Holding on to Normal Read online

  My mother came over to visit on the next Saturday.

  “Everything okay, Alana?” She was helping me tidy up in the kitchen, and I’d dropped a dish while I was putting things in the dishwasher.

  “Fine, Mom. My hands are just wet.” But they weren’t. I was trying to behave as though everything was normal while I was falling apart on the inside. In a sort of vicious circle, everyone around me was trying to stay positive, too.

  And in the midst of everything, I was trying to come to grips with potty training Charley. “Charley, you’re all wet!” I yelled one time when I realized that she’d had yet another accident. I was holding Rudy, who was screaming, and I was absolutely beside myself. Mom had just dropped by for another visit. She took Rudy from me.

  “You need to relax, Alana.” Her voice was kind and quiet as she said it, but I almost started crying. Everyone was worked up, but I knew I was the cause. I was more affected than I’d realized—and the worst was yet to come.

  The following Tuesday finally arrived, and with it my appointments. The mammogram was first. As a school teacher, I meet and get to know many people, and the technician happened to be the parent of one of my past students. I seemed to run into her all the time at the hospital—she had also performed my previous mammogram.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Great! How are the kids?”

  “Oh, you know. Charley’s potty training, and I don’t know if I’m going to survive.” I thought about the couple of days a week that Charley went to day care. It was all that was saving me right now.

  The tech laughed, then explained the procedure and got me into position. As I stood there, attempting to breathe but not move, my breast mashed between the mammogram plates, I tried hard to get information out of her. Could she see anything? I knew she was a technician, not a doctor, and wasn’t supposed to tell me my results, but that didn’t matter. I was hoping that if she noticed something right away, she would tell me, since we knew each other. She wasn’t talking, though. I waited patiently while she looked at the films to make sure they’d turned out, and then she finally spoke.

  “I don’t see anything.” Big sigh of relief. She couldn’t see any tumors, which meant that maybe there weren’t any. That was good, right? I gathered my things, and she walked me to my next appointment and introduced me to the ultrasound technician. Before she left, though, she stopped to talk with the tech. I strained to hear what they were saying but couldn’t. Was there something in my breast that wasn’t supposed to be there?

  The ultrasound tech gave me a gown and left while I got changed, then came back in. “If you could just lie back on the table,” she said. She had me expose my breast.

  “This is going to be cold.” She squirted gel on me and used a wand-like instrument to rub it around while she stared past me at a black-and-white screen. I craned my neck and tried to see what I could and, again, asked every question I could possibly think of: “What is that black shadow there? Is that the lump? What are you looking at now?”

  The technician was surprisingly chatty, but not in an upbeat way, more in an investigative way. I remembered with my pregnancy ultrasounds that the technicians were usually deep in thought. She asked me a bunch of questions: When did you find the lump? Does it hurt? Has it grown since you found it? Maybe if she hadn’t spoken at all, I wouldn’t have been so alarmed. It wasn’t that she said anything in particular, but I could feel something was definitely wrong.

  After she had finished and handed me a large wad of tissue to wipe the gel off with, she told me I’d have to wait about a week for both the results of the mammogram and the ultrasound. I couldn’t believe it. A week? That amount of time sounded like torture to me! I left the appointment feeling overwhelmed, confused and angry.

  On Friday, just three days after my mammogram and ultrasound, Rudy was in his high chair and I was feeding him when the phone rang. Call display is a great thing. I could see that it was the doctor’s office. I snatched up the receiver.

  “Hi, is Alana Somerville there, please?”

  It was Doctor 2. Oh, shit. It can’t be good if the doctor is calling himself.

  “The results of the tests were somewhat concerning,” he began.

  I put Rudy’s spoon down.

  “I suggest you meet with a surgeon and get a biopsy done, again just to rule out anything sinister.”

  “Okay,” I said, and we ended the conversation with the doctor explaining that the surgeon’s office would call me with an appointment.

