Monday, March 10, 2008

10 March, Labour Day

Two things: 1. What I did on the 10th January before the long drive home - as North Western Breastscreen is in Royal Park, near the Melbourne Zoo, I dropped in to the zoo. I even told the woman who sold my entry ticket, "I've just found out I have breast cancer. I'm here to get used to the idea." I don't know why I told her, I think because she said something about the day being too hot for a tour of the zoo. She was so warm and loving, I carried her love with me through the gates. I looked at the empty archaic cages. I remembered coming here as a child, down from the country, the hot sheep and wheat country, the country of forest that was felled to lay rail tracks in India. (If I went there, would anyone be able to tell me which were our railway sleepers?) I remembered watching the lone tiger pace. I remembered seeing the bored gorilla sprawling, delicately placing peanut shells between his lips and biting down, swallowing the peanuts and tossing the shells with apathetic indolence. Those days are gone. We do things differently. Much study and a shift in the way we see life on earth has resulted in these empty cages. The victims are no longer imprisoned, constrained. And nor am I. I visit the elephants in their new home and playground. So much space and yet they stick together. As I walk the zoo's pathways, I settle. I'm a speck in a blanket of specks that surrounds a lump of restless rock. So what if a bit of this speck has a wrong speck in it? Much study and a shift in the way we view variations in our physicalness has resulted in medical strategies I feel I can trust. I've been given a lot of simple, straightforward information. OK, this is what I have right now to deal with.

The second thing: surgery (partial mastectomy with sentinel node removal) is scheduled already for the Friday immediately after Monday's session with a) Breastscreen and b) the surgeon. I have brought my sister with me on the Monday, for an extra pair of ears, and for her heart.

I'm jumping all over the place here. On Saturday, between The News and The Confirmation, I worked only half the day. In the afternoon, met Mum, Heather and Mikaela at the National Gallery to look at the British Art. Mum in a wheelchair, Mikaela pushing. Funny, I don't remember many of the pictures/sculptures individually, just a sense of the amazing continuity of humanness, and the lightness we created as a family, doing something so unnecessary.

Before Thursday, when I will have something injected in the breast in order to identify which lymph node is the sentinel node, I talk to my boss and others whom I know will feed me a diet of power and self-determination. I get a lot of support, and one thing that becomes clear to me is: the lump has settled in very nicely, thank you, and is feeling pretty cosy and in fact considering an expansion soon, if I don't mind. And my natural way of dealing with that kind of intrusion, I realise, is to say please leave. But really, how there is to be about it is: well, no, you can't have this space, it's actually mine. If you don't GO, lump, I'm going to kill you. It takes something to say it plain like that. I practice between Tuesday and Thursday: If you don't leave, lump, I'm going to kill you. You haven't left yet, lump. You know that means we're going to cut you out and throw you away. That's right, you'll die. We're going to kill you.

By the time I'm in the operating theatre, I'm able to say to the assistant surgeon, who has a wonderful way of holding my hand, that I'm looking forward to getting this done, let's get on with it. In the past, I've been apprehensive as an anaesthetic has been administered. This time, I'm keen to get on with it. See, the other thing I found out when I talked about my situation is that any fear I was experiencing is actually part of the cancer. Cancer isn't just cancer to most of us; it's still the big C word. I know I've thought about possibly getting or having cancer and not gone for tests. Too scared. That's cancer. For me, cancer was actually a lump or unusual growth PLUS fear. In confronting that, I took a stand that this invader was not going to rule my life with fear.

I come out of some operations badly, I've discovered. Extreme pain, yes please use all that pethedine; crying involuntarily, probably shock; blethering on ... on the other hand, it wasn't long before I was pulling the tray of light food towards me eagerly, and wolfing down every morsel on it.

After the surgery, I feel completely fearless, if sore and dopey. I leave next morning, (Saturday) and by Monday am at work again, albeit on reduced hours. My boss and I decide the cancer isn't going any further, and tell it so, and we turn our attention to more pressing issues.

For the sentinel node, however, our message is too late. On Tuesday evening the surgeon rings to say there is micro metastase in that node and thus we should remove more nodes to ascertain the spread/scatter/invasion. Drat! I hate it when things don't go the way I WANT them to go. Too bad, says my smarter self. You can only deal with what's so. All else is fantasy.

to be continued

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