I won’t lie. I was super disappointed when the specialist delivered the news to us that more testing needed to be done.

But as Mike subsequently pointed out, just being told it was nothing to worry about probably wouldn’t have been all that comforting in the long run.

He was right, but in that moment, that had been the news I was hoping for. It’s nothing – you don’t need to worry about it.

But with the benefit of hindsight, I can admit that the initial relief I would have felt would inevitably have been replaced with doubts. What if they were wrong? What if they missed something?

As much as I didn’t want to do more testing, given the circumstances, this was the ideal scenario. At least the biopsy would give us some definitive results. Right?

Lucky for us, Mike’s step-mom was more than willing to come over to watch the kids for the biopsy appointment, and my mom immediately stepped right up to visit us on the date of the results. (Have I mentioned we have amazing parents?)

And on a positive note, with all the support from our families coming to watch the boys to facilitate Mike going to these appointments with me, we have had more date nights in the span of a month than in the entire rest of the time since our youngest was born!

While I don’t recommend a cancer scare in order to spend more time with your better half, if we were going to be dealing with it anyway, this was not a bad little side effect.

The Biopsy

So there I was, heading back to the cancer centre for yet another appointment. I felt I had already been to this place far to many times for my comfort, but this appointment was a level up from the MRI. This time around they would be freezing the area, making a small incision, sticking in a needle the size of which seemed like major overkill, and taking a number of tissue samples.

The thought of the incision/needle would normally stress me out big time, but much like the epidural during labour, at this point I was thinking “bring it on”.

Until I was laying on the hospital bed with the “tools” set out in an orderly array on a tray next to my bed. Then I felt nauseous again.

I recalled the mantra I had been repeating when I had the IV for my MRI and re-started that mental loop. Staring at the clock slowly ticking away on the wall, I reassured myself that in just a mere 30 minutes, this part would be over.

Then I heard the nurses talking in hushed tones outside the room. The doctor performing the biopsy was MIA. One nurse suggested he had probably slipped out for a coffee, the other lamented that she thought he would be able to see me before his coffee break.

I pondered on this for a moment and decided that I would rather wait and see the doctor after he’d had his caffeine fix rather than when he was rushing to get it. When the nurse came in to apologize for the delay, I reassured her that I understood entirely “coffee is very important” I added, with all sincerity.

After 15 minutes or so of waiting, my theory seemed substantiated when the doctor popped into the room in a cheerful and happy mood. He seemed in no rush whatsoever and instead wanted to talk about the origins of my first name. His bedside manner was wonderful, and the idle chit chat distracted me from the menacing tools laying on the tray.

I assume this was his plan all along.

He then went on to stare at all the images I’d had to date with a furrowed brow. He was not happy with something he was looking at. He subsequently illuminated me that he wanted to use his own ultrasound tool to examine the area himself. After a long period of viewing, comparing what he was seeing to what the old images showed, he excused himself from the room.

Once he came back in, he explained that it was very clear that there were changes within a large area of tissue, and that he felt my case was a bit of an anomaly.

Hmmm – an anomaly you say? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

I like being an anomaly in terms of the expected time frame of when the average person should retire. But having an anomaly in the same context as when you are talking about whether or not you have cancer did not seem so good.

I decided I would just nod and listen to what further information this doctor could offer me on my “anomaly”.

The doctor proposed a plan of attack. He felt it was best to take tissue samples from two different areas of where the tissue changes were observed, rather than the spots that had been noted on the original ultrasound and the recent MRI.

This would require two separate incisions and collections, but he felt it would give us a more thorough understanding of what was happening on a more cellular level.

Sure – why not? If you’re going be cutting and sticking that needle in – might as well do as many of those as you need to right now.

Then came the actual doing it part. It wasn’t fun – but the whole thing was over quickly. Back to waiting.

Limbo Land

I was back in the limbo period where there was nothing I could do but get back into the day to day of life and wait for the results.

At this point, I had a rough plan of action for the likely outcomes:

Plan A – If the mass was benign, I would push for them to remove whatever it was, send it away for testing just to be sure, have a brief recovery period, and be done with this whole saga.

Plan B – If I had cancer, I would push for a double mastectomy immediately regardless of the stage or aggressiveness of the cancer. At this point, I had done enough reading to know that wouldn’t be the route suggested if the cancer was caught sufficiently early, which seemed likely in my case.