  As I hung up, it hit me. I slumped in front of Rudy in his high chair, and all my courage faded away. Tears came in full force. I was overwhelmed with fear. Sweet little Rudy just stared at me. What was he thinking? He couldn’t possibly have any idea what was going on. I sobbed and sobbed, angry thoughts seething in my head. This should not be happening to me. I have the two most beautiful children and this can’t be happening to me. My children need me. I don’t have time to be sick!

  Greg continued to tell me things would be fine. “It’s probably nothing,” he said.

  I looked at him, wanting to sink into his arms, wanting desperately to believe what he was saying. “I hope you’re right.”

  He hugged me. “I’m sure it’s nothing, Alana.”

  “I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but I can’t help but worry,” I said. I wasn’t just worried, though—I was terrified. How could he possibly know what was going on?

  Everyone I talked to—Greg; my brother, Braden; my sister, Erin; my friends—seemed to dismiss the fact that there could be a problem, and those dismissals irritated me. I couldn’t help but think that it’s a lot easier to say things will be fine when you aren’t the one going for a biopsy.

  My mother was the exception. After all, she had just had a biopsy not that long before. She was the only person who seemed to be taking what was happening seriously, who didn’t just dismiss it. Her advice was simple: “You’ll cross each bridge as you come to it. If you worry now and it turns out to be nothing, you’ve worried for nothing. If it turns out to be something and you’re worried now, you’ll have worried twice.” It must have been difficult for her, but she was there for me every step of the way—even if she was treading carefully around me like everyone else. Her voice had the appropriate amount of fear, too, even though she seemed to be the one who was trying to hide it the most.

  When I called certain friends or family members, they avoided the topic, saying things like “Quite the weather we’ve been having, no?” or “Hey, did I tell you about the family trip we’re going on next month?” Some people told me about cancer patients they’d known who went on to live long and happy lives. One of my friends told me a story about a young boy who’d been diagnosed with cancer and was on his deathbed. “I don’t think he’s going to make it,” she confessed in hushed tones. I tried to change the subject, but deep down, I felt the impact. If this could happen to a young boy, could it happen to me? Then I got mad. How dare she compare me to someone who was dying? I wasn’t going to die!

  All of the responses to my news begged the question: How did I want people to respond? What is the “right” way to respond to the news that someone has a lump that may or may not be cancerous? I honestly didn’t know, and to this day, I still don’t. I had no clue what I wanted to hear from anyone. Nothing anyone could say was going to change what was happening to me. I didn’t want easy denials—a pat on the head and a superficial “everything will be fine.” Maybe that was the way most people coped—by pretending that the worst wasn’t possible. And maybe the people who didn’t say anything to me at all didn’t know what to say; that happened to be their way of coping. I just knew that few people were saying anything that helped.

  Dealing with this was bringing me down. I had to put on a brave face. If anyone had asked me—truly asked—how I felt, I would have said: I feel disheartened. I feel alone. I feel hopeless. Help!

  Chapter 3

  STUPID PINK EVERYWHERE

 
Maybe because the next month was October, which happens to be Breast Cancer Awareness month, all of a sudden, everywhere I looked I saw pink. Everything I saw and heard pointed to the fact that breast cancer was in my world. Every commercial on the television seemed to be about raising money for breast cancer. I ordered a new pair of running shoes, and the only color they came in was white with a pink stripe. Every product I looked at seemed to have that damn pink ribbon on it. Everything screamed breast cancer at me.

  It felt surreal. I was filled with anxiety, and not one minute of the day went by when I wasn’t thinking about my fate, even though only just over two weeks had passed since I’d first found the lump. Yet I had to keep myself together because I had kids to take care of, a house to run, and medical appointments to get myself to. It felt like I was living two different lives, but simultaneously.

  Things were moving fairly quickly, though. I was already up to Doctor 3. I wanted to keep track—so it felt simpler to just refer to them as numbers to keep everything straight.

