Tag Archives: breast cancer

Back in a Familiar Place

23 Monday Mar 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.”

-Brian Tracy

So here I am again waiting in the 3rd floor waiting room of the UCSF Mt. Zion cancer clinic as my wife goes into surgery for the third time in 6 months. It is a very familiar place although it has memories that I’d rather forget. Yes it is a bit easier and the procedure (that is what we call it for children so as not to alarm them) is less serious than the first two.  When my wife was first diagnosed with cancer almost 8 months ago I never imagined the path we’d take and where we are today while better than possibly imagined is not one of the many scenarios that ever ran through my head.  We’ve learned to appreciate what life has given us and to that we can’t control everything.

The venue and many of the faces are still the same here at the hospital although some things have changed or at least the first two times I was too distracted to worry about.  Over in one corner of the waiting room is a wife (I think) who is trying to hold back her tears.  She looks as if she is in her 70s or so and is elegantly dressed with a hat ( this should be definitely designated as a chapeau).  She has a lot of makeup on and you can tell she was raised in an era and with parents who told her that if she were to go out, she always needed to dress to impress.  Everyone else is sitting in here talking on cell phones and updating their loved ones, reading outdated magazines or sleeping upright waiting for their name to be called.   Of note is that Lance Armstrong and His Ride for Hope took a serious spill today as he broke his collar bone in a fall.  Also, the television overhead in the waiting room is showing photos of Liam Neeson and his two teenage sons  at the funeral of their wife and mother, actress Natasha Richardson.  The grief and sorrow are the images I had imagined for myself 6 months ago.  As I said, you just don’t know what direction life is going to point you.  You just have to take it as it comes sometimes.

As we walked into the hospital a couple hours ago I noticed we both had a bit of a smile on our faces.  We even joked a little with the admissions staff.  But what made it even more noticeable was that we ran into one of the other mom’s from our kid’s school who was just coming down from her pre-op appointment before her breast cancer surgery tomorrow.  The two mom’s hugged and I shook the husband’s hand.  Very quiet and private people (he’s a physician himself) we could see their worry and concern on their faces. We kept the conversation brief and wished each other luck as we needed to stay on time.  My wife even had a moment to discuss a play date for our two sons in the next week while she rested.  How odd is that? My wife and I got up to the room and talked about the chance meeting.  “That was us 6 months ago”.   The other couple noted that this was our third time through and mentioned how they hope this would be their only surgery.  We only hope that we showed a positive attitude and a good outlook in the face of surgery.   

That is what it is about, isn’t it?  A positive outlook?  Last night my wife even asked for a hall pass to get out and have a drink and chat with a girlfriend.  I said of course.  I mean how many other women go out and do that the night before their surgery.  The first two times my wife needed Ativan to calm her nerves and get to sleep.  This time she was ready and not worried.  I almost forgot she was having surgery when I woke up this morning.

Speaking of positive outlooks we were talking about the short term memory of our own son.  He had a bad offensive game the day before with the “hat trick” (three strikeouts) in his first little league game this season.  Although just 9 he is playing with 11 year olds twice his size and at least held his own defensively.  Other kids out there were crying when they missed a ball and we were worried that our own son was going to be deflated.  After the game I asked how he felt. “Hungry”, was his response.  And after another pause he smiled, “Don’t worry dad, I’m not going to strike out everytime.”  I laughed and he smiled back.  Here I was worried about him and he was telling me not to worry. I can’t wait til he’s 30 and able to take care of me and tell me not to worry.

Has it been 6 months?  Yep.  The timeline:

Breast Cancer Diagnosis: 7/27/08

Bilateral Skin Sparing Mastectomy: 9/9/08

Beginning of clinical Trial: 12/1/08

Exchange Surgery: 12/12/08

Revision Surgery: 3/23/09

It seems like it has been a long time but 6 months really have just vanished from our lives.  At the same time our love has grown enormously and so has the maturity of our children.  Even moreso as a couple, our respect for life and the people we meet in life’s journey has grown.  We can only hope to enrich our lives by challenging it, embracing it and finding joy whenever it is presented to us.

