Lori's Lump

I do things a bit backwards, blog wise.

Blogs tend to be personal. Mine tends to be general. I take great pains to leave out a majority of my personal stuff from Humor Me.

Some people can write about their everyday and make it interesting. James Lileks comes to mind. I doubt I could do that. I figure most people wouldn’t care to know if I went to Target and what I thought of the clerk that checked me out.

However, I will be making mention, now and again about something that that has entered our lives.

My wife has cancer.

She has Breast Cancer to be specific. Invasive Ductal Carcinoma to be precise, the most common form of Breast Cancer according to Breastcancer.org.

Like most things in life it began as one of those “it doesn’t mean that much” moments and grows to be the last thing you think about at night and the first thing you think about in the morning. She said she felt a knot. If you have been around women for any length of time, they are always feeling a knot somewhere on their bodies.

It led to an office visit, which led to a screening mammogram, which led to a diagnostic mammogram, which led to a doctor known as a “breast specialist” (my high school guidance counselor never told me about this job) who did a biopsy which confirmed what we feared. Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. Breast Cancer.

Now, the good news: it was a Stage One, which refers to its size. The doctor called it a “wussy little tumor”, which must be a new cancer definition. One nurse explained the tumor in this manner: there are tumors that are like Jethro’s (from ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’) truck and there are tumors that are like Jeff Gordon’s NASCAR. Lori’s tumor was a Jethro. That’s not to say that Jethro couldn’t stop somewhere and have his truck tricked out and suddenly become a major problem. Then the nurse said, “Get er done”, which I think meant, go ahead and have surgery.

Because of the stage of the tumor and the fact that it was a wussy, Lori was a great candidate for a “Lumpectomy” in which the tumor is removed and the breast is spared. Some women choose to have a total “Mastectomy” in which they have both breasts removed and then they are (usually) reconstructed with a new, um, set. While that might seem like a great idea, I subscribe to the idea that I picked up from a great medical mind (Marcus Welby): only have something removed that needs removing. Lori was on the same page.

In fact, to get a little more personal, for someone who was told they have a dread deadly disease in their body, Lori was a real trooper. She was calm, realistic, and very adult about the whole thing. I’ve never been more proud of her.

The Lumpectomy went well. The tumor was removed. The Lymph Nodes were clear. It sounds easy, but it wasn’t. Even though it wasn’t a Mastectomy, there was still pain involved. The dissection of the Lymph Nodes irritated some nerves in her arm. On top of that, there was moment that I thought she actually had a Mastectomy and the doctor forgot to tell us, but it turns out I was just being a retard, like always.

After the Lumpectomy comes radiation treatment. Most breast cancer patients have a five day a week for six weeks radiation treatment. That wussy tumor allowed Lori to qualify for a type of radiation treatment called “Mammosite”, in which the radiation is targeted and she went in for treatment twice a day for five days.

Sounds good, however, Mammosite treatment involves putting a balloon in the patient’s breast with various other contraptions which makes the patient look like “Doc Ock” from ‘Spiderman’ if the bad guy had hoses hanging out of his breast.

The treatment also entails many, many (medical) people looking at the patient’s breast. I told my wife she now knows what a Playboy Playmate feels like. She didn’t find it quite as funny as I did.

The last question was this: would Lori have Chemotherapy? As we all know, Chemotherapy causes patients to lose their hair and my wife has invested a lot into her hair. Fortunately, she will not have Chemotherapy.

I learned a couple of things out of this recent bout with reality. The first and foremost is that my wife is one tough cookie and I’m not going to mess with her. She went back to work four days after her Lumpectomy.

Secondly, I’ve learned that we were really blessed by having good doctors, good facilities and good jobs that provided good insurance. We have great family and friends that sent prayers to heaven and food to our house. I appreciated it all because I know that for all of the good news we got, there was somebody at the doctor’s office and/or hospital that was getting the bad news. Why those folks and not us? I cannot even begin to explain except to add what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:12 “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.”