My Story
Permission to Live My Dream; All It Took Was Breast Cancer
I doubt that I would have given myself permission to live my dream if it had not been for getting breast cancer. For most of my career before cancer, I was a closet writer, earning a living as an educator and administrator. I wrote educational and business articles related to my work. Today I do what I love…I write for a living. Since my first breast cancer in January 1999, I’ve had the good fortune to be a reporter for a trade paper, a freelance writer of magazine articles and a published author. Several years ago, I established a writing services company specializing in content writing for health care, education and social service organizations. Recently my company began producing E-learning programs (www.candostreet.com). In doing so, I fulfilled a 20 year dream of providing young children with computer-based programs that enable them to practice making good choices.
In late December 1998 a routine annual mammography showed something suspicious for cancer. Nothing could be felt in the comprehensive breast exam done just before the mammogram. My path report confirmed a Stage 1, estrogen-positive, early cancer that was confined to the breast. In addition to the lumpectomy, I had 36 radiation treatments and took Tamoxifen every day for five years to prevent a recurrence.
The hardest part of my first breast cancer was managing my fears and not allowing them to rob me of getting on with my life. Having faith helped, but I knew I also needed the support and sharing of other breast cancer survivors. When I finished active treatment I joined a support group. I came to realize that besides the love of friends and family the only commodity that matters to me is time; not money, not recognition, not great vacations, or how I look, just time and how I use it. I began building on this awareness to identify how I wanted to spend my time both personally and professionally.
A few years after my first breast cancer I accepted a position with the American Cancer Society to establish and manage a patient navigator program in 11 NYC public hospitals and 3 private hospitals. During the 3+ years I was with the program, I met with 1,000’s of men and women with cancer, many of whom had breast cancer. Once a patient knew I was a survivor, it didn’t matter what my age or color or ethnicity was, they just wanted to speak with me.
The longer I was breast cancer free, the better I thought my chances were that my breast cancer experience was behind me forever. I still got nervous about my annual exams but, my confidence grew as I ticked off the years. Then, in September of 2009, ten years after the cancer in my right breast, another routine mammography picked up a lump in my left breast suspicious for cancer. It also could not be felt in a comprehensive breast exam.
The only thing I knew for sure when I saw the surgeon was that I wanted my breasts off. I didn’t want another lumpectomy, radiation and annual mammograms that had to be followed up with ultrasounds, needle aspirations and surgical biopsies to check out something suspicious. Five times in the 10 years between cancers I needed needle aspirations and surgical biopsies following annual mammograms to check out something questionable in my right breast. Although all proved negative, the anxiety of having to have the procedures and then waiting for results took its toll.
The cancer in my left breast was a nine millimeter, Stage 1, early cancer. My right breast was cancer free. I didn’t have a recurrence; I had a new cancer, unrelated to my first cancer 10 years earlier. I didn’t need chemo or radiation.
I don’t miss my breasts. They had become a source of anxiety. Also, as I aged, the breast that had been radiated did not age, while the other one did. My breasts were no longer even and I had to wear a partial prosthesis in order to look balanced in my clothes. I don’t regret not having reconstruction. My partner, John, put it well when I told him my choice to have both breasts removed and not have reconstruction. Not missing a beat he said, “It will be like old times. You’ll look like you did when I met you in second grade…flat-chested.” That was just the levity the situation called for. I had to laugh.
For me, breast cancer’s lesson continues to be – live in the here and now. It has been the hardest lesson of the whole cancer experience, but the most liberating.
