Grey, fading to black and white...

-->

It is a new day. Each day I am stronger and healing. My wounds are itchy at least as much as they are painful now—a sure sign that I’m healing and the bandages need to come off (next appointment is Monday). I have felt elated over the news about the lymph nodes and about the hormone receptivity of the cancer. There has been good news this week from the biopsy and from my healing body. I have been walking along the sea each day, feeling the sun hot on my face (this picture from a walk with Keith yesterday).

I have also consulted with two oncologists today (bless the network and the beautiful people who connected me with these generous oncologists willing to look at my biopsy report and talk or write to me so quickly). And the news seems very clear after all, and not very grey at all: chemo leads to much better outcomes in someone with a tumour more than 2cm. So today I have begun to cancel everything that was left in my diary from 8 weeks post-surgery. I haven’t talked to an NZ based oncologist yet, but that will hopefully happen in the next week or two. And in the meantime, there is just preparing the body and the mind for four months of illness: how does one do that?

I am also sobered by the recurrence rates—even with the chemo and the hormone therapy (both of which I’ll have). When Aidan asked this morning, “Are you sure this isn’t going to shorten your life at all?” I tried to diffuse and crack a joke and then, when he was still asking, I had to say that I wasn’t sure about that at all. Five year survival results are excellent (nearly 100%). Ten year survival rates are less good. Life shortening is a possibility.

Keith noted today that I keep hating the uncertainty, and in nearly every case, the uncertainty resolves into bad news. It made me laugh—you’d think that maybe I’d start to enjoy uncertainty a little more given those conditions! Yesterday a potential client called and asked me if I could give a speech about uncertainty for her group. Ironically, I did know exactly what I’d be doing on the day she wanted me (and I’m booked) but it does seem a little ironic that I’ve just finished a book about living and thriving in uncertainty. I am generally immune to cancer ironies, but that one stands out.

So, it looks like maybe my cancer blog here will carry on longer than I hoped. I was so craving the most boring cancer story ever told: a small lumpectomy with the requisite radiotherapy. Full mastectomy was more plot than I had hoped—chemo is way more plot (and a longer story) than I was hoping for. I wished that my cancer would be a blip in the beginning of this new year; looks like it will instead be a companion for 2014. And it looks like there is more for me to learn here about pain and darkness.

In the taxi to my pre-surgical appointment last week, I thought that the mastectomy was as much as I could ever bear; that if I got the news that I needed chemo too, it would break me. Now I am healing and getting stronger and this news is a crushing blow, but I am not broken. I think this is a wonderful part of being human: that we really are strong enough to face the things that come to us. It is what all the research I have read would suggest: that we anticipate difficulty and can’t imagine bearing up, and yet we do bear up. We are shockingly fragile, but we are also so resilient.

So today, I wish for each of you the security that you are strong enough to take whatever comes, and the joy of not having anything come to test you.