9.28.2022

I stepped across the parking lot and took the usual picture.

Me in front of the oncology building, wanting to show excitement for another 6 months healthy. What I captured was the true feelings – exhaustion. Exhaustion from the new job and the drive.

No.

Not that.

Exhaustion from the counting.

5 years. The new APRN came in, face wrapped with a sunflower mask, beaming to share with me how happy she was about my five year mark. She bantered about it officially being Jan 30th, the day I finished chemo.

I pressed that I count my surgery date as my anniversary. With kind dismissiveness she said “yeah surgeon’s use their date, we use ours.” I, voice shaking under my mask said, ” No, I count it. It is the day I was pronounced NED.”

Thank goodness for the mask. I pressed my tongue hard against my pallet. I knew if the tears started they may not stop. Press your tongue. Don’t remember the rage and sadness and fear and trauma. Just answer the questions.

“Treatment in Virginia? What brought you to Connecticut?”

Tell the story. Tell the gratitude. Feel the miracle of the outcome.

Don’t start crying because the tears may not stop.

The grief and realization of the battle that was fought will rise. Then what? Then how do you drive to your new job and act like today is any other day? No visit. No medical history. No battle scars to show (they are carefully hidden under the tattoo that is carefully hidden under the high neck shirt).

It wasn’t until I read a beautiful post by a dear fellow flat sister at the end of my long emotional day did I realize that though I am so very grateful I survived, that I am surviving, I am also still grieving and angry and confused and bewildered and terrified by this disease.

I can have all of these at once.

All of them.

The APRN rattled on about the promise of my future because “if those of you with TNBC can live to 5 yrs without a reoccurance you survivability rate is extremely high”.

As I listened, I felt the weight of the sea glass that hangs from a necklace around my neck.

It is from Lake Michigan.

From a farmers market.

A farmer’s market that I walked with my friend Guala.

Guala, who 2 months after her 5 year exam discovered her breast cancer had become metastatic. She was gone within a year.

I bit the inside of my cheek as I held back the words I didn’t know were there.

“Do you know what it means to live day after day for those five years knowing the statistics of reoccurance that you hope upon hope you do not add to? Do you understand you are telling me the story of my friends Diane and Shana and Guala whom I have lost during that time and the others who are fighting every day the battle against metastatic breast cancer we all know is a losing game?”

“Do you understand in asking me to celebrate my survival you are disregarding the hell I walked through to be sitting in front of you today?”

This.

This explains the tears that I could not cry.

This explains why the only words I could type when I made it back to my car were to my sister and brother in law.

Words of gratitude for holding me, housing me, supporting me during those months of treatment.

I left the office in a fog.

I drove myself to Starbucks like I had done 5 years ago.

I celebrated with the same coffee I bought after I heard the words “it’s triple negative breast cancer. There is no other choice but immediate chemotherapy followed by surgery.”

5 years almost to the day I sipped that syrupy sweet drink hoping it may, 5 years later, sweeten the bitterness of these memories.

Yes I am grateful beyond measure.

Yes I am devastated by the financial, emotional, relational, professional and physical toll this disease has taken on my life.

My one hope is that as I step into the pink washing month of October I can let my voice be heard when sharing the many layers of what it means to have walked this path.