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Aboard the Starship BS Round 5 Rad

June 22, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

The room is sterile. You are guided to a gurney and instructed to lay down on your back, hands over your head. There are pegs there for you to hold onto, but not because this will be painful: it is only to keep you from fidgeting. Look to the right and keep your head turned, you can see countless cupboards on the wall. A blue light comes on as the interns adjust your body to line up with the tattoos. Above, there is a skylight, except you know it is not real: the buds on the trees are out of season, the clouds don’t move, and birds don’t flit around. Also, you are in deep space and there is no sky.

The interns leave and a machine begins to whirl around you: a large disk with a square screen looms over you, then a rectangle with a screen, and last, a dull gray arm of the AI machine. It is working on you now. Healing your wounds from the inter-galactic war; healing the wounds from the inside-out so there will be no scar. OR it is working on the wiring in your body: you are an Android and have malfunctioned during the night. The latter is most likely: why else would they need your tattoos?

The machine reverses and you notice your skin looks like blue scales under the light. Perhaps it has turned blue, with scales, and you have not been warned. This repeats, slowly. Remember to breathe normally.

Then it is over. Ten minutes in, not long enough to create a story line as to why you are here in this science fiction tale. The techs return on silent feet and help you sit back up. The drive to get there takes longer than the actual radiation treatment.

Radiation is painless, for the most part. Today, I noticed a small spot of burn on my left breast where the radiation has been concentrated. It will get worse before it gets better, but it is tiny, like the cancer we are committed to destroying (we: all the staff at oncology and myself). The radiation has been concentrated on the spot where the cancer was. The only other treatment is using a prescribed lotion to keep the skin supple and healing.

I understand now why my friend, Diane, mentioned the “special” cream her other friend had to use. It’s not particularly “special” but there are a limited number of over-the-counter choices you are given to use. Unscented and manufactured without certain ingredients: a list is handed out before radiation, and they encourage you to apply it two to three times daily.

The scenario(s) in my first three paragraphs are fictionalized, of course. You are not in deep space, and you already knew it was a fake skylight: the same mural is in many exam rooms in hospitals. The interns are trained technicians. You do appear to have blue mottled skin, but that is the lighting from the machine. It’s not AI, but a complicated piece of hulking machinery that can shoot radiation precisely at a small spot inside your body, cooking and killing any stray cancer cells that may have been left behind in surgery. In my case, it is unlikely anything was left behind, but I have opted for the radiation to lower my chances of a recurrence to 4% over an 8-year period.

Today is my fifth and final round of radiation. I hop off the gurney (slight exaggeration there: I lower my aging body off. I say good-bye to the techs and exit the science fiction room. On my way past the nurse’s station to the changing rooms, I am presented with a Certificate of Completion. This is perhaps the most humorous part of this: a Gold Star for completing what I hope is my final round with breast (or any) cancer.

If you followed the story this far, congrats. And get the damn smoosh-smoosh-squash-squash done. I hate them, too.  

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Saturday, June the 17th, 1995

June 16, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

Twenty-eight years ago. I remember some things clearly, but other things are muddled. For instance, I remember the fight down to Reno and where I sat on the airplane coming home from Reno. I remember my father, my brother, my mother, and the hospital, but I don’t recall much of my brother’s family (or the fact that I stayed with them and slept in the living room – that’s all a blur). I remember where I was when we got the call, and much of what we did over the ensuing two days. Father’s Day, the 18th, was a road trip for three of us.

I flew down in an MD-83, if I recall correctly. The series of airplanes had been grounded for several months following a deadly airline crash that had been determined to be a fault in the plane itself. They had only recently started allowing the model to fly again. I figured I was in a safest airplane around since it had been thoroughly worked over, right? I remember I sat in the tail section going down and coming home; coming home I didn’t even have a window, only the roar of the engine in my ear.

I don’t remember when I arrived in Reno or much of what happened that first night, was it Thursday or Friday? I don’t recall. My brother might: the events of Saturday the 17th impacted him as hard as it did me. We lost our best friend and family advocate that horrid Saturday.

Mom was hospitalized due to yet another round on pneumonia and the impacts of the disease on her weakened lungs. Mom had emphysema (they call it COPD nowadays). I don’t know how many times she had been hospitalized in the past because our parents were very good at concealing things from us kids. Sickness was only one of the many things they hid from us and we had to find out from other sources that something huge had happened, like our sister’s pregnancies.

I remember how she looked, lying in that hospital bed, tubes in her nose and oxygen doing the breathing for her. Morphine made it hard for her to pay attention to anything or respond to us. She pulled at the tubes in her nose, irritated. She held my hand for a moment.

