The thing about breast cancer is that nobody tells you what you need to know.
For instance, they don’t tell you about the hair under your fingernails. Your nails, once respectable-looking, are now ragged and brittle from chemo. Holding your hands out in front of you, you will notice dark hairs lining the underside of each nail, some poking out like tiny tentacles. These are from your head, scratched away as you gently paw at the pimply, patchy war zone that has erupted on your scalp. You will spend hours a day scraping these hairs from under your nails.
They don’t tell you that your father, your friend from work, your grandmother, and your college roommate will all exclaim, “you’re kidding, right?” when you tell them that you have breast cancer. You are not sure who the sociopath is that calls up her loved ones and announces, “I have cancer!” followed gleefully by, “just kidding.” Their reactions will give you pause, making you question whether your dark sense of humor has warped into a deep-seated issue that can only be corrected with intensive therapy.
They don’t tell you how, at first, you will try to manage everyone’s feelings. You are accustomed to playing the rescuer’s role, so this new position of being the individual in need of rescue will be foreign. You will rebel against it and instead will try to comfort your loved ones who are grappling with the news. You will primarily maintain an upbeat attitude, mostly out of fear that if you allow yourself to slide backwards into grief, it will kill you.
They don’t tell you that you will feel battered back and forth like a ping pong ball. Initially, a nurse will explain that the cancer may have metastasized to your liver. Nearly a month later, your oncologist will share the good news that it has not spread. Unfortunately, he will say, you have the bad kind you read about online, triple-negative breast cancer. A few weeks later, you will be told that the pathology was wrong—it is progesterone receptor-positive. You will celebrate your good fortune. Just as you begin allowing yourself to feel comfortable in the knowledge that your cancer is less aggressive, your oncologist will revert to triple-negative. He will use words like “necrosis” to describe your tumor’s pathology, and in your head, you will picture a decaying corpse (not necessarily your own, just a generic decaying corpse).
They don’t tell you that everyone you love will frantically try to cure you. Your grandmother will cut out articles about how New Zealand researchers are studying bee stings as a potential cure for your type of cancer. Your mother, always collected when you are near, will cry when she talks to your sister about you. She will bake casseroles, including the one affectionately nicknamed “Death Casserole,” when you were younger due to its featured role as the go-to dish for neighbors in mourning. Your father, a scientist, will simmer in quiet desperation because this is one problem he cannot solve.
They don’t tell you that you will have a port placed in your chest, right below your collarbone. It will feel a little uncomfortable at first, but you will get used to it. You will tell your children that it is your superhero button, then you will push it and pretend it triggers your Iron (Wo-)Man armor. Post-lumpectomy, you will also impress your children with your urine, which bears a temporary blue hue from the dye used to find your lymph nodes. Your daughter will note that it looks like Gatorade. You will stop drinking Gatorade.
They don’t tell you that your best friend will join you to drink mimosas and buzz your head. In the week leading up to the event, she will send you GIFs of GI Jane and Sinéad O’Connor. After the last of your hair has fallen to the floor, she will snuggle up on the couch with you to eat tacos and watch the final season of Schitt’s Creek. You will wonder how you went from singing together in your high school musicals to this.
They don’t tell you about the gifts. After learning of your diagnosis, you will be flooded with soft blankets, cozy socks, warm sweatshirts, and more crossword puzzles than you could finish in your lifetime. Initially, you will be perplexed by the number of blankets you have received, wondering what one could do with so many of them. After beginning treatment, your newly developed ability to fall asleep anywhere answers the question.
They don’t tell you that you will become obsessively organized. You will keep three written calendars, and you will clean out all of your old paperwork and personal belongings because if you die, you don’t want your family to have to sort through every greeting card you’ve ever been given. This new order that you have established will make you feel as if you have some semblance of control over your life.
They don’t tell you that just as you start to feel this sense of control, the treatment designed to kill the cancer cells will almost kill you. You will learn this at the clinic while receiving your second dose of chemo. Your nurses will pump you full of pre-meds to keep you from vomiting or having an allergic reaction. A few seconds after they hang the plastic bag holding your chemo drug, your face will begin to flush, your torso and back will become unbearably itchy, and your blood pressure will drop dangerously low. You will go into anaphylactic shock and will spend the next eight hours in the emergency room. Your mother-in-law will have to explain to your children that your medicine “took a little longer today.”
They don’t tell you that you will have conversations with your husband that he doesn’t want to have. You will explain where the passwords are stored on your computer, and you will show him the file where your life insurance policy is, along with your written instructions for how to handle the money if you die. You will threaten to haunt him if he does not fulfill your wishes. He will feel confident that if anyone can find a way to come back and haunt him, it’s you.
They don’t tell you that post-chemo downtime isn’t a thing if you are a mother. A few days after treatment, your daughter will vomit on the breakfast table, and you will immediately throw on a mask and latex gloves, calling for your husband to come help. You will get your daughter tucked into bed, and then you will discover that the dog has tracked chunks of his excrement around your house. You will note, as you scrape out his paw with Wet Wipes, that masks do not, in fact, mask the pungent scent of fresh dog poop. You will also note that the smell does not help with your lingering queasiness. Your husband will arrive home from dropping your son off at daycare to find you wide-eyed, furiously mopping the kitchen floor.
They don’t tell you that the job that once stressed you out will become your lifeline. You will continue working, even though your boss said that he “doesn’t give two s**** about your job right now, and you shouldn’t either.” You will crave the normalcy of logging in every day and checking projects off your list. Unfortunately, every task takes twice the amount of time that it used to take because you are exhausted, and your calendar is bursting with doctor appointments. You will wake up many mornings with a headache, telling your husband that you think it’s because of the weather. He will suggest that perhaps it is the mustard gas from which your chemo drug is derived.
They don’t tell you that every papercut, every little scratch, will take ten times longer to heal because chemo has annihilated your immune system. You will note that the emotional wounds caused by your diagnosis also seem to be taking a long time to heal for your loved ones. You will feel intense guilt at the pain and fear it is causing them.
They don’t tell you that you will become the reference point against which everyone else’s problems are measured. Everyone around you will feel guilty complaining about feeling tired or sore or anxious. You will hear the words, “not that I should complain to you,” with increasing regularity. When you feel a little prickly, you will think, “you’re damn well right.” Mostly, you will remind them that you do not hold a monopoly on life’s challenges.
They don’t tell you how you will begin to study the hands of everyone older than you with astonishing detail. You will gaze at your own hands, wondering whether you will be lucky enough to reach an age when they are gnarled by time. You wonder if you will live long enough for your two-year-old son to remember you.
They don’t tell you how, even amid treatment, life continues. Your daughter will begin kindergarten, and your son will start putting together full sentences. Your brother will call you to ask cooking questions and your sister will discuss renting a beach house this summer. Your husband will forge ahead with plans for his new business, and your parents will share pictures of their dining room remodel. You will have mixed feelings about all of this. Some days, you will appreciate the opportunity to discuss anything except cancer. Other days, you will feel as if everyone else’s lives are moving forward while you are left dangling in your uncertain new stasis. Usually, you will just be glad that you are still here.
They don’t tell you these things.
katie miller dunn 