Hello, I Have Cancer….

I wrote this two years ago and just came across it in my draft posts. I added a little bit at the end to bring it up to date. Enjoy:

So I was watching the Tig Notaro Netflix documentary and I decided it was high time for me to write my own reflective story. So here goes:

Hello, I’m infertile.  I thought the very worst thing in my life was that I couldn’t get pregnant.  For years my husband and I tried. We tried the old fashioned way. We tried the least invasive way. We tried the middle of the road invasive way We tried the most invasive way, multiple times over. Yet no pregnancy and no baby.  I wept and I wept every single month that we failed to get pregnant. And I say “we” loosely.  When you struggle with infertility, it quickly becomes an “I” game, not a “we” game. I had to do all the shots, I had to take all the hormones I had to check my underwear everys single time I went to the bathroom praying that my period wouldn’t show her nasty face. Sure, my husband was also infertile in a way — but he wasn’t physically going through anything. It was all on my shoulders and I was failing, miserably.

And after three years of infertility treatments, including 10 IUI’s with and without injectables and 4 IVF rounds including a few frozen embryo transfers, we still were without a child.

It was the worst kind of hell a person could be asked to live through.  I was working full-time at a very demanding start-up company.  I was juggling my personal hell with my professional goals.  It was horrible. I was miserable. I thought it was the very worst thing that could ever happen to me in my whole entire life. And then I was diagnosed with cancer.

If I could go back and whisper in my own ear, here’s what I would tell myself.

Andrea, hold tight to Paul even though you’re mad that he doesn’t feel “in the mood” and your ovulation window is closing. Hold tight to him because you can’t have a baby anyway. Hold tight to him and love him purely. You are about to find out that having a baby the old fashioned way isn’t an option for you. So hold on to this connection as long as you can. Nobody really talks about it, but having sex “on demand” is horrid — it can break a couple in half quickly. So hold tight to this loving man who appreciates you and your body, even though it hasn’t yielded a baby.

Andrea, you’re now 8 months into your fertility journey. Keep your head held high. You’re doing the right thing. It sucks to have to give yourself shots and that you cringe every time a friend posts her ultrasound to Facebook announcing her pregancy. Remember, she doesn’t know what you’re struggling with infertility because you’re intent on keeping it a secret from the world.

Andrea, why are you still keeping this a secret? It’s now been 3 years since you started this journey. your medical expenses have topped out over $100,000 and you’ve given yourself over 1,000 shots to the belly. Don’t you think it’s time to share this complete fucking hell with somebody?

Andrea, don’t you feel so much better now that you’ve told your family what you’ve been struggling with. Honestly, this has been the WORST thing imaginable. But it’s been really nice to have their support. You feel a new sense of energy and sticktuitivness, Ready to conquer the next hurdle.

Then you feel the lump. You talk to Paul about it but try to brush it off. You talk to your fertility nurse about it and try to brush it off.  Then the lump persists. You can’t ignore it. You go to the doctor and she fells it and orders some follow-up tests. Still, in your mind, you brush it off. What.could.be.worse.than.3.years.of.infertility?

Breast cancer.  It was laughable to me when it happened. Fucking hilarious. Seriously, for real?

After all that’d I’d been through, I got cancer. Wow.just.wow.

Andrea, just hold on a little while longer. 2 more years. You can do it. You can handle having your breasts amputated. You can handle surgical recovery. You can handle chemotherapy. You can handle your body being reduced to a lump of shit with no muscle definition or endurance. You can handle testing your marriage, yet again. You can handle it all.

Andrea, you can handle it all — but you will have your moments. You will have those times when you dont want to be the superhero. When you don’t want to smile through the tears. When you dont feel like asking another person how THEY feel. When you want to be selfish and cry. and weep. and weep. and weep. and wallow.

Andrea, your beloved dog will die unexpectedly just as you are feeling like yourself after chemo is finally done. This will knock you an on your ass. You will question everything that you thought you understood in this world. You will become angry. More angry than when you found out you had cancer, You will be sad. So sad. Sadder than when you couldn’t have a baby month after month after month.

