Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. It was a year ago on Ash Wednesday that I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There are different schools of thought on when you celebrate your “cancerversary.” Some people go with the day they were diagnosed, and others go with the day they went into remission. Personally, I don’t have a feel for when that was, the day we actually got rid of the last bad cells. It could have been last August, when I had surgery, or some time in October or November, when we did the radiation to clean up the stragglers. So I’ve decided I am instead going to celebrate my survivorship from the day I was first told I had cancer, which was March 9, 2011.
Today, I celebrated nearing the one-year-survivor mark by having my one-year smashogram. It was clean! Yay! And it was only half the pain it used to be, since there is only one boob left to smash.
Today’s mammogram and sonogram were hugely different than last year’s. A year ago, at the sonogram, the minute I knew I had cancer came while I was watching the radiology technician’s face. I saw the look on her face and started shaking. She was not allowed to tell me anything, but I could see she was trying not to cry. She put her hand on my arm and said, “I wish I could tell you what you want to hear.” The mammogram film was horrific; to this day, not even my husband has seen it.
Well, no such drama today! I was in and out of there with no hoopla. The staff radiologist said they saw nothing dodgy, and they would see me in a year.
Today was also another milestone in my cancer journey. I officially began participating in a large research project aimed at discovering whether the diabetes drug Metformin can help prevent a recurrence of breast cancer. I am probably going to explain this wrong in some way, but the gist is: there is very good reason to suspect that women who take Metformin are less likely to have a recurrence of breast cancer than women who don’t. They think that the drug messes with your hormones in a way that breast cancer doesn’t like. Now they have to demonstrate this effect in a scientifically acceptable way. So, thousands of women like me, who have had breast cancer, are being recruited to take this diabetes drug for five years. They give half of us the real thing and half of us a placebo. Then they watch us like hawks to see whose breast cancer recurs.
They had to do all sorts of blood tests on me to make sure I was eligible for the study. They had to weigh and measure me and ask me a lot of questions. I also had to sign and initial many pages of legal baloney. We did all this last week. I had to have another stupid pregnancy test! That’s just as ridiculous as it was the last time they made me have one, the day of my mastectomy. As I keep telling them, I had my tubes tied nine years ago and I’m menopausal. Definitely, unconditionally, not pregnant, and I’d be happy to sign a legal document to that effect. But the medical system in America is truly driven by lawyers, and they are covering their legal asses. It makes me sad to think that the breast-cancer-research money raised by millions of people running their 5k races and doing their three-day walks is going to pay for pregnancy tests for people like me who aren’t pregnant, but there it is.
The study seems to be trying to cover its legal ass in other ways, too. They wanted permission to test me for the BRCA genes, but refused outright to let me know the results of the test. I said no way. I told them if they wanted to do genetic testing on my genes, the least they could do is let me know the results, because I have a daughter to whom the results could be very important. They still said no. I am sure they don’t want to be held liable for counseling and such for people who turn out to have the bad genes. In the end, I refused permission for the genetic testing.
Today, I got my Costco-sized giant bottle of the “study drug” pills. I hope I got the real Metformin and not the placebo. My oncologist said the biggest side effect I could expect is not being hungry and maybe losing a few pounds. Well, sign me up! However, the nurses involved with the study say the biggest side effect is likely to be “G.I. issues.” I suspect I did get the real thing, and not the placebo, because the first pill did sort of upset my stomach, and I doubt a sugar pill would do that.
In other news, I can report that the cancer magazines at the breast imaging center at Sibley Hospital are as old and lame as the ones everywhere else. This one had ads for organic hair tonics for people like me, whose hair has fallen out from chemo and isn’t coming back the way it should. Have I mentioned that I am STILL looking pretty mangy? There are big old bald patches on the back of my head. I was supposed to have hair by now. In fact, my oncologist alarmed me last week by commenting on the thinness of my hair, which used to be pretty darn thick, and asking me if there were any genes for baldness in my family?
“What does THAT mean?” I asked him. “You said my hair would be coming back! Should I start freaking out now?”
He chuckles nervously and says we should give it more time, and of course I shouldn’t be freaking out, and some people’s hair takes longer to grow back than others’, blah blah blah. But clearly he is really thinking, yep, you might want to start freaking out now. Even so, I can’t see me as a consumer of organic hair tonic.
There were other ads in that cancer magazine for lots of other products I am never going to buy. There were several ads touting cruises for breast cancer “thrivers.” Not my cup of tea for a whole bunch of reasons. I am not a boat person anyway, but even if I were, locking myself on a boat and hearing nothing but cancerspeak and seeing nothing but pink for a whole week is not something I would ever do for fun.
There was also an ad for a machine you can buy for your own kitchen to blend wheatgrass for shots and smoothies, which we are told are the sort of thing “thrivers” consume. Well, I personally did a shot of wheatgrass once, in a crunchy Seattle café. I will not be doing it again. Doing a shot of wheatgrass is like kissing a horse, only not as nice. Drinking a wheatgrass smoothie would be like chewing someone else’s cud. No, thank you. Give me a nice Scotch, if you really want me to thrive.
And you know, even if I were going to do wheatgrass shots, I could probably whizz the wheatgrass in the food processor I already have, eh? I don’t need another separate device, I’m pretty sure, even if the damn thing is pink.
Speaking of useless pink items, we came across another one, the worst one we’ve found so far. It is a pink handgun called the “Hope” edition, which is being marketed by a gun company called Discount Gun Sales. Supposedly some of the proceeds are going to the Seattle branch of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Well, good for them! I am sure their P.R. folks have nothing to do this week other than deflect press inquiries on pink guns. I must remember to check if the N.R.A. offers any classes to empower gun-toting breast-cancer thrivers like myself. And somebody out there must be marketing a pink deer rifle…That is something a girl could actually use!
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