A week ago my sister had cancer. Today she doesn’t. Or at least we believe she doesn’t. It’s not that it disappeared, or that someone made a mistake. She had it removed, cut out of her—a lumpectomy, to be specific—excised, analyzed, and discarded.
What a week it’s been. Less than a month ago she was complaining to me about having to get a mammogram. We all hate them, those torture machines operated by a surprisingly large number of sadists (I’ve had my good ones, too, and I appreciate each and every one of you gentle souls!).
But my sister hates them more because she has cystic breasts. It’s become common for her to have a second mammogram because they saw something “extra.” She’s had more biopsies than even she can count. So this time, as she went from second mammogram to biopsy, I said, yeah yeah yeah, same old story.
But it wasn’t. She called me Thursday a week ago, stunned. She said, “I have cancer.” As soon as I heard those words, I felt faint. It was as though I was looking at the horizon that I’ve seen my whole life and suddenly a huge white space opened in it. There was a hole where my sister had been, this sister closest to me in age, whom I talk to nearly every single day. It was as though she was gone.
Then I snapped back and caught my breath. My first thought was “Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t get cancer.” That’s what we’ve always said, even though our paternal grandmother had a double mastectomy. But Grammom smoked and drank and ate bad food and never exercised. We figured that was from her lifestyle. But now that’s out the window. We do get cancer.
My sister’s next words: “Don’t tell Dad.” She knew the news would devastate him and put added stress on a heart already punished from him smoking and drinking and eating bad food and never exercising (at least until his quadruple bypass). Our mother she told, but that’s because they share the cystic breast problem. Mom would understand, Mom would be strong, Mom’s family doesn’t get cancer. Really. None.
So where were we? A weekend in limbo. My sister had an appointment on Monday to talk to the doctor about her options. Fortunately, maybe, long before her mammogram her husband had planned a very large party for that weekend, so she had many details to concentrate on that had nothing to do with her health. She sailed through the party, everyone had a good time, and she spent Sunday cleaning up and resting.
Monday she saw her surgeon. I had offered to go but she felt being alone would make it less of a big deal. She promised to take notes of everything he said. He told her she had DCIS, a stage 0 cancer. “Some people wouldn’t even call it cancer,” he said, but every website I saw did. Treatment is usually surgery and radiation. The surgeon just happened to have two cancellations the next day and offered to operate on her then. My sister saw herself doing nothing but worrying if she put it off, so she agreed.
I asked her what she wanted me to do. Her husband would take her to the hospital, she said. It was an outpatient procedure so she’d be home that night. She directed me to ask that people “show concern but not hover.” That meant flowers and cards but no one else at the hospital. I had already sent her flowers after her diagnosis but asked my husband to send more in a few days.
On surgery day I carried the phone everywhere I went, waiting for a call, from her, from her husband, something to let me know everything was okay. She called at 8:30 at night and sounded tired but normal. She said we’d know in a few days if they’d gotten it all. I made up my mind to think positively and tried to put it aside. We talked every day as she recovered from the surgery, complained about the pain, enjoyed the painkillers, tried to get some work done at home. She felt terrible that she’d let her team down at work while she went through this medical situation.
By Friday I was getting jumpy and started carrying the phone around again. She finally called me late Friday afternoon and left a message while I was on the phone. She said the doctor had called and left her a message, saying, “Nothing but good news.” I listened to her recording, hung up, and cried.
She told our father yesterday by email. He called her last night in a panic, remembering his mother. She tried to reassure him that it was very much under control but he’s still not convinced. So much for telling him only after the worst is over.
And now, after a whirlwind tour of breast cancer, my sister wonders what’s next? She called yesterday to say that she didn’t feel like doing anything. I told her that was understandable. We talked about post-traumatic stress disorder and what other cancer survivors do, like raise money for breast cancer awareness or go off to live life at full tilt. If I know her, she’ll grab “normal” and take that as far as she can and next year, when she faces the mammogram again, will stall and complain as though this never happened.