You truly thought you’d been dealt the worst of the worst. First the infertilty, then the cancer, then your fucking dog died. What next? How much lower can you go?

Andrea, you will look up through your tear-drenched eyes and see the love that your husband has for you. You will realize he is all you need in this world. Baby, no baby. Dog, No dog, Cancer, no cancer. He is your salvation. Stop taking him for granted. He is incredible. Look no further. He’s been at your side the whole time. Quietly and not so quietly rooting for you. Whether you know it or not. He’s been your biggest fan.

Andrea, you’ll get the type of cancer that’s incerdibly aggressive — BUT it’s the kind with no aftercare for 10 years. You can hop yourself up full of hormoes and still carry a pregnancy.

Andrea, you will become pregnant and enjoy every single second of it, including the birth.

Andrea, all of your wishes and dreams WILL come true and you will be happier than you could’ve ever imganined. You will want to bottle the emotions because they’re like crack. You could make a fortune selling this feeling to other people.

You are one lucky son of a gun. What a long strange trip it’s been.

Post script – you get pregnant for a second time and almost lose the baby at 22 weeks. Life seems likes it’s at another all time low.

Andrea, hang in there. After an emergency surgery and nearly 8 weeks of hospital bedrest, you’ll get to go home and serve another 7 weeks of bedrest. But at the end of the day, you’ll get a second baby who is perfect.

In the end, you’ll end up with a daughter and a son. They are perfect in every way.

Andrea, your marriage is still intact and strong. Hopefully the shit show the past 7 years will become a distant memory very soon…..

xoxo.
Me

The Cancer Booty Call

Uh huh. You read that right. The Cancer Booty Call. It really exists.

When I was first diagnosed, so many friends and family rallied around me, did their own research and scoured their social networks.  Many of you sent me private notes offering to introduce me to your mother, aunt, co-worker, or a friend similarly situated to me.  I read and re-read all of your offers and had to decide for myself if I wanted to reach out to a total stranger to talk about what was about to happen to me.

In the end, I took two of you up on your offers (thank you Bess and Katie). I ultimately decided that the people you were going to introduce me to were not really “strangers”, rather, they were just like me — and they’d already weathered the storm — so why not take their advice? They must’ve done something right, right?!!!

I placed those outgoing calls and am ever grateful I did.  Being able to talk to somebody who’d “been there, done that” helped give me perspective. Helped me to understand what was about to  happen. Helped me mentally prepare. Helped me realize that I will live and life will go on. They were living proof of that.

At this point, I’ve been on the receiving end of many a cancer booty call from you and/or your friends, moms, aunts, sisters, coworkers and college friends.  It saddens me to think how many of these calls I’ve had with you and your loved ones — cancer is just so stupid… and mean… and everywhere.  But, nothing makes me feel better, as a person and as a survivor, than to help your loved ones as they begin their own cancer battle.

It makes me happy to think that I am now the person that weathered the storm — someone out there weighs the pros and cons of talking to me, a quasi-stranger, and decides to go for it. I know it’s not an easy decision, or one that’s arrived at without much consideration. Just know that those of us on the receiving end of this particular booty call are flattered and happy to help in any way we can.

PS. My check-up with Garrett went well. My white blood cell count was elevated so I had to behave myself on our cross country flight to Andrew and Katherine’s wedding (and at the wedding itself). I don’t have my tumor marker results yet, so nothing to report on that front. Other than that, we talked a lot about the fact that my left implant (cancer and sentinel node removal side) pocket is stretching and my implant is sort of floating out toward my arm pit — leaving rippling and ribs exposed around my fake cleavage. I’ll have to talk to my plastic surgeon and physical therapist in greater detail about this as it’s not G’s forte. In the meantime, I’ve started wearing sports bras to try and keep the damn thing from drifting any further out of the pocket.