The Darker Shade of Pink…

As I sit here today, trying to keep my hands busy and my mind occupied by planning a fundraiser for others battling breast cancer, there’s a part of me that can’t help wondering…Did I beat it?

I wish I knew. My final PET scan showed 3 nodules in my lungs and one in my lower left adomen- places I never wanted cancer to have a reason to visit. And now I’m living in that unbearable space between “we don’t know yet” and “What if?”

My radiation was delayed 13 weeks after I developed megacolon from preventative clindamycin following my mastectomy. How Ironic something that was supposed to help me from acquiring an infection almost took my life. thirteen weeks. Thirteen weeks that was never supposed to be a part of my treatment plan. Thirteen weeks that left me with a hole on my upper right side of my stomach that my colon protrudes from (a stoma) that I get to crap out of.

You see, I wanted both breasts removed at the same time, but she would only take the left, cancerous one. I remember sitting there and hearing the strong words from my oncology surgeon:

“NO. WE DON’T WANT TO INCEASE THE RISK OF YOUR DEVELOPING AN INFECTION BECAUSE ANY DELAY IN YOUR RADIATION WOULD BE DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR HEALTH.”

Those words have stayed with me. they echo within me more often than I would like to admit. How detrimental, I wonder? Was there something else? Some other medication they could have prescribed to me that would have prevented this from happening. I know that there was, but there is nothing I can do about it. Doctors are protected, and for my case, ill intent, incompetence, or neglect would have been impossible to prove.

I wonder every day, did those thirteen weeks matter? How detrimental were they? No one can answer those questions for me right now. And yet, here I am. Still standing. Still living, still planning, still trying to turn pain into purpose. While I wait for the answers of my own future, I’m poring my energy into helping others who are also diagnosed with breast cancer and just as terrified.

I think that’s how I survive the waiting. Maybe helping someone else fell less alone gives me meaning to the moments that I feel completely lost and alone. I don’t know wht the next chapter holds for me. But I do know this: Cancer may have changed my life, but it does not get to decide what I do with it or how I live what I have left of it.