September 17, 2022

It’s September y’all – can you believe it?  I’m sure for many, September is the month that you think, “Finally, the cooler weather is right around the corner” and for others, the thoughts are probably “It’s September, already?  The holidays are just around the corner and I’m not ready” but for me, September now reminds me of “the month that changed my life forever.”  I was diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma (IDC) on September 23, 2021, and on September 30, 2021, with Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC).  I will admit that hearing those words – Triple Negative Breast Cancer – was much harder to swallow than hearing the diagnosis of cancer.  The next few blogs are going to be a bit lengthy as I tell the story that led up to the initial cancer diagnosis and the journey beyond.  I will apologize now for the lengthiness of these short stories, but I hope that you will hang in there and read them for the context they offer.  I also hope that my story resonates with some of you and that you take it to heart how important it is to get your yearly mammograms and check-ups.  It’s so important!  Enjoy the read.  I love you all. 

I’m often asked how my journey started, so let me tell you.  Thankfully, I am diligent about a few things in my life.  I am diligent about my annual check-ups, whether that is for my dental cleanings, annual bloodwork and doctor’s visit, my eye exams, my woman’s well-check visits, and my mammograms.  I come from the thought that it’s easier to have an appointment and move it than need an appointment and then have to wait to get in.  In August 2020, I had my annual mammogram and received a call back that they had found a suspicious area and they were recommending an ultrasound.  I scheduled the ultrasound and had that done.  It was determined that the suspicious spot was an 8 mm cyst and nothing to worry about.  The radiologist recommended that I continue with annual mammograms.  Which I did….

Now as we all know 2020 was “the year of COVID” where we were all facing our own challenges of homeschooling while working from home.  Our whole lives had been turned upside down.  For Mano and I, 2020 was also the year that Mano was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s B-Cell Lymphoma and we were navigating the waters on that and what the future looked like with that diagnosis.  For those who don’t know, there are many different types of lymphoma and Mano was “lucky” to get the “good” cancer.  From the beginning, his doctor’s shared that his lymphoma was slow growing and rarely changed to an aggressive form of cancer.  It’s more of the “let’s just watch it” cancer.  Lucky us!  With all the craziness the year 2020 handed to all of us when the radiologist said to just continue with annual mammograms, it’s nothing to worry about, I took that to heart and that’s what I did.  Hindsight, I should have insisted upon a follow-up mammogram in 6 months instead of a year.  But I didn’t.  Lesson learned.

Fast forward to August 26, 2021, it’s time for my annual mammogram and I remember this vividly because when I walked into ARA to get my imaging the desk clerk informed me that I was two weeks early from the 365-day mark of my mammogram for the year before.  I did not understand what she was trying to tell me and she was nice enough to explain that some insurance companies follow the rule that mammograms (and other annual tests) must be at least 365 days apart, while other insurance companies’ rule is that you can have that annual test once in a calendar year and since I was just shy of my 365 days, I had to go outside and call my insurance company to confirm that I was okay to proceed with my mammogram and not reschedule it.  Thankfully, my insurance company rules are the once-in-a-calendar year rule and I was able to proceed with my imaging. So, I did.

I’m sure many of you are like me and you ask the person doing your imaging if you can “take a peak” at the scans, which I did, and clear as day I could see “something” in the bottom portion of my right breast and instantly, I knew that this was a big “something” and it wasn’t going to be nothing.  My images were read quickly, and I received a follow-up call to have an ultrasound done on September 14, 2021.  Having been through the cancer stuff with Mano the year before I had learned that you can self-refer yourself to any major cancer center, and that is exactly what I did.  I self-referred myself to MD Anderson.  While I was waiting for them to receive insurance clearance and get my appointment scheduled, since I already had the appointment locally for the ultrasound, I went there and had the ultrasound completed.  Now, this is where my opinion differs from my medical teams, and I’m sure they are correct, however, I can’t help feeling like they aren’t.  In my ultrasound appointment, I happened to get the same technician who did my ultrasound the year before and she was able to “compare” the two scans.  She told me during this scan that this was “definitely” a new and different area of concern than she scanned the year before.  Okay, sure…see, my opinion is different.  Once she completed the scan, I was instructed to get dressed but wait in the room while she went to see the doctor.  When she came back into the room she had the doctor with her, who then confirmed that my suspicions about that new “spot” was definitely ‘SOMETHING’ and not ‘nothing’ as I had hoped.  I was advised that I needed a biopsy and should get that scheduled asap.  By this time, I had already scheduled my first appointment at MD Anderson for the next week.  As I left, I requested a disc containing my mammograms and any ultrasound scans for the past 5 years.  I also requested that they send them to MD Anderson.  And I thought so the adventure begins…

Now that I have shared the technical aspects of what happened, let me share the emotional aspects. If you are found in this position, if you have been in this position before, or if you find yourself in this position again, I want to first say, I am so sorry. I am so sorry that you are at this moment. I’m not going to candy-coat it, it’s tough. You will have friends and family telling you that it’s nothing. People find benign tumors all the time and I truly hope for you that this is the truth. For me, this was not the case as you will find out later. I will say this from experience, I am someone who believes that we shouldn’t create worry. I do believe that until I have all the facts, I try very hard to give it to God and allow him to steer the boat. I try not to worry until I know that I have something to worry about. I will also say, that despite all of the positive thoughts and statements from my family and friends, despite telling myself (and Mano) not to worry until we knew we had something to worry about, despite that – I was worried and in my gut, I knew, I just knew, that this was not going to be good news. It was at this point, that my prayers changed from “God, give me good news” to “God, please be with me no matter what and help me to navigate the rocky waters that are coming.” And that is what he did.