Thanks to modern medicine we’ll be able to continue this journey in a couple days.  I think it is amazing that within 24 hours after I get my wife home, she should be back to normal.  She’ll be stiff with limited mobility, but most importantly she’ll be here for our children, for me and for her friends.

A Little Spring In Our Step

21 Saturday Mar 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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“Spring is Nature’s way of saying, “Let’s Party” – Robin Williams, comedian

The first day of spring and hope was in the air.  It is always a day where I start to see hope for people (of course the stock market took a bit of a hit yeesterday after a rally so not all is good).  More importantly personally we waited for my wife’s results from her BRCA test.  This test is to see if my wife has an abnormal  BRCA gene which indicates a higher probability of having ovarian cancer.  It has been found that those who have breast cancer and the BRCA are more likely to have ovarian cancer.

The average woman (without an inherited breast cancer gene abnormality) in the United States has about a 12% risk of developing breast cancer over a 90-year life span.  In contrast, women who have an abnormal BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have up to an 85% risk of developing breast cancer by age 70.  Women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 abnormalities are also at increased risk of developing ovarian cancer. The lifetime risk is about 55% for women with BRCA1 mutations and about 25% for women with BRCA2 mutations.  By comparison, about 1.8% of women without an inherited BRCA abnormality get ovarian cancer. The risk for certain other cancers may also be higher with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. But these risk increases (for cancers such skin or digestive tract) are much lower than the increases in risk for breast and ovarian cancer.

This cloud has been hanging over our heads since last July, but obviously the figth with breast cancer came first.  The thought of another surgery (given that we are having revision surgery on Monday) just isn’t something we wanted to consider right now.  Well the results came and my wife is negative which is a relief and slightly expected since her mother was negative.  It is quite possible though that since my mother had cancer that I could have pass it along to my daughter but we can’t test her until she is old enough and the oncologists said that she doesn’t need to be tested until she is 30 or so.  Amazingly we shared the news via phone, talked about it for 2 minutes and then went back about our business.  No celebrating, no hugs, no kisses.  Just another hurdle that we’ve met and jumped over without incident.  No doubt though, this was a big deal.  Nobody wants to mess with their ovaries in their 40s.  My mother-in-law had hers taken out in her 50s and I think psychologically it is a tough transition and although she is fine and have never really talked to her about it, it is something that affects you more mentally than physically.  I know my wife was not wanting to follow that route.

We even remarked at here we are concerned about cancer and how in current events today, Natasha Richardson, a beautiful actress our age could have an innocent fall and one day later be lost to her family.  People always say. “What if you got hit by a truck tomorrow…”.  Well this is just one more reason to focus on living life to the fullest and not worry about every detail.

So with that Spring in our step I took the time to get out for a walk for lunch yesterday.  A beautiful day for San Francisco with crisp clear skies, I sucked in the air, walked by the Martin Luther King Memorial fountain and pool in Yerba Buena Gardens where people were sunbathing, and read his quotes about his dreams.  I passed by two Japanese tourists with matching “Have a Nice Day” T-shirts with those yellow Happy faces.

For those who remember the 70’s a vision of the ubiquitous yellow “happy face” is burned into memory. From every direction this cheerful circular icon extolled us to “have a nice day” and none of us was curmudgeonly enough to not strive for compliance.   Along with “Hey the Fonz”, my OJ Simpson football jersey, my Willie Mays jersey and my Farrah Fawcett t-shirt, my “Have a Nice Day” t-shirt was part of my t-shirt rotation that I wore every day after tearing off my school uniform.  I was even part of the lunchbag brigade that had white lunchbags with the yellow smiley face which read “HAND” (Have A Nice Day).  Instead of the graffiti we see today, you saw Yello Smiley face stickers everywhere.  You couldn’t escape it.   My dad loved those lunch bags.