But, I also knew enough people who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had lumpectomy’s, and chemo/radiation, only to have the cancer return years later and have to do the mastectomy anyway.

I know that getting it done won’t guarantee that cancer would never return – but it sure seemed like the safest bet.

And worst case – I’d just go in for reconstruction. Weapons upgrade, right? Plus I promised Mike that he could do the re-design.

The next two weeks crawled by. I focussed my energies and thoughts on getting overly organized for Christmas.

I repeatedly impressed upon Mike the absolute importance of us having all of our Christmas decorating, baking, shopping, gift wrapping, renovating the play room, etc. done before November 25th.

Why November 25th? No idea – it was just an arbitrary deadline I had set in my head that ensured I would be incredibly busy for the next two weeks straight. While not entirely intentional – even I could sort of see what I was doing.

Pretty sure Mike new exactly what I was doing – but he took it in stride like a champ, and went right along with my incessant need to be ready for Christmas a month early.

The Finale

Then there we were – back in the cancer centre. Ok – this time it was going to be over – right?

I could feel the sweat building on my palms as I was sitting in the waiting room. I looked at Mike and gave him a calm smile. He did the same.

We were full of it. Our calm exteriors were convincing to others, but we both knew that on the inside, we were trying to reign in our fears of what might be coming. I appreciated his effort nonetheless.

Neither of us had really talked bluntly about how scared this whole thing had made us. We had talked around it. He hinted that he’d had thoughts about the worst case scenario, but couldn’t let himself go down that path. I’d hinted that I was worried.

The truth. I was scared. I suspect he was too.

All our lives we have been risk mitigators, looking for ways to control the scenario and build in safety plans. This was completely out of our control – and our comfort zones.

The Takeaway

If I learned anything from what has now been more than a 6 month period, it’s that sometimes you need to just lean into your fear.

My entire life I have been a person who has believed in the value of stoicism. Of maintaining a calm demeanour. People who freak out and get emotional before all the facts are available……… annoy me.

And then all of a sudden, here I was, feeling emotional about an issue that I didn’t have near enough facts to feel concerned about. Throughout these 6 months I exercised positive self dialogue. I put on a brave face to those around me.

But what I quickly learned is that, for me,  having a bunch of positive messages thrown at you in response to an uncomfortable topic does NOT help. When people took that tact, despite their best intentions, it left me feeling like the whole experience was being dismissed, and increased my need to maintain a brave a positive facade.

Those comments left me feeling like I couldn’t say I was scared, or worried about any of this.

Then there were people who over dramatize things. That’s not my scene AT ALL.

There were however a handful of people in my life who handled it beautifully. They acknowledge the suck factor without being dramatic, told me that what I was experiencing must be scary, asked me some pragmatic questions about what I planned to do given various results, and ultimately left me with an open ended offer to talk about again, if I decided I wanted to.

They didn’t give me advice, they didn’t tell me how to handle things, they didn’t tell me that it would all turn out to be nothing, they didn’t try and make it anything it wasn’t, tell me not to worry, or respond with “Oh my god!!!”.

It was lovely – and I aim to forever remember this lesson when talking to other people experiencing difficult situations.

There are many people I didn’t tell about it at all – because it didn’t seem reasonable to talk about what I was going through unless the actual diagnosis came back badly. Which was basically me telling myself that I could only be scared, or get worried based on the outcome, not the experience.

In hindsight – I probably should have just had a solid cry it about it and admitted that I needed a hug. One where I wasn’t trying to fight back the tears or feeling embarrassed that my eyes had welled up, or that I was showing any emotion about the whole thing.

I probably should have just told my family that I was scared. I probably should have told a few of my friends what was going on and been more open about my feelings.

I used this blog as an outlet instead, because it granted me a degree of anonymity. But I probably didn’t need to feel embarrassed about showing some vulnerability and weakness in front of the people in my life. I probably shouldn’t have tried to be a hero.

No one gave me a trophy at the end for (mostly) sucking it up.

I’m not advocating being a blubbering mess when crappy things happen, or indulging in a woe is me mentality when life hands you lemons. But after going through this, it is totally okay to acknowledge (out loud) that the lemons are darn sour and kind of suck, before you get on with making some lemonade.