After my ultrasound, Mano and I took all my scans with us to my first appointment as an ‘undiagnosed’ patient at MD Anderson.  On September 23, 2021, starting around 7 am began my full day of medical appointments.  I started with a visit with a nurse practitioner who explained what the day was going to “look” like for me.  I then headed to the next waiting area to begin the day which started with a mammogram, then an ultrasound, and then 4 core biopsies of the tumor bed area and one core biopsy of a “suspicious” lymph node.  It was quite the day and extremely overwhelming.  For most of the day, I was separated from Mano.  They required him to wait in the waiting room as I was shuffled from one exam room to one waiting room, to the next exam room, to the next waiting room, etc.  It was a long and overwhelming experience.  I will never forget the doctor who was leading the team handling my biopsy.  She was a tall and confident oriental lady.  She was dressed impeccably, and she could tell that by this time my anxiety level was off the charts.  She came into the room as they were prepping me and explained the procedures.  She was a matter of fact, which I like, and at the same time, she was kind.  When they started the procedure, she reached out and held my hand and brought my focus to her while she talked to me as they did the procedure.  When they got to the point of starting the lymph node biopsy, she grabbed the ultrasound wand and started moving it all around, pushing here, pushing there, and talking all this fancy medical talk, which I interpreted as “this is not cancer, this is just a lymph node that is smashed against another lymph node.”  She then said to me, “I can tell you right now, that this lymph node doesn’t have any cancerous cells in it.  I am still going to biopsy it, but don’t worry, your lymph nodes are clear” and do you know what? SHE WAS RIGHT!  At MD Anderson, they have a tech in the room that spins the cells from the lymph node right there in the room, so before you leave, you know if there are any cancerous cells in that node.  How cool is that?

After my eventful day of being smashed, stabbed, poked, and prodded, I was able to reunite with my husband and we then met again with the nurse practitioner who informed me about the clear nodes and explained what the next steps were at this point.  From here they were going to complete the biopsy test to determine if that “spot” was cancerous or not and if it was, they would then “type” the cancer.  This means that they determine if it is ER+/-, PR+/-, or HER2 +/-.  These additional tests take time.  So back home we went to wait for “the follow-up calls.”

On September 28, 2021, I received the call that no one ever wants to hear – You have Invasive Ductal Carcinoma.  In layman’s terms, “You have cancer.”  As you can imagine, my heart fell, and the tears began.  I honestly don’t know what is harder, hearing the words “You have cancer” or knowing that right after you hear those words you now have to tell all those that you love that “It’s cancer”.  The crazy part for me was that I never felt a lump, and I never felt sick, I had no suspicions at all about cancer.  We don’t have a history of breast cancer in my family, no BRCA genes, nothing.  That’s the crazy part. It all felt like I was living someone else’s life because I thought to myself – they can’t be talking about me, can they? 

Now, remember, there are a couple of other factors to this story that are important to remember.  My cousin, Sabrina “Dina”, was diagnosed with breast cancer on September 16, 2020, and I had been walking her journey with her for the past year.  I had been praying for her, hearing about the stages of her journey, and lifting her up with cards, gifts, etc.  During this same time, my Uncle Doug, Dina’s father, passed from cancer in April 2021, and Mano had been diagnosed in June 2020 – we had been living the cancer journey for quite some time, however, no matter what that journey is and whose journey it is, it will never prepare you for your own journey.  That is something that no one can prepare you for, but you can get tools, and tricks, after your diagnosis, to help yourself move forward – I will talk more about this in a follow-up blog.

After being informed of my diagnosis of IDC, I called my neighbor, Emily, who has spent her career doing breast cancer research and who is full of knowledge on the subject.  Emily came over and we sat at my dining room table as she explained the ‘typing tests’ they were doing, the genetic testing they would want to do, and potentially the genetic tumor testing they would like to do as well.  We talked about the pluses (if there are pluses with breast cancer) of having the positive cancers – ER+, PR+, or HER+, we talked about treatments and things they can do for those.  Emily shared in that conversation that “You don’t want the negatives – those are the BAD ones.  You want something positive, not all negatives.”  Emily and I have attended the same church, and were in the same small group, for a very long time we had a dear friend at church who had passed away a year, or so, before my diagnosis from TNBC and I clearly remember Emily saying “You remember Nancy (the name has been changed) she passed from TNBC. That’s the bad one.”  Now, remember this statement as it will be important in a follow-up blog. 

I spent the next week trying to “pretend” that life was normal while I waited for the results of the type of breast cancer that had invaded my body.  My sister, Nicky, and her husband, Phillip, had already planned to come to Austin for a visit which Mano and I were so looking forward to before the chaos of “cancer” was uncovered.  We insisted that they go ahead and come out because we knew that despite whatever the results were, we would not be heading back to MD Anderson for the next steps until the early part of October. 

I remember vividly, VIVIDLY, thinking to myself, and being completely convinced, that I had ER+ breast cancer and that I would have “a little chemo”, some sort of “surgery”, maybe “radiation” and then I would be given a pill that I would take for the next 10 years and that all was going to be well in my world.  Y’all, when I tell you that I was TOTALLY convinced this was my pending diagnosis, I mean it. 

The second part of this story is the day that I received “the call” informing me of my TNBC diagnosis.  In the next blog, I will proceed to share the story of what I now call, “The day the air left the room”.   Stay tuned and remember the underlined details in this story as they are important reminders for part two coming soon. 

Xo,

Tracy