A ten point update
What happens when everything goes to hell part three
One: Hah-hah! We’re not out of the woods yet, my friends. Remember how last time the good news was all unofficial? Well, now I have the official news, and it’s not the news I wanted to hear.
Two: You see — I have a very special cancer because I am a very special person. I insisted on the snowflake treatment and so here I’ve got a snowflake cancer. Yes! My lymph nodes were always clear! Yes! My margins were nice and tidy! Yes! The tumor shrank! But the tumor that remained was still very much an active tumor, with a cellularity of 90%. Which means that up until the moment the tumor was removed, one or two of those little bastard cancer cells could have jumped into my bloodstream and is now inner-tubing through my veins like some drunk jerk Magic School Bus just waiting to cause a whole lot of mess somewhere real bad. Metaplastic breast cancer often skips the lymph nodes. Metaplastic breast cancer jumps the velvet ropes and crashes everyone’s nice bottle service.
Three: With this in mind, my oncologist is recommending four and half more months of an oral chemotherapy called Capecitabine. It’s not supposed to cause hair loss. It’s demonstrated successful survival outcomes for triple negative breast cancers. (Though that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any good for metaplastic breast cancer.) The idea is to prevent recurrence by killing off anything that might be sticking around.
Four: I’m getting a second and a third opinion.
Five: I don’t know how to feel. The only good news is my plastic surgeon gave me the okay to drive and exercise (excluding lifting). So I drove to Target and wandered the gift wrapping and greeting card section for hours. The selection rarely changes. I know exactly what’s there. But I still walked up and down the aisles, scanning the shelves for something — I’m not sure what — something that when I saw it I knew it would make me feel better. I gathered a lot of paper goods in my arms — all sorts of useless and wasteful gift wrapping flourishes — and eventually I awkwardly dropped everything. So I put it all in my tote bag, which then made it easier to drift through the messy piles of discounted clothing. I shoved through overstuffed racks, strappy dresses and shirts slipping off their hangers and pooling in the abyss below. I knew it was only one grade better than the stuff I find at Ross — everything comes from the same three factories in China. I marveled at the textile waste before me, wondering if the profit companies make off of fast fashion really outweighs the cost of getting rid off all the crap no one wants to buy, not even at 50% off. Still I sifted, hoping for some treasure. None appeared. I was almost going to buy some ill fitting athletic shorts, just because they were on sale, but then I came across a display of leather gloves, and I thought, “Oh, I can wear these when I ride on the motorcycle with Daniel.” They were only $29, so I put the shorts away and I added the gloves to my collection of gold heart stickers, gift boxes, decorative twine, shredded filler paper, and box of delicate blank notecards. I did the self checkout and struggled with it, and when I glanced back at the impatient customers waiting on me to finish, I wondered if they had cancer, and if they didn’t have it, if they would one day have it. I wanted to say, “I am sorry for being slow, I am trying to savor everything — even this self checkout machine — because, you see, while I am spending money, I don’t have cancer. And when I go home and giddily cut the tags off my new purchases, I don’t have cancer. Oh, it catches up to me. But for now, I don’t have cancer. Please let me linger here a little longer.”
Six: I know I am femme because one of my coping mechanisms is meticulously wrapping presents. Maybe one day I will read a book that will reveal all the secrets so I can always make crisp, clean folds, guess the correct size to cut the wrapping paper just by eyeing up the gifts, wrap any shape with the same ease and precision of wrapping a box.
Seven: Oh my, how did it get so late. My face is streaked in mascara. I cried for a long time in my parked car in the garage.
Eight: It is scary, but you become sort of used to living with cancer. Or it becomes a new reality. Bad news stops being bad, it’s just news. One more treatment — oh, okay. Another surgery — well, all right. You adapt. You adapt to saline filled silicone bags for breasts. You adapt to a life of wondering and hoping if you’ll wake up feeling better than the day before. You adapt to blood draws and IVs and knowing which nurse will give you what you really want when the doctor’s back is turned. You adapt to hospitals and gowns open to the front. It is a tedious wonder to meet someone new and have to explain the whole damn thing from the beginning because don’t they know? Haven’t they heard? I am that girl, that girl Liz, that girl Liz with cancer.
Nine: So it is not the new treatment that disturbs me. I have adapted and rebounded. I am resiliency’s golden child. I did the chemo. I kept my hair. A month out of surgery, and I am wearing my high heels. I don’t hold grudges — I forget. I used to worry about the past a lot, but I’ve mostly forgotten it, and the future is so hazy that the only thing that really matters is what’s right in front of me. Even when I am talking about my cancer with a random Lyft driver, it feels very theoretical. But when I am sitting face to face with my oncologist, and she is telling me that I have to make a decision because even if I make the best decision I might still die, then I remember that there is a very good reason my breast tissue is all gone. Then I remember that this isn’t about my silly new tits and how I no longer have to wear a bra. Then I remember that this isn’t fair. That this is serious. And that most of all, it really, truly isn’t fair, and that for all my cleverness and all my slippery trauma-developed survival skills, I might still die because life is really just that unfair. That’s when I think about the future I was dreaming of and wonder if that future will never come. That’s when I think about my friends having to bury me. And all I can say is, “Why me?”
Ten: Why me?
I am a thirty-one year old queer Hispanic woman and trauma survivor battling a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. Devoted to social justice and advocating for mental health understanding and resources, I was just six months into my new career as a backend software engineer trying to make space for marginalized people in tech when I was struck with Stage IIa Grade 3 triple negative metaplastic breast cancer. You can read more about my journey in my publication Never Tell Me the Odds.
If you enjoy my writing and you are able to, please consider donating to my medical expense crowdfunder. I’ve got a yearlong treatment plan ahead of me, and I need all the help I can get. Thank you so much for your generosity.
