength, especially when ours is depleted!!!
Thankfully, also, we had some very competent nurses that tried different things to make her comfortable. One of them had noticed that she was twitching — which I guess is common when you have a break that the muscle twitches around it — so every time it would twitch, it would cause her bones to move — lots of pain. So they gave her some valium to calm her muscles. So she did sleep a bit — maybe 6 or 8 times of 10 minutes each over the whole of the night.
The surgery the next morning, Friday December 5th, was quick — like a half hour tops.
And this is what the break looked like in an xray. Gracie was hospitalized for 6 days.
It takes two days to get results back from a biopsy and because I did mine on a Thursday, that meant that the results would not be in until Monday.
Over the next couple of days getting smile out of Grace was impossible.
Monday morning finally came around. I called the Dr’s office to see if my results had come in. The receptionist told me that my Dr had the day off and made me an appointment at 4pm with another Dr in the office to go over the results when they came in, which she said, should be in within the hour. 10 minutes later she called back — said that Dr. Masserman was coming in after all and they’d like to me to see me and discuss the results in a 1/2 hour (his office is on the hospital grounds as well).
Dang… that wasn’t good news. I called my friend Thelma and cried on the phone — “They want to see me now…” She tried to encourage me not to get upset until there was something to get upset about. But I new…. I knew from the fact that Dr Masserman was coming into the office on his day off… I knew from the look on the receptionist face when I walked in… I knew when the Dr Masserman was asking many questions on and on about Grace instead of just telling me the results were clear… I knew, and finally he said it: Stage 1a Breast cancer… kind of just like hung in the air…
We left the office and I fell apart. Up to this point, not many had even known I was going in for the biopsy… How was I going to break this to my parents, my kids, my extended family, my friends? So I threw it on Steve. Told him he needed to call everyone, because I couldn’t take having to retell this over and over and over.
My friend, Thelma, came to the hospital to stay with Gracie while we went to my appointment. She brought my daughter, Elizabeth with her. Thelma and her had to endure Gracie’s physical therapy while we were gone. They were in another room while the physical therapist was working with her, but she would just scream the whole time and it went through every wall. Enough to make anyone’s nerves rattle.
My friend Sue, came to the hospital to spend some time with me. This is a picture she took of me while she was there. And this is where I stayed, slept, etc for the 6 days Gracie was in the hospital. My eyes are red from crying…
I mourned and wept for 3 days
straight, always trying to hide it from Gracie, as it made her very sad to see me sad and she had enough to deal with. I mourned for the loss of my health. I wept for the uncertainty that it all meant. I also, obviously, was mourning for Grace and the pain and suffering she was having and would continue to have for months. I mourned that I wouldn’t be able to have any more children. That was a huge blow to me. I wasn’t mentally done yet, even though we had been unable to get pregnant for the 5 years prior to this, there was still hope that maybe God would open that door again, but it was definitely being shut.
The nurses were very concerned for me as well as Gracie. We were treated very well by everyone. They offered much comfort to me during those days.
Gracie did better and better each day. Moving was a screaming ordeal, but even that improved every day.
This was Gracie ready to come home.
Grace got out of the hospital completely needy — wheelchair bound and had to have everything done for her.
We set her up in my room next to my bed. Thankfully we still had a little toddler bed up in the attic.
My surgery to remove the tumor was that next Monday (15th). My mom came down to help out as Grace need to be lifted and carried and I was not going to be able to do it (during the day when my hubby was gone).
Gracie needed to be taught how to clean her pin holes, which needed to be cleaned several times a day with peroxide and a q-tip. Gracie did not like to see her leg, so we kept it covered with an ace bandage most of the time.
The surgeon thought he could go in and just do a lumpectomy to remove the cancer and some follow-up radiation… everything sounded so neat and easy, but, alas, the results from the Dec 15 lumpectomy revealed that not only did they not get a clean margin, I had a second type of breast cancer as well. This was located in the milk ducts.
Another lumpectomy on the 22nd trying to get a clean margin. About 1/8 to a 1/4 of the breast was removed between the two surgeries. And because it was all the way to the breast wall, it left an heavy indentation in the breast tissue.
On Christmas Eve I got the test results by phone from my surgeon — the tests showed that it was all over my breast (still no clean margin). I would need a mastectomy to remove the cancer completely from the breast. I had also finally gotten the pathology results. My tumor was a very aggressive one. My surgeon scheduled me for an oncologist appointment that afternoon.
Thinking back, it was even a “fluke” that I had gone in for my mammogram. I only did so because we had met our deductible for that year. Otherwise, I’m not sure that I would have found it important enough to go in for one. We make a gazillon “random” choices a day. This one turned out to be the one that saved my life. Because of the aggressiveness of the tumor, it would have been a matter of time before it had metastasized and it would have spread quickly… and then this would have been a story…
Off to an afternoon appointment with the Oncologist (still Christmas eve). More bad news from him. It wouldn’t be enough
just to have the mastectomy, I also needed chemo because there was like a 40% chance, because of the blood vessels that tumor creates, that it had spread into my blood stream where it could deposit somewhere — even though the initial tests showed that it hadn’t metastasized to my lymph nodes.
