February 16th, two weeks after my diagnosis Dr. Fox called me at 6:30 pm. My son was here with me and the girls and we were making dinner. I shooed everyone away so I could talk to him on speaker in private and take notes. I wasn’t expecting a call after business hours. I turned off the stove and just let the half-boiled pasta sit there in the pot of hot water.
My kids went to their rooms and patiently waited – kind of. Their bedrooms are next to each other, and they kept going in and out of each other’s rooms, opening and closing the doors. We live in such a tiny place that I found the sound of the doors opening and closing and their giggling annoying and was having a hard time concentrating. I got up from my desk and walked back to their rooms to ask them to please stop with the doors and be quiet all while Dr. Fox is still talking to me and I’m missing some of what he’s saying.
Dr. Fox has this way of being personable, but all business. He is good at giving you all the facts but allows enough time that you don’t feel rushed. He was calling to give me the MRI & Her2 results. I didn’t expect the doctor to call me himself. Again all new territory. Why is the doctor calling me himself – is it bad news?
The MRI showed that the mass is 3cm, and it appears it is still only the one lymph node. I asked him why the mammogram said 2cm, and the MRI said 3cm. Is it growing? He told me that imaging will only show so much and we won’t know the actual size or how many lymph nodes are affected until surgery. He said, let me put it this way “I’m not calling you with any new bad news; there are no new surprises from the MRI”.
Her2 ICH2 came back equivocal, so they had to send it for FISH testing. I still haven’t looked up these acronyms. FISH came back negative.
Next, I’ll need to make an appointment with the oncologist.
I asked him about spreading again. How do we know it hasn’t spread to other areas of my body? He said his first look would be liver, bones, lungs. He also wants me to schedule a skin biopsy.
This part is embarrassing to write about, but I got an ingrown hair on my right breast below the nipple last year. After several months, it never surfaced or went away, so I went to the doctor. I was puzzled about why I would get an ingrown hair on my breast as they are usually caused by shaving and I definitely do not shave my boobs. The doctor said it was probably folliculitis. I mention this because then I got another one. It is these ingrown hairs that made me start paying more attention to my breasts. I tried exfoliating with salt scrubs, and they never went away. I don’t have any on the left breast. I asked Dr. Fox if maybe the cancer caused them; like my breast was fighting against that ugly mass inside. Dr. Fox didn’t think it was anything to worry about but wanted to do a skin biopsy to rule it out.
Dr. Fox said that he’d follow up on the genetic testing, but for now, it looks like all options for treatment are open. I asked him what stage of cancer I have. I’m a grade 2 out of 3. Middle of the road.
The stage won’t really be determined until surgery, but I’m somewhere between a 2 or a 3. No one has sugar-coated anything since this all began starting with Dr. Evans.
The whole last two weeks, I thought my ‘Grade’ was my ‘Stage,’ but it’s not. I’m a 2 or a 3 out of 4 stages of cancer.
The pasta soaked up all the water in the pot by the time I got off the phone and had to be thrown out. Anna started making dinner over. I wasn’t hungry. The kids didn’t ask any questions and I again tucked the whole surreal conversation in the box to keep things as normal as possible for the rest of the evening.
I AM JULIE STRONG 