Knock, knock. Who’s there? Cancer.

Posted by Leah Houghtaling in Deep thoughts with Leah and tagged with breast cancer, cancer, coping, diagnosis, family and friends, monster February 3, 2016

No one is exempt from cancer: toddler, grandparent, serial killer, neighbor, asshole, rock star, plumber, homeless person, new parent, cop, cashier. I am not exempt. You are not exempt. Cancer is like a monster creeping around the house, waiting to scare the bejesus out of you when you least expect it and then refusing to leave like an uninvited house guest.

The number of people I know who have or used have cancer seems to be increasing by the month. Off the top of my head I just counted 12 people. It’s becoming a common occurrence. We can chock it up to so many things and debate causes and treatments, but one thing is for certain; cancer isn’t going away anytime soon.

Me getting cancer is now what I call a direct hit. It’s one of those things that you truly do not understand until it happens to you. For me a direct hit is something that happens to myself or Amelia, someone who I live with and see every single day of my life. I love my close friends and family, but when something bad happens to them, it’s a little more of an indirect hit. At least it was prior to my diagnosis. Now it’s different. When even an acquaintance gets diagnosed with cancer, I feel like my heart is taking a direct hit. Now I understand. Now I get it.

Oncologist

Posted by Leah Houghtaling in Pathology and tagged with breast cancer, diagnosis, genetics, HER2+, herceptin, invasive ductal carcinoma, Mastectomy, oncology, pathology October 9, 2015

The next appointment we have is with an oncologist. Dammit, I now have an oncologist.

The pathology reports came in electronically. (We love technology. That we can view all of my records and test results online is amazing.) Trying to decipher a pathology report without a medical professional is pretty hard. There’s only one thing that we really came away with. During surgery, the pathologist in the operating room found a 2mm area of cancer cells in a lymph node. This was classified as a micro-invasion which is a very grey area as far as treatment goes. All of the tissue was sent to the pathology lab for more thorough testing. The new pathology report says two lymph nodes testing positive for cancer, the largest tumor being 6 mm, which is a macro-invasion. This means I have Stage 2a cancer. Well, shit, this is not a grey area anymore.

Hormone receptor tests came back, too. I am negative for estrogen and progesterone, but I am positive for HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2). This, to me, is good news because HER2+ has very successful treatment with Herceptin, a drug that targets the HER2 receptors.

I am doing a lot of what if-ing right now, trying to prepare for the next steps emotionally. My sense all along has been that I’ll need chemo but I keep hoping for some little light to point in a different direction. It’s a waiting game, still. And I’m full of questions, some of which I don’t want to even ask out loud.

There is more good news. Genetic tests came back all negative. I don’t have any of the scary cancer genes.

Last month I was stressing out about re-wiring lights and tiling a floor. This month I’m relieved that I don’t have scary cancer genes, and I’m beginning a long journey of healing after a mastectomy. Perspective.

We have cancer

Posted by amelia sauter in Cancer and tagged with breast cancer, diagnosis, helpless, Mastectomy September 22, 2015

September 22, 2015

By Amelia Sauter

We have cancer. That’s what it feels like when someone you are that close to gets a diagnosis. WE have cancer. At least that’s what it felt like three weeks ago at the Wende Breast Clinic. The sad clown face on the nurse that day as she walked Leah out from the biopsy shouted a diagnosis that they couldn’t say out loud before the pathology report came back. I called my parents that night and said Leah is going to be told tomorrow that she has cancer and I don’t know what we are going to do. The shock, the grief, the WTFs. Leah and I are going through all of it together.

Everything in your head comes to a crashing halt when the cancer diagnosis comes. And the ripple effects of the crash shake up every corner of your life. For us, that ripple has an aftershock that most people don’t have to deal with: We were planning to open a new restaurant this fall. So now we are both indefinitely unemployed. Until we get pathology reports back after surgery and meet with an oncologist, we are both in limbo. No plans can be made. Talk about bad timing. For now, I paint and I cry. I paint every fucking wall in that building, every ceiling, every piece of trim. I paint and I cry and I hope. It’s all I can do.

We have cancer is changing to Leah has cancer now that the surgery is approaching. Our paths are separating. I can’t do that part with her. I can’t lay on the operating room table with her and join her in in the LaLa land of anesthesia and in the exhaustion of pain and painkillers. I am not losing a breast and I will not know the same grief as her.

My path is a river of utter helplessness. I have never before had the feeling of wanting so badly to protect the person I love most and been able to do nothing. Every second, I fight the urge to grab her and run from the hospital and take her away from all this. But I can’t save her. It is the worst feeling I have ever had in my life.