The Dialogue

The recent weeks have been surreal. Was this my life I've been living? It's as if I stepped into a role created by another writer, and I was being handed a new script every day.

One of the most difficult parts of my new role has been telling people that I have breast cancer. I'm obviously not a private person, so that's not the problem. It's because the diagnosis scares people on so many levels, and I'm the one who's causing them to be scared. On the other hand, sharing my news has drawn me into conversations that I would not have imagined.

I found myself at a high school soccer practice the other day telling the coach that I wanted my son Nick to skip the team's trip to Arizona this year in the days before Christmas, because I wanted him closer to home. Those of you who are parents of an athlete will understand right away that a mother simply deciding that she wants her 16-year-old son to miss the out-of-state Christmas tournament carries zero weight. You'd better have some compelling reason.

So I turned to the truth and shared with the coach that I had breast cancer. Surprisingly, he pointed to the yellow Lance Armstrong wristband he was wearing, and shared his story of his own mother's cancer -- first in one breast and, later, the other -- and her long-term survival. Once practice was over and I had left the field, the coach took Nick aside and told him the same story he had told me.

I had another unexpected conversation when I phoned an attorney who I work for, but I've never actually met, to tell him that I couldn't help him for a while because I was having surgery. As we all know, attorneys ask probing questions, and I soon found myself laying out the breast cancer diagnosis. After a momentary pause, he told me that he knew three other women, all in their early forties, who were facing this disease. He also said that he believed strongly that if men developed breast cancer, doctors would be doing a much better job of preventing and treating it.

I don't know if I agreed with his opinion of gender-biased doctors, but I was touched by his real concern for me and for the women he told me about. In my particular case, my treatment seems first-rate, at least as far as I can tell. My hospital stay was fine, as those things go. But it's also clear that how you react to everyone and everything defines your experience.

The hours before a surgery are busy ones. Surgical patients are staged in a pre-op area, and each patient is assigned to a small cubicle, which is their homebase for a couple of hours. It's here that you talk to the anesthesiologist, that you get your IV, that you meet the surgical nurses, etc. From this cubicle, you're also shuttled back and forth to whatever pre-surgical procedures you need. Before my surgery, I was taken first to nuclear medicine, where a doctor injected the area of the mass with a radioactive material that would aid in identifying the sentinel node the minute the operation began. In an efficient use of time, the surgeon removes the sentinel node first in order for the pathologist to begin studying it, while the main part of the operation gets underway.

My next stop after nuclear medicine was to another radiologist to get my guide wires. These are fine wire markers that are threaded into place so the surgeon knows exactly where to cut. I know that the specific placement of my guide wires was agreed upon in advance, because I was present the previous week when my surgeon and the radiologist discussed it. Now, the same radiologist needed to put the wires in place. This procedure was a little challenging, mostly because my anatomy is quite literally tougher than you'd think. But with ample lidocaine and a little patience on both our parts, the radiologist got the placement he wanted, and I was returned to pre-op.

Meanwhile, my husband had been holding down the cubicle. He had passed the time visiting with the medical staff, mostly because they had mountains of consent forms for me to sign. He was also soaking up the scene, while pretending to read the newspaper. Because of the layout of the room, it's impossible not to hear what's happening in the adjacent cubicles. When I got back from my guide wire trip, my husband, with a wink and a nod, directed me to the discussion in the cube next door. A woman was loudly complaining to the anesthesiologist that she was not about to have any guide wires inserted without a full, general anesthetic.

In that moment, it was obvious that this woman's resistance, panic and fear weren't helping her. Her agitated conversation was not one that I wanted to have with any doctor. But easy for me to say, I already had my guide wires in place.

Breast cancer is scary. No one wants a pathology report like mine, nor do they want it to belong to someone they're close to, except there's no turning back from it. Those bad cells have to be confronted and eradicated. The choice is in deciding how to face it. I can go with the panic and the dread, or with as much good cheer as I can muster.

While it does seem surreal, this script is definitely mine, and I get to write much of the dialogue. So far, the conversations have played out in different ways with different people. Whether they've been matter-of-fact, emotional, funny, or surprising, all of the talks have been good ones. I look forward to many more before this story is finished.