There’s a moment in your life when you have to make a decision you don’t want to make. The nurses pulled me aside, the last of the family members to arrive (my sister couldn’t be there: she was pregnant and I didn’t know she was pregnant until then). Did I agree with my brother and father to take my mother – my best friend – off of oxygen and all other life support? My heart screamed, “NO!” but my mind knew what Mom wanted.

Dad said he couldn’t do the “death watch” – he’d done it too many times before in his life and Mom was the love of his life. We were going to go out for lunch, away from the hospital. I held Mom’s hand and spoke to her, telling her that I didn’t want to let her go or lose her, but – in the end – “you will do what you want to do”. I knew the Scots’ blood in her would stubbornly go down the road she wanted no matter what the rest of us felt.

We were looking at some “art” car on the street when we got the call. Mom had made her decision. In the elevator, Dad seemed shrunken and old. He pounded his fists on the wall. My brother entered the room first and gently closed Mom’s eyes before Dad or I could see her. Not that she was there. A shell was there, a fragile casing that once held my mother. I had the strange feeling that she was still in the room, in another, happier, dimension. Somewhere we couldn’t see into, but which existed parallel to us.

That night we sat in Dad’s motel room doing – what? I don’t remember. What I do recall is my brother was on call with the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department and he got an emergency call. How Dad and I managed to tag along, I don’t know. Terry had to hitch up the trailer with the flood lights and we headed north on SR-447 in the dark. A trucker hauling cardboard for recycling had rolled on a corner north of Gerlach.

Once, on the loneliest stretch (and that is a lonely highway), Terry briefly turned on lights and sirens for us. We made jokes. Dad asked Terry about the afterlife. It snowed. Dad and I pretended we were undercover cops and “real bad honchos” while we stayed out of the way. We felt sadness, too: it was a fatality and the trucker had family somewhere in Texas.

Father’s Day. We loaded up in Dad’s Buick and took a road trip. Terry and I argued about the wildflowers we saw along the way. We stopped in Portolla, California, at a family friend’s house. Dad wanted to speak to them alone: old friends from our early childhood, and a mortician by trade, Dad needed reassurance and advice on how to go forward. From there, we circled over to Donner Lake. Parked about the azure lake, One of them asked, “What is that blue out there?” Eager to prove myself an expert in wildflowers, I peered out the window.

“I don’t see anything blue,” I complained.

“I think it’s called ‘Donner Lake'” one of them dead-panned. This is how my family pranks each other.

We laughed most of the day. I was the butt of more jokes, but that is the only one I remember. It was a jab at the fact I live in a state with plenty of water and they lived in Nevada – and I am no expert in wildflowers. We ate somewhere in Truckee, California. Mom would have loved the day: all the expensive little shops to wander through and browse. It was bittersweet, full of laughter, and one of my favorite memories of family.

*Photo of Mom with a lampshade on her head. 1952

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Got My First Tattoo Today

June 5, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

I wish my son was here for me to tell. He would get a kick out of my first tattoo even though it is really not impressive. I have four tiny dots (about the size of a . ) on my torso tattooed with India ink. They are there so when I go in for radiation treatment, the radiologist will know where to point the lasers.

Backing up. I do have to have five days of radiation even though I am technically “cured” of breast cancer. The radiation is to ensure that no stray cancer cells were left behind (“leave no cell behind!”) and reduce my chances of ever having a tumor again. I’m cool with that. I am thrilled that I won’t have to endure chemotherapy. Radiation is just a road bump.

Last week, I met with the radiology oncologist who explained everything to me and gave me my options (I had three). Given the small size of the cancer, I chose the least invasive radiation plan which is streaming the radiation only on the site where the cancer was. No whole breast radiation, and not three weeks of it. I consented to the tattoos.

Today, I went in for a “sim” test on the CT Scan (Sim=simulation). They need to figure out the best position for the cancer patient to be in to maximize the radiation and to protect the heart and lungs. Radiation is good for you, but it is also very bad for you. Fortunately, my cancer was on the left side and that already helps protect the heart. I imagined this process would take some time as the tech figured out the best position for me to lie in and I also expected that position to be a bit uncomfortable. It was neither.

The first position worked, and it was not an uncomfortable one. I may get a bit of a neck cramp at the end of the first radiation treatment. I think the process took ten minutes, including the placement of the tattoos. Those dots will never be as fancy as my son’s tattoos or those of my beloved daughter-in-love, but at least I can brag that I have them. Can’t show you them (probably can’t even find them), but… I have them.

This short process was followed up by a consult with one of the radiology nurses who schooled me in how this is all going to work: side effects (minimal), checking in, consult with the radiology oncologist part way through, skin care, where to go, and so on.

It got dicey then. I had to fill out this form dealing with my emotions and mental outlook (I swear it is really good!) and under one heading was the question: “Are you dealing with the loss of a loved one?”

