The worst summer holiday ever

My friend Keith says, “There is no world irony shortage,” a phrase that has come back to me again and again over the last two weeks. In the week between Christmas and New Years, I used long stretches of unplanned time to really be strategic about the coming year. I wrote about what was most important to me, decided which things to drop and which to carry on with (although of course there were some things I had to do because there was no getting out of them) and walked along our big beach thinking about not letting my life happen to me this year, but instead really crafting it. On the weekend before New Years, as Michael and I took a long walk through the hills near our house, I told him that this was the year that the seeds I had planted over the last many years were bearing fruit. Cultivating Leadership, my leadership development firm, is thriving. We have grown from an idea to a collection of interesting, smart, kind, masterful teachers and coaches and scholars. The Growth Edge Network, a twinkle in my eye for a very long gestation, is flourishing beyond my wildest dreams. Our Gathering in Cambridge this August was one of the high points of my career. My first book is selling well enough for a book of its kind, and my second book (written with Keith) is off with peer reviews. A golden age.. I was near tears with joy for much of that week.

a 600 year kauri tree

In a Greek myth or a movie, something horrible would happen here, I thought. This is tempting the fates. My life has been charmed for a long time, and I’ve kind of been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a while. But I have been giving myself a firm talking to about this. Live in this glorious present. Don’t be checking your blue sky for coming rain—just live with joy in the blue sky and if the rain falls, learn to live with some new kind of joy in the rain. I am a slow learner, but I walked along the beach and practiced this idea.

And then on the eve of New Year’s Eve, I was showering—not checking for anything, not on a hunt or a mission—and I found a lump in my left breast. I had to sit down in the running water and collect myself for just a minute before telling myself women find lumps in their breasts all the time. Still, it was big and hard and distinct. I toweled off and called the doctor.

He was pleased with the feel of the lump. It was firm but mobile whereas cancer usually tethers to things. I would need a mammogram, but not urgently, which was a good thing because the week was impossible with the holiday right inside it and a mammogram would be hard to come by. “It’s the wrong time of year for this sort of thing,” he said apologetically. “But I don’t think this is a big deal—you can wait until next week when things begin to get back to normal.”

I explained that Michael and I were having our first couples holiday for a long time and we would be away. Could we have the mammogram this week anyway? He made a couple of phone calls and made it so—mammogram for Friday afternoon. Holiday with a clear mind was to begin on Sunday.

But our play doesn’t go like that. The mammogram was inconclusive, the ultrasound merely proved that the lump was not a cyst and would need a biopsy. “Do I need to cancel my holiday?” I asked. No, they told me, this isn’t urgent and you probably couldn’t find anyone to see you next week anyway. It’s the wrong time of year for this sort of thing.

Us looking up at the kauri tree with delight

So Michael and I headed off to the beautiful north of NZ, and by the time we made it through the rain to our B&B, we were spinning. He spent Monday on the phone and finally found an open clinic and made an appointment for a biopsy on Wednesday. We celebrated our biopsy appointment with a boat trip to see dolphins on Tuesday, and mourned the doctor’s strong sense that the lump she had biopsied was cancer with a trip to the magnificent Cathedral Cove on Thursday.

(This, by the way, is not a recipe for a winning holiday. The parts of the holiday that we were able to have—before and after the biopsy and before the results—were filled with heart-wrenching beauty. But there is terror before a cancer diagnosis, and thoughts of death and pain and baldness and sickness and wasting away. Makes it a lot harder to enjoy the lovely scenery of the most beautiful country in the world.)

Friday we were back in Auckland for the diagnosis: infiltrating duct carcinoma.  It is a 21mm tumour, an with a provisional aggression grade of 2 (of 3). We won't know what stage it is until after surgery.  My surgeon called this "garden variety" cancer--it's what 70% or more of all breast cancers are. He thinks there is an 85% chance it has not moved to the lymph nodes. There is no sign of lymph activity via feel or ultrasound.

Cathedral Cove

We left the doctor’s office both horrified (I have breast cancer!) and also somehow elated (this doesn’t look deadly!). And since walking out that door, with my admissions papers all filled out and my hospital stay pre-paid, we have had the most extraordinary stew of emotions. I wouldn’t have known my emotions could move around so fast around the same topic, or that one topic could so swiftly and decisively take over my life.

Trying on bras (which I hate anyway, and which you have to wear 24/7 for weeks after the surgery) made me weep in the Lulu Lemon dressing room. Telling my kids left me surprisingly dry eyed. Michael will go out to run and errand and come back and find me busily working away (cancelling things and informing people) or he’ll run downstairs to ask a question and find me in a puddle of tears. Even in these last endless 14 days, I have found a deeper connection with Michael, a richer gratitude to my friends and family all over the world, and a love of life that makes me want to sing and weep and dance.

I offer this blog to all of you who want to follow this journey, which I hope will be relatively brief in the cancer scale. Today I told the kids. Tomorrow I have an MRI to see the extent of the cancer in the breast. If it’s just a single tumor, I have a lumpectomy on Thursday up in Auckland at a breast clinic. If there’s more cancer than that, the surgery will be bigger and will happen the week of the 20^th.

Keith and I have just finished a book that’s about dealing with things that are not what you expected and how to keep nimble and awake enough to do that well. And here I am, living the unexpected and trying to be nimble and awake. I guess we’ll all see how I do.