  Doctor 3 was a local surgeon. We met for a consultation before the biopsy was performed. Yet again I had to disrobe from the waist up, and yet again I waited alone in an exam room, cold, semi-naked, with only a hospital gown as protection between me and the help I needed. Doctor 3 examined me, focusing in on the lump.

  “Is this concerning to you?” I asked.

  “Yes, it is,” he answered. Could he have been more blunt? Could he not have beaten around the bush a little and given me some hope?

  “We need to do a biopsy to see exactly what it is we are dealing with here. I’ll try to get you in within the next week.”

  I didn’t ask much after that. I got dressed and slowly walked out to the reception area, where a nurse took my information and said she would get back to me with a biopsy date. She called later that day. The biopsy would be done by Doctor 4 in the hospital. It was scheduled for Friday, September 10, three weeks after I’d found the lump. Doctor 3 would meet with me again after the biopsy to discuss the results.

  I felt shell-shocked. I thought about who would come with me to the biopsy appointment. I didn’t want to go alone. My mother, I decided. She was tough, probably the toughest woman I knew, even though she had a habit of crying while watching sappy commercials. I wanted her there with me, but she was also the best person to watch the children. In the end, Greg came with me, while Mom watched the kids.

  We walked into the hospital, and I was already feeling as though the antiseptic smell and white walls were becoming a recurrent theme in my life. I hoped I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. I had that embarrassed feeling again. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Why would I be embarrassed? What did I have to hide? And yet all I wanted to do was hide. I wasn’t ready to discuss with acquaintances what was going on in my life. Close family and friends, yes; acquaintances, no. Illogical as it sounds, I felt like I had done something wrong to end up in this predicament. And I didn’t want people to start talking about me.

  When the nurse called my name, it was clear I would have to leave Greg in the waiting room. How I wished he could come with me. I changed—stripping was by then becoming routine—and waited till the nurse came to lead me into the operating room. Another table, more exposure. I felt cold, but that could have just been my fear. On the wall, an anatomy chart of a dissected woman stared me down. I could relate to her—exposed and vulnerable, her privacy and dignity cut away. I tried to cover myself with the thin sheet of blue paper I’d been given, but it felt wholly inadequate. I felt as though my privacy and dignity had been sliced away.

  Doctor 4, the radiologist who would perform the biopsy, entered along with a nurse, and they got right to business. My breast was frozen with a few jabs of a needle full of local anesthetic. Then an ultrasound was used to find the exact location of the lump. The doctor took a device that when it was employed sounded disconcertingly like a staple gun and used it to remove three samples of tissue from the lump.

  The process didn’t hurt at all, which surprised me. I thought that if someone had been jabbing my breast with a machine sounding like a staple gun, I would definitely feel a throbbing pain. Instead, there was just a little pressure. I found the sound of the machine more alarming than anything else. Doctor 4 showed the bits of tissue to me when it was all over. They were in a container filled with liquid and were each about the width of a small juice box straw. The sight of pieces of my breast floating in front of me made me a tiny bit woozy. Could so much be learned from samples so small?

  “Here’s an ice pack,” the nurse said. “It’s to put in your bra when you get dressed. And take Tylenol for the pain.”

  I sat up. I wasn’t concerned about the pain. “How long will it take to get the results?”

  “Between seven and ten days.”

  Again I would have to wait. I found waiting the most awful part of everything. Waiting was when my mind wandered, when I thought about all of the negatives and the possibilities. If the results were negative, were they really negative? Or would they tell me later that they’d made a mistake? If they were positive, what next?

  The following Tuesday, four days later, I received a call from the surgeon’s office saying that the results were in. No one would tell me anything over the phone; the receptionist simply scheduled an appointment with the doctor for the next day at nine A.M. Surely, if the biopsy results weren’t troubling, the appointment could have waited for the following week? I thought about all that pink I kept seeing, about cancer, and felt overcome by dread.