UM. YES. And then I had to tell my story to an incredibly empathetic radiology nurse who kept asking sympathetic questions and crying. To say it ripped my heart to shreds is to put it very mildly. I kept trying to tell her that going through cancer was nothing… but hitting that wall of loss still echoes in my heart. She hugged me when I left the office, but I sat in the car afterward and tried to collect myself. I came home and just sat in the garden, trying not to feel anything.

I really don’t want anyone’s sympathy. But- BOOM! – a stranger asks and then loses it over the tragedy of MY life. I don’t want to minimize my hurt by saying, “Others have it much harder” BUT … my life isn’t tragic. There have been tragedies and I may never fully recover from them. I will say my son’s name every day (and my sister’s, and my mother’s, and my father’s, but especially my son’s name). I am not who I was 2.5 years ago. The world shifted.

Even so, I wanted to write about my cancer journey with humor and funny anecdotes. It isn’t the end of the world. Even if it was a more severe cancer, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for me. This is just an obstacle in the road.

After all this is over, maybe I will get a real tattoo. Something that speaks of joy and living life to the fullest in honor of my son.

I thought the worst of today would be figuring out my position on a hard table with half my clothes off in a room of strangers, but that’s pretty darn minor. The hardest was trying not to lose it in front of an Empath who truly understood my pain. The hardest was reliving those frantic hours between December 10 and December 12, 2020. But I got my first tattoo.

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Breast Cancer Follow Up

May 24, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

I had my post-op appointment today and it went screamingly well – except for a couple bumps. I write this because so many women have no clue what they are getting into when it comes to breast cancer (I am one). The general stuff is thrown out there, but there’s the up close and personal stuff that doesn’t seem to be talked about.

#1. They don’t even talk about radiation treatment until 4-5 weeks AFTER the surgery. I jumped on that one, in part because I received a strange phone message from the “body oncologist’s assistant” asking when did I start the letrozole (femarole)(estrogen blocker). I hadn’t started it because it states I should *not* start it until after radiation. I tried calling back but she didn’t return my call and I (wrongly) assumed I wouldn’t have radiation. I will bring that up to the body oncologist when I see him in two weeks. Follow up is important.

#2. I won’t know how much radiation or how long until I meet the radiologist next week on the first of June. I did tell my oncologist surgeon that as long as it doesn’t interfere with my road trip in late July to see my grandchildren, I’m pretty cool with whatever happens. She gave me a very long and heartfelt hug over the loss of our son two+ years ago and the fact I haven’t seen all these kids together since then. It’s an important road trip.

#3. I got my results today. The cancer was 1.5cm, which is about the size of a dime, not the .8cm they thought it was. Still in the Stage 1 zone, and they got it all. I am, for all purposes, “cured”. Radiation is a second layer of protection to prevent further development as is the hormone blocker I will be on for the next five years. I remain among the very lucky.

I don’t know how this will affect my other summer plans. I may have to change things up a bit but I won’t know until next week. Radiation could be one week or it could take several weeks. I have plans the first week of July as well as the last week, but I will sacrifice that first week if I have to (sorry to my friend with whom I have made plans) BUT I may not have to. It’s all a waiting game.

#4 No one tells you how much of a waiting game cancer is.

I am healing well. In a week, I will be able to lift 5#+. That means gardening, building that retainer wall, and hauling things to the thrift store in order to declutter. BUT I don’t have an inkling as to how radiation will affect those plans. Square one: wait and see.

In summary: don’t jump the gun and don’t expect the worst. So far, it has all been the best possible outcomes (aside from actually having cancer in the first place) but I have been jumping the gun much too often. Breathe, Jaci, breathe. Patience.

What I DO know and celebrate is this: NO CHEMOTHERAPY. And that is a huge bonus.

On a side note, while I was at the oncologist’s office setting up appointments today, we fell into a discussion on perfumes. I won’t bore you with how we got to that conversation, but I feel it is important to note the context. I don’t wear perfume most of the time. When I do, I wear very little: you would have to be intimate with me to smell what I do wear. I do this because I have been in and out of doctor’s and dermatologist offices: people have serious reactions to perfumes, including anaphylactic seizures. Deodorants, hair spray, shampoo, and perfume can all be triggers. I know the people on the allergic side of this equation. We (the scheduler, the assistant nurse, and myself) all agreed this is a huge issue and it is ignored by so many people in the public sector.

I once worked for an employer who came straight to work from the shower, doused in after-shave, body wash, and cologne. I’m not allergic, but he reeked of a sweet perfume. TOO MUCH. You are not supposed to be able to smell yourself. Perfume or cologne should be sprayed into the air and you wave your arm/write under the descending droplets, capturing just a hint of the scent. That’s it. No more. And use unscented deodorant, please. It’s important to the person next to you.