After a while they started having different sayings on those lunch bags and then it started getting expensive to just buy those lunch bags.   Eventually my parents got economical (or cheap) and started going to brown paper bags for lunch that they’d expect me to use at least 10 times before they would retire it.  Every night my dad would write a new saying on the bag.  Something inspirational , but mostly something that our friends would snicker at like: “Take care of your body”, “Listen to your teachers”, “Share with your friends” or “Be humble as pie”.  Needless to say, we’d hide our lunch bags from the view of our classmates, but once they knew it was all over.  As funny or corny as it was, I obviously remember it fondly and maybe it is something I should do with my children by leaving a little message for them each day.   Just seeing my daughter roll her eyes or seeing the funny smirk on my son’s face as he reads each message will be priceless.

Yes, hope springs eternal and the first days of Spring not only bring new energy and new dreams, but remind us of old ones that we need to renew.

Someone Saved My Life Tonight

15 Sunday Feb 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Celebrity Sightings, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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“Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever did. Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid”
  –  I’m Still Standing, Elton John

I’ve been waiting for Valentine’s Day for a while.  I’m not a big believer in the day as like many people say, you should treat everyday like it’s Valentine’s.  Well that’s easier said and done.  I like to thing that I show my love everyday anyway.  For me Valentine’s is that day where I show more than ever how I feel and make just that little special effort more.  Of course this year was more special to me and my wife and I wanted her to know how much I appreciate her.  I had been offered tickets to a show in Vegas and debated between Love – Cirque du Soleil and Elton John’s – Red Piano.  I’ve always been the Carpe Diem person in the relationship and since we’d seen four different Cirque shows before and I felt like Elton John is one of those iconic performers you have to see, I chose Elton John.  I was not to be disappointed.  This day would be full of wonderful moments each of  which would make the day special in so many ways.

I can recall only flying one other time in my life on Valentine’s.  It was a snowy day in the East when I flew from Chicago to Raleigh to be with my then fiancee back in 1994 right before we got married.  A 90 minute flight turned into an all day affair because of the weather and by that evening we were traumatized.  This Valentine’s flight was much smoother.  Ironically I finished the book “This Time’s A Charm” by Don Wilhelm, just as we landed in Vegas.  As we approached Vegas I kept pointing to passages in the book and having my wife read it.  Real life inspiration and all around good attitude about living life to it’s fullest in the happiest way is all I can say about the book and I will dscuss this in more detail when I host Don on this blog on March 1st.

With less than 20 hours in Vegas we took that attitude and had a blast.  We walked all over the Casesar’s Palace resort and got the lay of the land.  This would be the first time in a while that I did not gamble a penny.  I will write a review of the hotel at a later fay, but the new Agustus wing rooms were great and we got a chance to even run into a professional basketball player that I think was shocked I knew his name ( Leon Powe is one of the more feel good stories in the NBA today).  His story should be read even if you don’t follow sports.  He is truly a wonderful human being and very humble despite all the accolades that he has received.

Leon Powe and my wife

Leon Powe and my wife

We ate dinner at Bradley Ogden (a bit of a splurge) as I had made reservations before the show.  Our waiter enjoyed our husband/wife bickering over what to order.  The usual thing about changing my order because I didn’t want to order the same thing and then my getting chastised for being boring by ordering a Caesar’s Salad except when I listened and said I’d order the Foie Gras, she told me that was unhealthy.  Carpe Diem I told her. We’re living life right?  We’re celebrating, right?  So there it was, Foie Gras, followed by Risotto accompanied by a nice LaRoache Pinot.  Once dinner started we talked about our upcoming trip with the kids and how blessed we are by their presence in our lives.  Sure we want them to improve their manners and learn more of life’s social graces, but they are relatively easy children to manage.

