Nancy Jill's Cancer Alphabet: N

I really want to do an MBC post about numbers, but it so happens that the letter N falls on the two year anniversary of the day I was told I have cancer. So instead on N for numbers, N will be for Nancy, and I will tell you the story of my diagnosis. In cancerland we call it our cancerversary. It doesn’t feel like anything to celebrate. I went in for a 6 month follow-up mammogram because my April routine screening mammogram had revealed a suspicious lesion. The mammographer took three images, then ran and got the doc. Dr. R told me I was getting an ultrasound and biopsy right then (this is one of the good things about small town hospitals). As I was lying on the table looking at the dark spot on the ultrasound screen, she said, “I’m 95 percent sure it’s cancer.” It think she was trying to be nice, because now I know that it looked 100% like cancer. She numbed me, stuck a needle in my armpit, and I cried, not because it hurt but because I didn’t want to lose my hair. After that it was like falling into a bottomless pit of bad news. It finally stopped at cancer in some vertebrae. In 2018 I had four surgeries, four rounds of dose-dense AC chemo, four rounds of taxol chemo, more pharmaceuticals that I ever thought I would take in my life in one year. My understanding of my mortality changed completely. I live in a state of feeling well but never knowing when my health will change. This is the state that stable metastatic cancer patients all live with. When stability shifts to progression, we shift with it, find new meds, new stability and move to the next phase of treatment. We can do this until there are no treatments left. I’m grateful to be in the first line of treatment and to have been stable for over a year. Some get years on the first line. I’ve learned so much in the last two years. I used to think breast cancer was one disease. Now I know that it’s complex and as individual as a fingerprint. I’ve made some dear friends, and I’ve watched many brilliant, strong, loved and loving women die. The youngest woman in my cancer group who died of a pulmonary thromboembolism was 26. Please, please, please become active with me. Join METUP http://metup.org/, donate to MetaVivor, support the ACA so that cancer patients don’t lose health insurance. 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer in her life time. One third of those will become metastatic. 40,000 women die every year. #metavivor #metup #pinktober #thisisnotpink