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Let’s Talk Garden!

May 22, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

We went from a cold and drizzly April to a dry and sunny May. The garden has “popped” as they say. Flowers galore. The daffodils faded and the grape hyacinth followed them closely, then the blue and white hyacinths. The heat came on and the peonies reached for the heavens. The heat turned down and the peonies are hanging on to their blooms: blood-red, deep magenta, salmon pink, cotton candy pink, yellow, and white. Bomb peonies, doubles, triples, and tree peonies. Now the irises are clamoring for their time in the limelight: purple, blue-and-white, purple-and-yellow, yellow. Dutch, wild natives, Japanese, and flag. Out front, the geraniums and Solomon’s seal are in full array of pink and white and green.

The tiny flowers as well are in their glory. The native forget-me-nots and the commercial ones, the inside-out flowers, the bishop’s weed, and the poached egg flowers (meadow foam) are all on display. The native camassia has bloomed and faded now. Heucheras, or coral bells, wave their tiny fronds of mini blooms in the breeze, along with the fringe cups. Speedwells have blossomed and faded along with the sweet woodruff.

Pushing up from the ground to make the next display are the sages: pineapple and Jerusalem, as well as the phloxes, the Peruvian lilies, the crocosmia, the Shasta daisies, cornflowers, bachelor buttons, and dahlias. Then will come the milkweeds and the evening primroses with the scattered sunflowers. The four roses out front have swollen buds while the rhododendrons are finishing off their array of colors. The heavy scent of the lilacs has already faded with the memory of their color. The orange daylilies will put on a show in just about a month. The Rose of Sharon has greened out and will soon bloom with reddish-purple blossoms.

If I am fortunate, the mock orange with blossom this year. I am fortunate: there are eleven spikes of flowers in the bear grass clumps. The hostas will take their turn as well as the lilies: Easter lilies and Martha Washington white lilies. The honeysuckle is striving for its place in the glory of bloom.

There are few bumblebees, and this concerns us: the giant solitary ones are house hunting but the littler ones we have are scarce. But the tiny ground dwelling bees and the mason bees have been plentiful, and we have noticed honeybees here and there. The paper wasps have returned home – they are important pollinators. We always have a plethora of tiny, winged pollinators on hand, from hover flies to yellow jackets.

Birds. The crows built their nest just to the south of our fence. We’re certain they will fledge any day and our hope is that the little ones will not end up on the street below the nest or in our yard where the dog might find them. The juncos that nested on the ground beneath a peony have raised one fledgling. It now can make short flights and avoid the dog easily. The lesser goldfinches are building a second nest for the next brood of babies. We haven’t seen the wrens for a while but have heard them: hopefully they also raised some new babies. The secretive spotted towhee comes in daily for a bath in one of the many baths for birds.

This season of flowers and warm days is my favorite time of year: Spring into Summer in the Pacific Northwest. I ache to be on knee pads with my hands deep in the wormy soil, pulling weeds and coaxing new flowers out of the loam – one more week of being careful after surgery and I will be back at it. I will plant some annuals before then: my usual petunias and pansies need to be purchased and planted in baskets. My fuchsias over-wintered and I have planted nasturtium seeds in the hopes of watching those pretty (edible) flowers will soon grace my yard.

There are issues that need to be addressed: brown spot, aphids, black spot, fungus in the soil, bushes that are half-dead and hanging on that need to be pruned and babied back to life and moving plants from one area to another to better facilitate their needs. I will be doing that in June.

Don is prepping the vegetable garden for the rototiller. We need to build a retaining wall around two sides of that garden (I bought the stones in February of 2022). The apples need to be protected from flies and worms (we have special nylon “socks” for that). The crazy grapevine is bursting with little green blossoms that portend a great harvest later in the summer (I share liberally with birds and with the neighbor whose fence helps prop up my vines). Sadly, I lost my “blackcap” raspberry in 2022 and that needs replaced this year – I live for my raspberries!

OH! Did I mention my strawberries? No, I did not but I will now: I have two urns full and an accidental little strawberry patch by the A-Frame (where we hang bird feeders out front). LOTS of berries are coming on! Sweet Hood strawberries, the best in the world. I just need to keep the slugs at bay.

<SIGH>

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Mother’s Day Recovery

May 16, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

I am almost a week out post-surgery. There isn’t anything to write about as my memory begins to fade and events become jumbled together. The recovery is worse than the surgery. Waiting is worse than surgery. Surgery is sometimes all about waiting.

The highlights of the event include needles, blue dye contrast, bruising, and a little swelling. And waiting.

The odd thing about waiting is that once things start happening, they happen in a whirlwind of motion until – abruptly – it is all over. You get sent home for another round of waiting: waiting for the pathology report and waiting for the three week recovery time to get past so you can lift five pounds again.

