Discussing Breast Cancer

The call to inform me I had breast cancer came in on Thursday, July 17, 2003. But each time the phone had rung between the time I walked out of that hospital door and the time the call actually came in I’d have an adrenalin surge.

The biopsy was positive for intraductal carcinoma in situ. I wrote down the words as the surgeon explained them to me. I knew that carcinoma meant cancer so I stopped hearing what she was actually saying because my head was reeling with that single word. Carcinoma.

I had DCIS. Stage 0 breast cancer. Historically considered ‘pre-cancer’ but now known to be the pre-cursor to a more advanced form of the disease. My surgeon had booked an OR for the following Thursday.

I wrote down as much information as I could. Then, I picked up the phone and called my husband at work. “I got the call,” I told him. “I have breast cancer.” He was speechless, of course. The information is impossible to process. His wife, friend, lover, mother to his children … had breast cancer.

I tried my parents’ house, no answer. My mother’s cell phone, no answer. So I packed up the boys and just started on the half-hour drive to their home. I needed my mother.

My parents phoned me on my cell phone as soon as they saw that I’d called. When I told them the biopsy was positive there was silence on the other end of the phone. After all, I was their baby, their youngest child and I was telling them I had cancer. What words could they possibly use at that moment?

Within minutes (so it seemed) of my arrival at my parents’ house they came home; my husband also arrived at their house (who could possibly work when their spouse tells them they’ve been diagnosed with cancer?).

Together we tried to process the information my surgeon had given me on the phone. I was 100% treatable. I’d most likely need surgery then radiation therapy. But I was 100% treatable. We pondered over the fact that she didn’t say, ‘curable.’

I knew this meant that I wouldn’t be taking that business trip so I called my client and again, there was that silence on the other end of the line.
Apparently shock, devastation and speechlessness are linked in your brain’s processing unit.

Then it hit me hard: if this is how the adults in my life were taking the news, how would I tell my children?