Talking about cancer

    What do you say when a friend or family member gives you the news that they were diagnosed with cancer?  Is it ok to ask questions about the disease or diagnosis? Will it hurt if I hug you?  Or, do you get half way into a story about someone who had cancer only to realize that you wish you hadn't started down this road since the subject of your story didn't survive. The truth is that most of us are completely uncomfortable talking about cancer.  When Joy was diagnosed, we put out the word selectively and were blessed to have a couple of friends that have had a similar diagnosis and have beaten it.
Statistically, the chances for survival beyond 5 years with Joy's diagnosis is somewhere over 80%.  I felt real good about that until I remembered that that they told us the lump in her breast had an 80% chance of being benign.  So, the 80% survival rate doesn't comfort as much as you'd think since we're already in the 20% that ended up with cancer.  You get what I'm saying?  Good news is sometimes what you make it.

    Some of the best advice we received was from one of the ladies that had been through this process. She told us to use the word cancer as much as possible. Talk about it. Encourage your family and friends to talk about it.  That makes perfect sense when you realize that cancer is a scary word and anything we're afraid of gains more power over your emotions and thoughts.  Joy and I are learning to verbalize whatever we're feeling at the time and it does wonders in keeping the mind monkeys from terrorizing your thoughts and dreams. From the stories of those that have already traveled this journey, I'm beginning to see the next few months as a season where it will be cold, clinical, and full of small and large storms.

    This picture of the maple tree in our front yard made me think of where we are in our journey.  There is plenty of warmth and beauty all around us but the season is changing. The important thing to remember is that all seasons run their course and that we will emerge from the darkness and cold at some point and begin to create a new normal for our future.


   I don't want to be too technical but we both want this blog to get out information about Joy's cancer.  The current diagnosis is that her cancer is called invasive ductal carcinoma. That is the most common breast cancer. It is stage II, hormone sensitive, and I forget the rest.  The tumor is on the lower, inside of her left breast which is a little unusual as most are on the outside toward the armpit.  The stage is determined by the size of the tumor. We do not know about lymph node involvement or if there is anything metastasised anywhere else. For the time being, our diagnosis is pretty much the best bad news you can get.  They also found 5 suspicious spots in the right breast and Joy has endured 3 or 4 mammograms and sonograms on that breast trying to locate the lumps so they can be biopsied.  They tell us that they think they are nothing to worry about and that they are "probably" not cancer. Not sure where "probably not" fits in that 80% thing.  Obviously, we want to know about the right breast before deciding what to do regarding a lumpectomy or full mastectomy of the left breast or whether we need to consider removing both breasts.  These are not easy decisions and I find I'm mostly as spectator and there for support.  Statistically, the recurrence percentage is almost the same for lumpectomy or mastectomy.  The lumpectomy requires less healing time for the surgery but requires 6 weeks of daily radiation treatments. Then there needs to be 1 to 2 years of tissue healing before the breast can be reconstructed. The mastectomy requires a longer healing period but she may not need the radiation or chemo if they find no other bad tissue when removing the tumor.  So, that's where we are. We're trying to decide which surgery gives us the best results and it isn't an easy decision.  We meet with the medical and radiation oncologists this week so we will hopefully be able to fill in more of the blanks.