This has all been a pain in the behinder for me. I hate waiting. I hate waiting in waiting rooms, on hospital beds, and on time to pass. I am a useless appendage when I can’t be up and doing things – and I *want* to be doing some things. Certain things. Things like pulling the weeds out of my flower beds before they reach three feet in height, bloom, and go to seed. Things like planting more flowers in my garden beds. Going to the grocery store alone! Doing anything but light duty.

It has been unseasonably hot for this area. One day, it was ten degrees below normal and raining. The next day – BOOM! – it’s in the nineties (Fahrenheit) and the ground is turning to hard clay before your eyes. I love me some hot summer days, but not days when I can’t haul hoses or watering cans (five pounds!) around to water thirsty plants. I also like to become acclimatized to sudden death summer. (And it isn’t even summer!)

So I am waiting. Sitting in a lounge chair, sipping water or beer and doing nothing except watching weeds grow faster than the flowers and unable to do anything about it.

WHINE.

I know, I know: you feel this deep empathy for me, a great sorrow at my plight. I appreciate that. Once I post this, I will get back to that lounging and wining (er- whining) and you can feel even more deep sympathy for me. Poor Jaci.

Enough of that. There was a little tracker injected into my breast last Wednesday. Needles. The tracker helped the surgeon find the lump and was removed with the lump. That was two needles: one for the lidocaine and one for the tracker. Thursday, the blue dye contrast was injected into my breast. No lidocaine but two hurts: the initial poke followed by the sting of the dye. Needles.

After surgery, my pee turned Smurf blue. My breast was Smurf blue (except where it was bruised violet-blue). The blue lasted around eight hours. The bruise is still violet-blue, but now has tinges of yellow along the edges. The colors are all very brilliant and spring-like.

That’s it. We’re still waiting on pathology (which will determine if there is more to this story or not) but in the meantime… I’m going to go sit in the shade, read a book, and watch my peonies bloom. It’s my waiting game. I know you feel sorry for me. 😊

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I Chased the DDT Truck

May 7, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

We have had an unseasonably cold April. And a lot of rain. Last year, April was dry, so – you get what you get in the Pacific Northwest. But it is screwing with my gardening.

I lost several bushes over the winter. That makes me sad. My French lavender bit the dust, the curry plant is hanging on by a thread, and my purple wallflower is half alive. I lost some transplants as well, but I haven’t looked at my plots for the garden to know exactly which plants died. I can only tell by the remnants of the plant they were and go, “SIGH.”

It has been difficult to get ahead of the grass and weeds due to the cold rains. However, I have but one flower bed left to dig the grass out of as of tonight. The grass is a foot tall, but I’ve conquered all the other beds so far – so good. Have I ever mentioned how much I despise grass? I’m certain I have. I could replace lawn with wildflowers and ground cover if it weren’t such a daunting project on a 100×100’ lot.

I skipped the big Garden Palooza on the first of April: too soon, too rainy, and so much cancer information going on in my brain. We did, however, make the Clackamas County Spring Garden Fair this past weekend. I only found two pots of anything I wanted but my husband found starts for his tomatoes and peppers. We still need to do a Portland Nursery trip, but I think we’ll skip the annual drive south to Corvallis and assorted nurseries this year. Inflation and health concerns (actually, medical bills concerns).

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy! I moved three columbines (Aquilegia) to new locations. They were blocking out my poached egg plants (Limnanthes Douglasii). Last fall, I also moved some of my geraniums and coral bells (huecheras) (those are coming along nicely in their new locations). I still need to thin out the geraniums and huecheras in the front!

Friday there was a post on a local garden group on Facebook for free plants. I scored pink phlox, purple monkshood, and two toad lilies (one of which I gave to a friend). Saturday, I purchased two small pots of bunchberries (Cornus canadensis). Today, I planted most of them in the shade border along the fence. The monkshood prefers full sun and will go into a planter that I can move around out front (it’s toxic, so can’t be where the dog can get to it).

The paper wasps are back and setting up home in the little blue ceramic house they have lived in for the past five years. The native ground nesting bees, wasps, and hover flies have all hatched. Mason bees have hatched and laid eggs. The darling six year old next door tried to give us a humongous slug today (we politely declined).

The crows are nesting in the fir tree immediately adjacent to our property and are quite demanding of peanuts and other treats now that the eggs have hatched. A pair of Bewick’s wrens have nested in the wood pile (they once nested in the garage – not a great idea!). A pair of Dark-eyed Juncos have chosen to nest on the ground amongst the grape hyacinth and peonies that are in the fenced off portion of the flower garden (where the dog can’t reach them). Those have hatched as well. The Lesser goldfinches are nesting nearby somewhere and eating me out of thistle seed.

