It's time again for my annual post. This time, I thought I'd do the short story version which I will get to soon.
I moved to a new position at a different school in the district this summer. I'm with a new staff after having spent 13 years, essentially growing up as an educator, at my previous school. Everyone at my old school new my story, but not so much at this new school.
We typically celebrate the day of my surgery as an anniversary, going out to dinner or make some special treats. This is a particular tradition at my previous school...birthday, pregnancy announcements, Fridays were all celebrated with treats in the lounge. Cancer-versary is a definite lounge treat occasion. This left me thinking this year, what do I do? Do I put myself out there with this staff? We just got done doing a book study of Brene Brown's Daring Greatly, so I said yes to vulnerability and chose to share. Hopefully others will start to as well and we can get the lounge treat tradition going here too. I put some chocolate covered strawberries in the lounge with a note about what we're celebrating. Lots of questions came up, which leads us to the short history that I'm about to write.
Here it goes:
My family has a long history of breast cancer at young ages and includes men with breast cancer. Our history is so unique and with such a large family that we were approached by Creighton University to be in a study in which we'd get genetic testing done and they'd track us. I had the genetic testing done and found out that I carry a genetic mutation that increases my risk of breast, ovarian, and other cancers. I had a hard time initially with this trying to figure out what it meant for me and how I would proceed. But eventually I was able to come to a good place with it; writing and talking to others about it was a big part of that.
I made the decision to have risk reducing surgery after we were finished having kids. We had our two daughters but were having a hard time deciding if we were going to have another child. I got pregnant with a third child, but miscarried and I felt like this was a sign. After a lot of prayer and thought about it, I felt that God was telling me something. I decided needed to do something about my breast cancer risks now rather than later.
I went ahead with plans moving forward with a preventative mastectomy. There are a lot of choices that you get to make when you come at it from a preventative side. I needed to have one last MRI in December before my February surgery was planned to help decide if I was going to have something called the sentinel node biopsy done as this is the one and only time it can ever be done.
The MRI came back however with suspicious lumps. An ultrasound and biopsy of this was unsuccessful. So we didn't know exactly what they were, but my doctor assured me that the surgery that we already had planned was the best course of action. We were planning on removing everything anyway and that would be a part of the treatment plan regardless of what these lumps turned out to be, so we were really in a good place.
I had a bilateral mastectomy with the removal of 1 lymph node on both sides. During the surgery the lumps that were spotted in the MRI were examined and then these along with the rest of the tissue was sent off for a more detailed examination to be studied and determined exactly what was going on in there. I was able to have reconstruction immediately because the initial during surgery pathology came back clean showing that the lumps were called Fibroadenomas. The more detailed pathology report indicated that I had hyperplasia in both breasts along with 4 spots of abnormalities in ducts. Hyperplasia is the overgrowth of atypical cells and is what turns into cancer eventually. These abnormalities found are called DCIS and are treated as stage 0. My treatment was the same as what would have happened 6 months down the road when this tissue had become full blown DCIS like my dad's "precancerous lesions" as he and his doctor called it back then or something worse depending upon how fast the cells were growing.
I remember an ob/gyn that I had one appointment with during my second pregnancy asked me quite a bit about my genetic mutation during one of those check ups you have every two weeks at the end of pregnancy and he said, "Do you feel like you have ticking time bombs?" I was offended at the time and was like no...I'm not going to explode! But in reality, I did have a time bomb. I had cancerous tissue starting to form inside me and removed the bomb before it did any damage. I am now thinking of my doctor like she's MacGyver!
I shared with my amazing MacGyver-like doctor at one of our last visits (before I had to switch to another doctor due to our insurance changes) that I was struggling with how to describe what I am...am I a survivor? am I a previvor? what describes my journey? She told me, "Renee, you are absolutely a survivor. You beat cancer before you even knew you had it." So that is the best way to end my history. Yes, I am an cancer survivor. I am so thankful that I made the choice to do this surgery when I did. I am thankful that I still had the choice--not something that I HAD to do after diagnosis. I beat cancer before I knew I had it.
That was not so much a short history because I like words and whenever I start to write it never ends up short. Hopefully this helps others understand without having to go back and read the entire blog history.