As I mentioned, Elton John’s – The Red Piano was great.  Full of outrageous costumes, videos, and blow up dolls (cherries, bananas, breasts, roses, legs with garters, etc) along with balloons and confetti falling from the ceiling it was 90 minutes of toe-tapping fun from Benny and the Jets to Believe to Someone Saved my Life Tonight (my wife’s favorite) to I’m Still Standing (my favorite).  The words all had special meaning as we held hands and swayed.  The fact that the show’s theme was all about love made watching this on Valentine’s all the more special.   The video below was the romantic encore.  It set the mood just right:

That evening we lived like kids.  We went to one of the hottest clubs in Las Vegas.  Mind you this was Valentine’s and thus the party was crowded with pretty young people.  The night was hosted by Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of The Hills.  We were probably twice the age of most people and probably one of only a handful of couples in there that have children.    Either way the atmosphere was vibrant and young and we felt so alive that we stayed up until 2:30am  (way past our curfew), leaving us little time to rest before getting up and checking out this morning.  Most importantly my wife and I had fun giggling about the scene, amazed that us oldies were hanging out withe youngsters and a couple guys offered to buy my wife some drinks!  She was so flattered and in the most round about of ways, that just made my wife let her hair down and forget about the night as her rejuvenation, but rather as her just remembering what it was like to take what life gives you and to run with it.  We never have PDA, but just kissing on the dance flow while listening to house music and having some 20-somethings say that we looked so in love, was kinda nice.

In the end it was a perfect Valentine’s evening.  It was a celebration of our love and the beginning of our life where we take the anxiety and worries of cancer and put them behind us as much as we can and move forward with a life we will be happy about living.  The smiles on my wife’s face were so wide last night and I held onto them tight because I hadn’t seen her so lively in months.  In many ways it was a zest in her look I’ve never seen before.  She looked so gorgeous because of it.

So much for this Hallmark Holiday.  It was really an enlightening Valentine’s and will be one of the top days in our life.

Gathering Inspiration Daily in a Fight Against Breast Cancer

08 Friday Aug 2008

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight

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“Everyday I’m reminded of another reason why I love you so much”

I think one of the pieces of the healing process during the journey from diagnosis to surgery to recovery and treatment is hearing the stories of so many other women.  Amazingly enough I still haven’t heard a story that I felt is exactly like my wife’s.    Today a woman who is helping another woman in her recovery told me about her patient who is getting tattoos on her nipples after having a bilateral mastectomy and has been trying to find the right tattoo artist for the procedure coontacted me via this blog.  I responded to tell her that my wife’s situation was slightly different.

As I’ve been told, my wife will be able to maintain her nipples.  This is called a skin saving procedure or something like that.  Frankly when they told us this was an option during the counseling I didn’t react.  I wasn’t even sure what was the appropriate reaction for a husband in that moment.  It has been a couple days since then and all I can say is that I truly married my wife for the woman that she is.  Her external beauty would not be there if her inner light wasn’t so bright.  If she needs her breasts reconstructed to make her feel good, and that means it will enable her to keep up the spirit I fell in love with, then I will take whatever she wants.

I know there are many women who get bilateral mastectomies with different consequences:  Some don’t get reconstructive surgery at all, some decide to delay or can’t get reconstructive until later, some have reconstructive where they lose their nipples and have to have them tattooed on, some just never get them tattooed on, or in the case of my wife (this is the option that has been discussed to this point), she will have immediate reconstructive without losing her nipples.  This was an option I didn’t even know existed at the time where we walked into the doctor’s office.  They say that no matter what there is some loss of feeling.

But like I said, there are so many variables that breast cancer can throw at you which will change the possible opportunities.  My mother-in-law decided to have a double mastectomy (cancer had only been found in one breast) and never had reconstruction.  My own mother decided against a lumpectomy and had just a unilateral mastectomy without reconstruction.  My wife had the otpion of just a lumpectomy.  Family history, age and actually my wife’s current breast size had a large impact in the choice she/we have made.

We are going to take a break for a little family vacation before resuming with meetings with the plastic surgeon, getting the MRI and having some genetic testing done.  Still a while to go so a little recharge of batteries will be needed.

As for me, I’m finding myself still needing to talk about my wife with my own friends.  It helps me to talk about it and fortunately my co-workers and friends have been so supportive.  Telling them how my wife is fighting hard also makes them feel good to.  They are my inspiration.  Their wishes and prayers are not taken for granted and the fact that they are doing this for my wife makes me even more inspired to work harder for her and to show her my love will never waver.