We missed the arrival of the Turkey Vultures due to the inclement weather (normally around March 15), but the bald eagles have not disappointed us.

Bald eagles. Daily. Three or four. Daily. I remember when we drove them close to extinction. I am 66 and that was 55 years ago. I have never seen them like I am seeing them now, five decades since we sprayed DDT to kill mosquitoes on every road, every stream, every town, every suburb, and every child. I am one of those children.

The DDT truck would come through our neighborhood, and we would run out into the street to follow in the fog of pesticides silently screaming “Hallelujah” as mosquitoes died on our freshly coated skin. We’d beg off from baths and showers in the hopes that the residual poison would continue to protect us for days to come. Meanwhile, we killed fish and fish-eating birds – some to near extinction. 56 years later, we get to see bald eagles soar overhead, a symbol of recovery and survival.I should have had cancer ages ago.

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Don’t Look at Me Like That

May 7, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

This is not That. Whatever your experience with breast cancer (or any other deadly cancer) this is not that.

I have been trying to make fun of this entire experience, but I’m coming up short when people give me That Look that says they feel terribly sorry that I am even going through this. Please, please, please, don’t look at me like that. In the memory of all the friends we have lost to cancer, don’t look at me like that. I don’t have the kind of cancer that is going to kill me in five years or less.

I started writing about it because this is novel to me, having a firm diagnosis on something. The irony of making the appointment and having the procedure done is not lost on me: I abhor mammograms. I don’t particularly believe in them. And after decades of having something “off” in my body but no one can figure out what it is, suddenly I have something “off” and everyone freaks out. (Maybe not everyone.) There was the mystery of the bleeding kidney (unsolved) and the mystery of the sudden blood clot in my left leg (also unsolved). Tests, C-T scans, biopsies, stress tests, and so on – all with no results.

Indeed, the MRI I recently had reported NO anomalies. The cancer in my left breast is undetectable by MRI, only by mammogram. The irony.

I am basically healthy, aside from year-long “seasonal” allergies and the Covid weight gain of 25#.

Reading the test results and discovering that a carcinoma was growing inside my body was more of a surprise and an immediate feeling of, “OH. BOTHER” than it was terrifying. I mean, seriously, OH. BOTHER.

I won’t lie: the novelty has lost some of its shine as I have gone to appointments and had procedures done. The oncology staff puts on a great show of cheerfulness but underneath their smiles runs a current of “I’m so sorry you are having to go through this” sympathy. My pharmacist looked at the prescriptions I had to fill for my post-operative care and suddenly turned empathetic and sad. “When is the surgery?”

This is not Stage 4. This is not metastatic. This is not Stage 3 or even Stage 2.  This is the simplest form of Stage 1 breast cancer. There is nothing in my history to suggest otherwise and nothing in my blood work to indicate otherwise. They aren’t even talking about chemotherapy (thank the good Lord!).

This is more of a “Whew! Dodged that old bullet, didn’t I?” cancer. More of a “When can we get done with surgery and recovery so I can go back to gardening because this is the month of May” kind of cancer. This is an Oh. Bother. Cancer.

We have a Game Plan. By “we” I mean this sudden influx of extremely compassionate staff and oncologists who are now in charge of my upcoming and ongoing care.

May 10 – ultrasound with contrast to see which lymph node the milk ducts feed into. This is “new”: they used to remove all the lymph nodes in the affected armpit but they discovered milk ducts (where breast cancer usually starts) only feed into one lymph node.

May 11 – lumpectomy to remove a carcinoma that is scarcely 3/8” (0.8cm). See attached photo. I get to go home the same day.

I will be under long term care as any cancer survivor will attest to. This is something I did not know I would have to go through. It’s more of an “Oh, Bother.” Five years of hormone blocking therapy. Yay. What little estrogen my post-menopausal body still produces will be entirely cut off.

Under good news: there will most likely be no radiation treatment and definitely no chemotherapy unless this go completely sideways on Thursday and the tumor is larger than they could see in the mammogram (highly unlikely since the MRI couldn’t see it at all).

Under bad news: no estrogen for five years. More hot flashes (not a bad thing in my world of being constantly cold). Most likely a full beard within a week of therapy (I already have to deal with whiskers every four or five days, so – yay). Twice a year visits to an oncologist to track my progress. Twice a year mammograms (!!) for the foreseeable future.* No magical weight loss due to chemo or radiation (DARN!).

*This, boys and girls, is why we go to have a mammogram done once a year or so – to avoid the bi-yearly squash by highly trained sadists.

To summarize: I am not scared, worried, fearful, or otherwise emotionally attached to the upcoming surgery and procedures. I just want it over. And I don’t want your sympathy. (I’m merely writing about it for the laughs.)

