Journey

1Don’t Beat Yourself Up over It
“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” she says. “It happens all the time.”I had seen her when I was waiting for the X-ray—the kind of person I get along with immediately: cheerful, warm, and caring.Don’t beat yourself up over it; the sentence goes through my mind like a song that gets stuck.It is August 2010, and I am at the Breast Assessment Centre in the Peterborough Regional Hospital where I am talking to the radiologist.“It has to be removed, whatever it is,” she announces.The biopsy result will be there in three days. Business days, that is; with the weekend, it will be five days.“I often thought it would be nice to have smaller breasts, but this is not exactly what I had in mind,” I say. We both laugh.“If you need a mastectomy, you will be rather lopsided. They can do a breast reduction on the other side.”“Let’s not go there yet,” I answer. The jump from a lump to a mastectomy is going too fast for me. Rob is waiting outside in the corridor; when I come out, he looks at me. I don’t know what to say. “It’s not good,” I blurt out. “I think it is cancer.” I run into the washroom, leaving him standing there.The five-day waiting time is strange. I have not told my friends yet, because I want to wait for the biopsy result.In the Netherlands, where I come from, we meet and greet with “Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.” Here in Canada, where I now live, it is “How are you?” At first, after I came to Canada, I was actually telling people how I was—until I found out they didn’t really want to know.“I’m good. It’s a beautiful day,” I add, to be at least somewhat truthful.I am good, but I’m also sad and scared, and I most likely have cancer. What if I had found the lump earlier? How could I have missed it?“Don’t beat yourself up over it.”It stays stuck in my head, and I silently thank her for saying it.

2Is This My Body?
A couple of days later, I lose it during yoga.Several weeks ago, I fell on my back, compressed two vertebrae, and could not do my daily yoga anymore. I have recently picked up yoga again. Positions such as the cobra, which have been no problem in the past, seem impossible now because of weakness and pain. All these exercises I could do before are suddenly out of my reach.I start sobbing. Is this my body? Falling apart. I have no control.
Later in the week, I see my family doctor. The biopsy result should have been in two days ago, but I haven’t heard anything. Today, I will hear something for sure.His first remark: “I don’t have the result yet. I phoned, but nothing. I can phone you as soon as I know. Are you okay to get the message by phone?”“Oh, yes, that’s fine.”I am so brave, so easygoing; don’t want to be any trouble. It may be even nicer to hear it over the phone, not to have to look him in the eye when I hear it. Who knows how I will react?When we leave the office, I feel relieved. Another day without cancer.
The next day, we are away most of the day for a bone-density scan that seems rather irrelevant under the circumstances.After that, we do some shopping and have lunch at a Thai restaurant. I’m thinking maybe I should hurry home to be there when he calls. It feels oddly familiar, a thing from the past: home, waiting for a phone call. Only this time, it is not romantic.When we come home, the message is there on the answering machine. The biopsy result is in. It is now official. I have cancer.I call back, but the doctor has already left. I tell the receptionist I would like to know what type of cancer it is. She says she’ll ask the doctor and have him call me the next day. “He’s not in this Friday,” I tell her. “Yes, he has to come in for something else, probably in the morning.”So on Friday, instead of the day before, I do the waiting by the phone. But nobody calls.It is a long weekend; it will be Tuesday before I hear anything.Tuesday, he calls. “You want to know the type of cancer?”“Yes, I do,” I say, thinking, I don’t want to have cancer. It turns out to be invasive ductal carcinoma. I do not like the word invasive, but then carcinoma is not pretty either. He adds that, after the surgery, I will most likely need radiation and chemo.For several days, I don’t have the guts to look the diagnosis up on the Internet. When I finally do, it turns out to be the most common type of breast cancer.I will find out later that this is only the beginning. There is much more to say about this tumour than that it is an invasive ductal carcinoma; not all the test results are in.