The Party Girl's Guide to Cancer

Favorite fur hat, Liv and Finn I felt like I was on the ropes.   Bad mammogram (OOF!), Blind Alan put down 15 minutes before my biopsy (BIFF!), cancer diagnosis the next day (POW!), got served with $17,000 summons night before surgery (SOCKO!), breast cancer tumor surgery and lymph node biopsy (BAM!), and two days later Mom’s house is sold (KA-POW!).   Her home of 35 years, the place of many family gatherings and milestones, was where I last recovered from surgery.   The cops showed up that night, but that’s another story.   I cannot rest even though I’m supposed to recuperate.   I feel like inertia equals death.   I gotta move. What, me worry?   The night before my biopsy. We joked about it.   Yotel NYC with Emma. I have a month of “recovery”.   After that, I start 12 weeks of Taxol, and another chemo for Her-2 positive breast cancer called Herceptin.     I’m expecting to be knocked out (BANG!).   No,...

Headed South I had just taken the little money I had saved and played the market to invest in a flip house in Florida.  I was finally going to be free financially, free from my family obligations, free from my old life to start a new one, just me doing my own project with Kevin with my own design sensibility and wits.  Sweat equity – that’s all I got.  This is cause for celebration.  I booked a gig for my  going away party in NYC and planned to ride victorious into the sunset.  I’m exuberant in rehearsals.  I’m tying up loose ends.  I’m checking off my “to do” list.  One of them is getting a mammogram.  I get called back.  I get the diagnosis one week before my show.  I am going away, but for a completely different reason.  I have to stay with my family.  I have to stop the band.  My time and resources will be focused on treatment....

“Did you do your pre-surgery check up yet?”.   Only one week to surgery, and I forgot that the only appointment cancer secretary does not make is the checkup and blood test with my GP.   I’m now in fire drill mode.   I met with the genetic counselor the Monday after my Friday meeting with the surgeon.   I went through their battery of questions.   The outcome?   I had a 2-7% chance of testing Positive for the BRCA gene.  I’m a numbers gal, so I’ll take those odds and skip the test.   This means I can move my surgery date up by a MONTH.   In my mind, the speed of getting the tumor out is more important than satisfying an emotional urge to take a test and wait when the outcome will most likely be negative.   That was the first hurdle of my flow chart, so with that box eliminated, I called cancer nurse and moved my surgery date from Valentine’s Day to January 17 th . This means all my other appointments move up.   My ra...