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The Dog is Worse Than the MRI

April 30, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

My little Breast Cancer saga continued this morning: I had an MRI scheduled at 9:30 in the morning at a nearby hospital. Not my local hospital because they don’t have an MRI machine, but a sister hospital within a 20-minute drive. We arrived early, of course, because it was a Sunday morning and there was no traffic.  We wasted ten minutes sitting in the car and trying to count how many Eastern Fox squirrels were in the adjacent trees and shrubbery. I quit counting at ten. That’s a lot of squirrels in a small area.

Checked in at 9:25 and sat down to wait for the tech. Oh, I had about three minutes’ worth of additional paperwork to fill out: “Where does it hurt?” It doesn’t. “Place an ‘x’ on the body part to be scanned” (That was easy). And so on.

Another patient wandered in for an ultrasound. His nurse came and picked him up after about fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, the clock ticked. Trust me, this was the WORST part of the morning: waiting for a full 45 minutes before my tech showed up to usher me back to the machinery. Tick…tick…tick…

The tech was very out-going and so made up for the long wait. The second worst part of the morning (actually, pretty low on the scale of worst to best) was the insertion of the IV.

Wait. I forgot to mention that our eighty-pound beast of a dog jumped on the bed at 6:30AM, firmly landing on my outstretched leg. He heaved himself up onto the bed and subsequently stepped on that same spot before I could withdraw my leg. I have the bruises to prove it. Darn dog!

That was more painful than the IV.

Technology has come a long way since the last time I had an MRI. Back then, the machine was a long tube and my biggest fear was that they would stick me inside that tunnel and forget about me (or the power would go out and they wouldn’t be able to get me back out). Fortunately, I was only having my left knew scanned and got to sit outside the tunnel with just my legs inserted. (I had a torn meniscus at the time.)

Now the machine looks like an oversized CT Scan machine. Open on both ends and not nearly large enough to swallow a human being whole, much less strand them due to forgetfulness or a power outage. WHEW. I declined any sedative at that point: it couldn’t possibly cause me to have a claustrophobic anxiety attack.

Rather, the positioning of the body was the most distasteful part. On my stomach, breasts positioned just so, and hard plastic digging into my sternum with my ribs crushed below. I was certain I would bruise after 25 minutes of that torture, but – alas – it wasn’t that much torture and I endured. And I didn’t bruise. Only where the dog walked on me earlier in the morning.

The tech gave me headphones with music cranked up at front row concert, like at least 85 decibels (probably not that much, but it was pretty loud). I soon learned why the music was so loud: the MRI machine is LOUDER.

Bang! Clang! Alarm! Beep! Boop! Whistle! Vibrate (that actually felt kind of nice). I decided the best way to pass time was to count how many songs played. If a song is three minutes long (standard radio play time back in the day) that it would take 8 songs for 25 minutes to pass. Apparently, songs can run longer in this day and age because I only reached 5 and a half songs before it was over.

When I had ten minutes to go, the tech came on the little radio and told me he was sending the contrast into my system. I half expected to feel something, although he had earlier assured me that the contrast he uses is not the same contrast they use for kidney function: the stuff that makes you feel like you just wet your panties. His contrast, according to his words, is “more Vanilla than that”.

Despite the warning from my drinking friend last Saturday, waiting for the contrast was not horrid. I felt nothing. I heard a lot: whirring, gears grinding, some more beeps and boops and whistles. Some day they will invent an MRI machine that is as silent as a CT-scan machine. Won’t that be amazing?

We left the hospital at 11:00AM and headed to the local food cart pod for breakfast, then across the street for a couple beers with dear friends. By 2:30PM, I realized that all the noise of the day – the MRI, the crowded brew pub, and the loud 80’s MTV music playlist – had worn my sensitivities to too much noise down to a frazzled level of “I just need to go home and be quiet”. Kind of like the night my brother dragged me to some nightmare Casino/kids play area in Reno with greasy cheese pizza and his grandchildren running amok (not ill-behaved, mind you, just bouncing off the walls in the kids playing area with thirty thousand other children) and I crawled into bed later with my Introvert HSP ears ringing.

In summary, the breast cancer screening by MRI is uncomfortable and noisy, but the biggest pain of the day was when Ruger stepped on me and woke me from a dead sleep with a stabbing pain in my lower right leg. And left me with bruises. And the worst part was the 45 minute waiting in a hospital lounge where there was only one other patient, and he only waited fifteen minutes.

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Blessed. I am Blessed.

April 23, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

My last post was about breast cancer biopsy (the bruising is completely gone now). I told my brother that I wasn’t surprised by the outcome because doctors have “tells” in their speech and mannerisms. I am, however, disappointed in that I am now a statistic. A lucky one, at that.

