I have an amazing ability to make things happen that I explicitly want to avoid. In the early days dating Bob, he told me about a woman he broke up with because she was a spiller. Spilled everything, all the time. I knew it had to have been bad if Bob was upset by it. I’m not a spiller. Unless it's very soon after we met, and I’m sitting with Bob at a poker table in a casino, making a mental note of the location of my drink, then watching helplessly as my arm spastically lashed out and knocked my full cocktail across the felt. Or sitting down to a nice dinner party, resolving to not have any issues, and moments later snorting a tiny broccoli floret into my lung, causing a reflexive, catastrophic over-reaction that appears to others like I’m choking to death and need the Heimlich.
Once, in the dead of winter, I was leaving the office late, and as I was locking up, I thought, “God, wouldn’t it suck if my keys fell through the deck,” and immediately they did, leaving me to crawl under there in the dark and feel around for them. I have a history of dreading things true.
Having cancer, I’m finding, allows one to choose their own adventure in many ways. I didn’t have to have a double mastectomy; I may have had a similarly positive outcome with a lumpectomy and radiation. There are choices to be made, decisions weighed. The one thing I’ve been clear about from the beginning is my deep, deep desire to not have chemo. We met with my oncologist for the first time last week, he told me definitively that I’m at stage 1A (the first possible stage, unless you count stage 0, but I think that’s dumb). Good news! But then he spent the rest of the appointment explaining to me why I need to have chemo. Bad news.
An aside: you may know that Bob grew up on Long Island. During these years, the Islanders hockey team enjoyed a dynastic winning reign. Players, including star Bryan Trottier, would hang out at a bar called Dr. Generosity’s in Bob’s home town of East Meadow, New York, where later in life Bob would find out he’s not suited for bar work. Drinking in bars, yes; working in bars, no.
My oncologist? Bryan Trottier’s son, Bryan Trottier, Junior. I asked him if his star athlete dad was disappointed that he only became a doctor. Turns out he was fine with it.
So back to this chemo bullshit. We’re waiting on one last test result: my Oncotype number. If that number is 26 or higher, a whole lot of research says to do chemo. If the number is 25 or lower, the chances chemo will kill me outweigh the cancer-fighting benefit. The odds are that my number will be 26 or higher, because my cancer is grade 3 (out of 3, i.e., most aggressive grade).
Right now, at this very moment, I don’t have cancer. There could be some random cancer cells floating around my body, though, which is what the chemo would go after. We really want to prevent any of those rando cancer cells from setting up shop anywhere. I have no breast tissue left for them to invade. If they move in somewhere else, it’s a bad deal. For me. And for those who prefer me as a living person.
The TC chemo (Taxotere and Cyclophosphamide) is on the lighter side of the spectrum, but it’s still poison. It consists of an IV transfusion once every three weeks, for four cycles. Three months and I’m done. I will lose my hair. I will be able to work. It seems they’ve really dialed in the drugs to treat unwanted side effects, like nausea. I won’t be doing any air travel during that time, just to limit my germ exposure while my immune system is compromised. I will feel like I have the flu some of the time. Apparently, how I react during the first cycle will set the tone for the remaining three cycles, and I can expect it to be the same each time. We will probably fire up the Meal Train again.
But who knows. We’re still waiting for the final Oncotype result. Maybe chemo can be avoided. I’m getting used to the idea of it, though, just in case.