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What a difference a month makes.
As our newsroom was preparing for our “Paint It All Pink” series this month, which we have run each October – National Breast Cancer Awareness Month – for the past couple of years, each of us here was asked to share our personal experiences with breast cancer.
I didn’t have any.
Lung cancer, heart attacks, Alzheimer’s and diabetes have all touched my life, and “touched” is an extremely understated way to say it, but not breast cancer.
I even went on one of our websites and answered a poll question about how has breast cancer affected your life by clicking “I don’t know anyone who has had it.”
I guess I clicked too soon.
Someone very close to me, someone who, for all the good and bad that comes with it, I truly consider family, had a physical last week, during which the doctor found a lump on one breast. A mammogram showed the lump to be about an inch in diameter, and there were also a few “spots” on her other breast.
By the time this column comes out, after her next doctor’s appointment, we’ll know what she is actually facing. For now, though, all we have to go on are an undiagnosed lump and mysterious spots.
Waiting really is the hardest part, and not knowing what she, as well as those close to her, is actually facing just allows the worry and worst-case scenarios to take root. In her mind, unfortunately, she is already bald from chemo, with a scarf on her head and one foot in the grave.
I know from reading the stories we’ve run this month that this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, just as I know from our series that our local hospitals have dedicated cancer centers with the latest treatments available. Support groups are out there, and programs like Jordan Hospital’s “Look Good, Feel Better” exist to help people like her feel less self conscious should she have to undergo treatment.
While the information can be overwhelming, I’ve checked, and shared, the survival rates for the various stages of breast cancer, and they are surprisingly – and reassuringly – high.
What has been interesting, even over just the past few days, is the response from the friends I’ve told. Almost all of them were quick to share their own experiences. Sometimes, yes, it ended in death. More often than not, however, there were happy endings; painful journeys, absolutely, but the person recovered (even if, at least with one friend’s mother, it meant a mastectomy, the psychological and physical effect of which I can’t even imagine. Still, my friend said her mother chose to focus on appreciating being alive rather than what she had to do to survive.)
I’ve tried to downplay the situation, at least for now. It’s a fine line between trying not to feed her concern, which has already progressed to depression, and coming across as not caring. Right now, though, we simply don’t know.
And as much as I hope these are wasted words and wasted worry, she can be certain that whatever the diagnosis, she will not go through this alone.
Email dsmith@wickedlocal.com
Read more: EDITOR'S NOTES: Breast cancer, close to home - Carver, MA - Wicked Local Carver http://www.wickedlocal.com/carver/news/lifestyle/columnists/x2063885215/EDITORS-NOTES-Breast-cancer-close-to-home#ixzz1c15hcLXz
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