Had I not been referred for a bone density scan, I would not have called the radiology lab at the local hospital. Had I not called, I could easily have ignored the referral for a mammogram. I still could have ignored that referral but I decided to just go with it despite my previous painful experiences. I still don’t know what the bone density scan showed, but I sure as heck know what the mammogram revealed and the subsequent needle-poking of the biopsy proved.

Emotions tend to run high at the mere hint of the word, “cancer”. I’ve had several basal cell carcinomas removed from my face and a couple pre-cancerous lesions. Nobody freaks about that although those areas were much larger than the carcinoma discovered in my left breast. It’s so tiny, it can’t be felt by a routine self-exam. It’s considered an “invasive carcinoma” which merely means that it has invaded my breast tissue.

The word “metastatic” was not written in the report nor has it been mentioned by anyone. So, calm down everyone: it’s tiny. It most likely has not moved into the lymph nodes. All my markers are good. I’m not freaked out.

I’m irritated at the timing, worried about how friends and family have reacted, and not real thrilled with all the upcoming tests and surgery and follow-up, especially (irritation) during the height of garden season. my list of questions for the oncologist had more to do with the timeline of care and recovery than “Am I going to die? Will it recur? How scary is this?!” I still have no definitive answers on the timeline, but there is an outline of a game plan, and it does NOT involve chemotherapy, mastectomy, or even a whole lot of radiation.

The number of friends, family, and acquaintances I know who have already been down this road have been diagnosed with Stage 3 or 4 cancers, some metastatic and some highly aggressive. the living ones (sadly, I have lost friends, acquaintances, and family to this scourge) have either told their stories publicly or I have known them well enough to have watched them endure the weeks and months and even years of recovery. We all know those stories. I think that is where the fear comes in.

The doctors I have spoken to have gone out of their way to be kind and considerate. My own PCP (Julia) left a voice message that if I “needed to talk…” she would be there. The oncologists office was cheerful and upbeat in a true effort to make the whole process less frightening for cancer patients. Everywhere I have turned so far, it seems like I am being handled with kid gloves, as if my emotions are going to just spiral out of control.

I was referred to CompassOncology which has several offices in the Portland Metro area, the closest of which is 20 miles away, right off of I-5, and very reminiscent of my commute for at least 10 years. My oncologist is a Dr. D who is tiny, funny, sincere, and caring. She’s also very thorough. And she’s on vacation all this coming week.

Which is OK because I have to have an MRI a week from today. A mammogram only catches 50% of cancers. An MRI catches 97%. They want to know if the mammogram caught the entire picture of what is happening in my body and only the MRI can do that. My husband and support person whispered, “If that’s the case, why don’t they just do a routine MRI for breast cancer?” (Answer: insurance companies don’t want to have to write off that expense.) He also offered to take me to breakfast after the MRI even though I might be a bit loopy (I’m claustrophobic and will need a little sedative to get into that tube face down for 20 minutes).

Check that: MRI on April 30.

I also need to see a hematologist. This is because I had a DVT (blood clot) in my left leg a year ago and there was no obvious reason. No surgery, no bumps to the leg, nothing out of the normal and my blood pressure and heart beat all tested out relatively normal. this came as no surprise to me: Julia had mentioned it last year saying that we could rule out a clotting disorder if I saw a hematologist. We need to rule out a clotting disorder before I go into surgery.

The fun part about this upcoming appointment is that it is at 4PM. I’ll be driving home in high traffic. It’s OK, I’ve done this commute before, too many times to count. I told my husband he is not allowed to come with because I don’t want him to be in the car with me when traffic comes to a dead stop. And starts again. And stops again. he’s not good company in heavy traffic.

I do know the surgery will most likely be a simple lumpectomy and that one lymph node under my left arm will be removed for testing. I was advised Saturday by a cancer survivor that the injection of dye into the breast is the worst of it that no one tells you about. So yay for implanting that bit of knowledge into my nervous system.

Telling friends and family has been … interesting. A lot of “I’m so sorry you are going through this” comments and virtual hugs. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I am going to be okay. Two friends broke down and cried. But I still made summer plans with one of them. My family… Well, my brother made jokes (I love that guy). I know they are all there for me, if I need them. But I am still making summer plans with some of them. I’ve heard privately from other dear friends, encouraging me. All the same people who reached out when our son died.

This has been a lot more serious than I intended it to be. I was planning on making jokes all the way through. I’m not far enough into the process to make this journey humorous, but – trust me – I will find a way.

The photos I am using were sent to me by a very dear friend shortly after my last post. She said they were the first images she saw after she read (and deciphered) my last post. They are of the Oregon Coast. They are proof that I am blessed. Very blessed.

Please do not feel sorry for me. This is just a little stumbling block. I’m in good spirits. I’m hopeful. I am grounded.

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