Pinkish

I give you a regurgitated column. After all, October is here. I’m still here, too.

Ah, October in Texas. Finally, we can all venture outdoors without fear of our lungs liquifying in the heat. High School football is king. The State Fair of Texas is in full swing. Turn off the a/c. Open all the windows. Time to buy pumpkins. Time to buy Halloween candy. Time to buy something pink. Love it or hate it, October means a sea of Pepto-Bismol pink almost anywhere you look. Welcome to breast cancer awareness month. It seems, more and more these days, like slapping a pink ribbon on everything from yogurt to mechanical pencils to powdered sugar doughnuts has big biz thinking we'll be more apt to buy, buy, buy. Are you as tired of it as I am? Do you often wonder if ANY of the money spent winds up funding a single study or helping even one patient? Hot pink. Hot pink with glitter. Camo with hot pink. NFL with hot pink. Save the TaTa's. Save the Boobies. Fight like a girl. Get your pink on. I mean really? So irritating, right? So unfair to all the cancer patients who weren't 'lucky' enough to get breast cancer? Who picks the ribbon colors, anyway? Is there a khaki ribbon? Relax. Settle your feathers. I'm not crazy over the commercialization of breast cancer either, but it kind of saved my life. If you read my column and feel like we're sort of best friends even though we've never met, this one's for you. Now you can tell people that cancer touched your life, because your sort of best friend is a survivor. 2008 was decidedly not a good year.

I buried my beautiful, 16-year-old daughter, on April 16, 2008. She did not have cancer. She had a congenital heart defect that wasn’t diagnosed until March of 2008. Three weeks later, she died after an unsuccessful attempt to repair her aorta. My husband offered me the opportunity to take a few months off work to get myself together. Translation: I cried every day until I vomited at least once. I slept in her clothes. I slept in her bed. I crawled into her closet and refused to come out for hours. I went a little cray. It's not so much that you had to know this, but you had to know this. I cannot tell one story without telling the other. They are just so intertwined. You'll see. I am 40 years old in this story.

My house was full of kids. Three more of them, in fact. Ranging in age from 7 to 21. And 3 dogs. And a great husband. And a cat. We were all shaken and broken. We missed her, and we understood our own mortality for the first time. I could feel us freefalling, untethered, off the rails. If I wasn't careful, if I let this go on, who knows what could happen to us. So, I made a conscious decision to hide my crazy, as Miranda Lambert would say. I got up and washed a million loads of clothes. I washed my hair. I put on makeup. I found the lump. It felt like a scab, a tiny pellet from a bb gun under my skin. Dear goodness, what have I done to make a scab? I can't pick it off. It won't come off. So, I look, but I can't see it either. Yet, I can feel it, a little pellet under my skin. It is there. My husband says it's there. He says it that night. He says it the next morning. Still there. I have just turned 41 in this story.

I needed to see a doctor. I needed my gynecologist, but I couldn't go see her. She worked in the hospital where I just camped out for a week, where I didn't get to bring my daughter back home with me. If I must see those halls, or that lunchroom, or that parking lot, I don't know what I'll do. So, I pick another doctor off the internet, randomly. I call and tell them about the bb pellet. I tell them I don't know what to do. They ask about my last mammogram. I tell them I've never had a mammogram. They asked why. I tell them I accidentally skipped it. I tell them I meant to schedule it. I really, really meant to schedule it. They set my appointment two weeks away. Except, it felt like two years. Finally, I meet my new gynecologist. She's lovely and caring and thoughtful and so sure the pellet is absolutely nothing. But I should still have a mammogram the very next day. So, I do. During my mammogram, the phone in the exam room won't stop ringing. I think that was when I knew something was wrong. Having a mammogram is much like playing Deal or No Deal. There's a banker up high in a booth somewhere who dictates what happens. Except, the banker is really a radiology doctor who's watching your mammogram images. And they need more views, because that pellet is there. Then, the door flies open. Your body is exposed, and you don't know who this man in the white coat is doing the Risky Business/Tom Cruise floor slide, but you sense that he's the banker. He wants more images, a sonogram, and a meeting in a secret room. He says there's something there, two somethings. He says I should have a biopsy the next day. So, I did. I went alone. I didn't tell anyone. It was a Wednesday. The banker told me he'd try to rush the test so I wouldn't have to go all weekend without knowing. When the phone rang at 7 pm on Friday night, I knew it was him. I sort of knew what he was going to say. You have cancer. My daughter has only been dead for a month in this story.

I could go on forever, but I won't. Here's the Reader's Digest version. I had two tumors in one breast, a very slow-growing breast cancer I’d probably had for 7-10 years. The tumors had very high levels of estrogen and progesterone. My surgeon says at least stage 2. My oncologist says definitely stage 3. My lymph nodes are affected. Mastectomy. Chemo. Radiation.

Depressed yet? Here's the deal. I took my grief and all my untetheredness and all my lostness and I DOVE into cancer speak. I read everything. I talked to everyone. I participated in a clinical trial. I ate differently. I spoke differently. I prayed differently. I woke up one morning and saw everything clearly. I would take my husband and my children and my 3 dogs and my one cat and my parents and everyone else who so graciously supported me, and we would FIGHT. Win, lose, or draw, we would not go down easily. I had all these beautiful, precious souls looking at me every single day. I saw that I was the only one who could lead us. Well, God would lead us, but I would have to be the first one to fall in line behind Him. If I chose to fold, they would fold around me. If I chose to fight, they would fight with me. If I chose to live the best life I possibly could, even if it were just because I felt I owed my daughter to see the world for her and live a good life for her, they would all see and feel and live, too. I think I just didn't want the tragedy of a beautiful girl who left too soon to be the defining moment of my other children's lives, or mine.

Moral of the story: MAKE MINE PINK! I'll be the sellout. I'll wear the pink shirt. I'll drink out of the pink mug. I'll pop the pink breath mints. I'll do it all. Thank you, cancer. Thank you for saving my life. Because you made me, I crawled out from under my bed one day and decided life was worth living. So, I'll take your pink. Hopefully, I won't have to take your yellow or your purple or your khaki or any of your other ribbon colors. But, hey, I'm still standing. I am cancer-free, as far as I know. Do I live in fear of a recurrence? Yep, but I live. I am 57 years old at the end of this story. My story. Praise God.