I didn’t want to tell my parents, who were at my house.
I couldn’t bear dealing with their fears and sadness while trying to come to grips with mine. So although we told them about the mastectomy (they were next to me when I got the call at home), I didn’t tell them about the chemo, which I found out about at the oncologist’s, until after New Years and we had the test results of the CT and PET scans.
Steve, earlier in the month, had written out “NOEL” on our gate with Christmas lights. When we drove in to the driveway from the oncologist appointment that Christmas Eve, he looked up there and said “Noel?? We should change it too: Oh hell!” I love my hubby and they way he makes me laugh even when everything around us is caving in.
I had the tests the day after Christmas and on Monday, Dec 29th finally… Good news. It had not metastasized!! But that following Monday, I would already start chemo…
In preparation for my hair falling out, I came home from my appointment and cut my hair short.
Chemo started January 5th and went for 4 sessions 3 weeks apart ending on March 5. The first one was really bad; I spent the most of the night laying on the floor of the bathroom. The next three days that nausea would not leave me. I remember calling the doctor on that Thursday in tears — will it EVER go away???! I had to drink large amounts of water to rinse the chemo from my system – but I could only suck small amounts at a time through a water bottle laying down. Finally on Day 6, I felt a bit better and started to eat. The next week I had to go and get my blood tested. I had to have one red blood cell shot — and then had to go in every day for 5 days for white blood cell shots. To this day, I dont’ think I have had anything quite so painful. They give it to you in the back of your upper arm very slowly. This causes your white blood cells to start producing, which your bone marrow makes. So all my bones would start to hurt horribly (especially my jaw) and I would run a high fever. This lasted about 2 or 3 days after my last shot. Finally the 3rd week I felt back to normal, only to start the whole process over that Friday…
Each successive chemo I wasn’t down for quite as many days — maybe 4, then 3, then 2 — amazing how your body can start to cope with something. Although by the 3rd one, my white blood count would be almost nil when I would go in – so then they gave me this super duper white blood cell shot that would last for a week — It was a $5000 shot! Yikes!
Two weeks to the day after the first session ¾ of my hair fell out in the shower. That was something that even though you prepare yourself for, when it happens it completely blows you away!! I mean, I knew it was coming, but when it actually arrived it was “reality” and I remember leaning over in the shower and just weeping. I mourned my physical appearance – the one that tagged me as a cancer sufferer. I mourned the reality that I would have to walk through this this part of my treatment. I wept for the effect of the chemotherapy on my body. I mourned and wept the whole day. But even with that, the shock and sadness only lasted that day. I was ready to move on. Looking back, the thought of losing my hair was horrible, but once it happened and I got past the shock, it really wasn’t as horrible and is seemed it would be. I shaved the rest of my hair off, and this is how I looked for the next few months.
I mainly did a scarf thingie.
My Mom and I
It was a long haul for Gracie and her physical therapy, which thankfully was here at the house every three days — a very painful road to full mobility.
Here she is so excited to finally get to wear a pair of pants after 3 months.
She limped for a while, but now you’d never know.
Easter 2004
(Oh look — we hadn’t broken our wall out yet into the kitchen!)
Here’s me recovering from my mastectomies.
6 weeks, May
2 months, June
In July we went camping. I laugh at this picture because it looks like Matt and I have matching haircuts!!
August
September
It grew fast, growing almost 1/2 inch a month. It came in thick, and curly in the back — which is so funny because I’ve always had pretty much stick straight thin hair!!!
Alas, the curl is gone and I’m back to straight hair now. (taken on Thanksgiving 2013)
When I was told that I would need to have 4 more years of oncologist appointments 4 or more times a year, it seemed like forever away. 5 years of this! I naively thought that once I had the chemo and mastectomies, I wouldn’t need to do anything else — why? It was all taken care off. Never thought about after care. And now, those 5 more years have passed (and then some). I still need to go 2 or 3 times a year for blood tests, but I am officially done with having yearly CT & PET scans.
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Prognosis: Unfavorable
)…..I mean, I knew I wasn’t hormone receptive (which with breast cancer isn’t good because there isn’t anything they can do to stop it from returning as they can do if you are hormone receptive), and I knew that it was extremely fast growing as my Her2/neu value was the highest it could be: 3+. But one of the things tested for was this cancer marker that determines the likelihood of the cancer returning (the higher the percent the more likely it is to return). High levels of this thing also is a sign that the response to chemotherapy would be poor and because of that long term survival was poor.
Dang!! These things literally took my breath away. I literally couldn’t think and could barely breathe after reading them. That was fear. But fear has no victory here!! As I looked to a sovereign, good and loving God, my fear was removed. He has my good at heart – whether I live or die. I can rest knowing He will never do anything to me that isn’t for my good and the good of those around me. There is such peace in knowing that. 
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
2Bless the LORD, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits;
3Who pardons all [my] iniquities,
Who heals all [my] diseases;
4Who redeems [my] life from the pit,
Who crowns [me] with lovingkindness and compassion;
5Who satisfies [my] years with good things,
So that [my] youth is renewed like the eagle.
Well that’s about it.
~Me
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