  Wednesday, September 15. I circled the day on my calendar. Would it be the day that would change my life forever?

  Chapter 4

  DIAGNOSIS

  Sometimes more than one person is needed on a journey. Both my husband and mother accompanied me to get the results of the biopsy.

  We didn’t have to wait long before Doctor 3 came into the office, sat down and began to tell me my fate. I don’t think he even said hello. His words came as if in slow motion, yet somehow so fast.

  “It looks like it’s cancer,” he said.

  I couldn’t move. I replayed his words in my head. Cancer. I had known all along, but how could it be? The doctor said the pathologists were 95 percent sure, but because I was breastfeeding at the time of the biopsy, the milk may have mixed with the tissue sample so they weren’t 100 percent sure and were working on it.

  “So maybe it’s not cancer, then,” I said.

  He stood up. “I’ll give you some time to think about this.” Then he left the room.

  Where did he go? To grab a coffee? To meet a patient who didn’t have cancer? My life had just divided in two, so where the hell was he off to? I looked at the two people still there with me.

  “I feel like this is a death sentence,” I blurted out.

  I have to give credit to my husband and my mother: They were both rock solid.

  Greg said, “You’ll be fine.” I think he and my mom were holding my hands, but to be honest, I can’t quite remember.

  My mother was trembling. “Alana, we will fight this thing. You are going to fight this.”

  I was frozen. I felt like the walls and the ceiling were caving in on me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening.

  Doctor 3 returned and sat down. “I can perform a lumpectomy,” he said, explaining that he would surgically remove the lump and the surrounding tissue under local anesthetic. “It’s a fairly common procedure. I would love to get you in for surgery next week, but I’m going on vacation, and this is one of those situations where we need to ‘hurry up and wait.’ ”

  What? What did he just say?

  “I can book you in for surgery on October 19.”

  It was September 15. How was I supposed to wait more than a month with this thing growing inside me?

  My mother, who had been silent while he’d been talking, leapt into action. “Should we take Alana to a bigger cancer center? Maybe they’d be faster? What about the Juravinski Centre in Hamilt
on?” She was referring to the Juravinski Cancer Centre, or JCC, a large treatment facility located nearby in Hamilton, Ontario.

  “Studies show that we have good luck in smaller, local hospitals,” Doctor 3 responded.

  Good luck? Good luck?

  “This is my daughter we’re talking about,” Mom said. “We want the best treatment available.”

  Doctor 3 again replied that he was sure he could successfully perform this surgery.

  Mom and I looked at each other. Everyone needs a vacation, I understood that. I wanted to go on vacation at that moment, too. In fact, I wanted to get the hell out of that office and escape from the nightmare I was in, but I couldn’t. I had a cancerous tumor growing inside me. I couldn’t wait for a surgeon to come back from his vacation to get it removed. I knew my family was thinking the exact same thing.

  We left the office and walked towards the elevator. The ride down felt like I was sinking into a new and horrible world. I had cancer. I couldn’t step back over that threshold into before. My life before cancer was over.

  Dead silence in the car on the way home. My mom gave me a huge hug when she left us in the parking lot, and surprisingly she kept it together, so I tried to keep it together for her as well. I was shaking, though. I was in shock. Greg had left work to come to the appointment with me, so before we started driving, he phoned his boss and told him that he wasn’t coming back that afternoon. Although I heard only one side of the conversation, and it was brief, I could imagine exactly what his boss had said. It was just that kind of conversation. “Oh, no! The results were positive? I’m so sorry. Let us know if we can help. Please tell her we are praying for her and thinking of her.”

  I think Greg knew that I didn’t want to talk, and he allowed me that time to just think. He kept looking over at me, but I stared straight ahead. I know he was genuinely worried, but what could he do to help? It was a long ride, and as I stared blankly out the window, I started thinking about what this world would be like without me. Cars flickered past me, filled with people going about their lives. They would still be there when I was gone.