Okay, what’s up with this? I get up this morning and I have a white hair about THREE!!!! inches long coming out of my neck. How long has that been there? I don’t think it was there yesterday. What is going on in my body. Things grow like crazy.
I have to admit before I learned I had cancer, things had started to change. I couldn’t concentrate. I fatigued so easily I took naps all afternoon. I was working, but I could not function after 3 pm. I would go hide in the bathroom and take a 20 minute meditation nap and try to regroup. I coughed all the time especially in the afternoon. The doctors later told me that was nothing. I know it was something. It was horrible. There were no other cold symptoms. It went away after I had the first lumpectomy which took out the ‘invasive’ cancer.
By the way, my cancer was so small. They said 1.3 centimeters. In one place only and it was called invasive ductal carcinoma, hormone positive for both estrogen and progesterone. The other site was about an inch west, and it was ductal ‘in situ’ carcinoma. In other words it was contained within the duct itself, but it turned out to be in a very large area. I didn’t know anything about breasts. Isn’t that bizarre that we really don’t know or care most of the time, how our body works. We take it for granted.
We are so stupid to take health for granted. So Stupid to just go around each day in ignorance. “Sure, I will have that extra glass of wine, and throw in one of those chocolate croissants too.” Not that you can’t eat those things once in awhile but I had always done whatever I wanted to do all my life, pretty much. And the twist here, is I have type II diabetes also. I have had that for ten years. Talk about playing with a loaded gun. That loaded gun was a warning for me which I did manage, but I could have done a better job. Coulda, woulda, shoulda, shame on me for thinking that.
I will jump in here and tell you that in the past year I had lost a lot of weight. I walked daily! One or two miles religiously at lunch time. I felt fantastic, but the fatigued moved in to cloud my brain every day about three pm. I ignored it and pushed forward. I was down four sizes, was cold all the time and went straight to bed after dinner, which was usually 5:30 in the afternoon. I only got out of bed to let my dogs out again about 11, and I slept till 5 the next morning. Everyday. I slept with a beanie hat on (I still do). I was cold.
In July, the cough was back and it was worse. I showed up for board meetings at the place I was working, and people just looked at me, and I knew they thought I had the plague. I went to the doctor but he said it was bronchitis. again? I still doubt this but nobody will say anything else. I finally had a chest x ray after the cancer was diagnosed. On July 27th, I got laid off from my job, and I still think it was that darn cough. One idiot at work asked me if I had been checked for HIV. Oh, thanks buddy. The x-ray and other tests were negative.
I decided to go get a physical while I still had insurance, till the end of July. Enters the mammogram, standard, I wasn’t afraid of that. There is no cancer in my family. Certainly no breast cancer, that I knew of, or still know about.
The most bizarre thing occurred to me when I had the mammogram. When it was over, I was talking to the technician and she said it looked fine to her. I remember putting my arm into my sleeve of my jacket, and at that moment I seen in my brain, or visualized a long silver thin rod and I had like a snapping. Weird. I walked to the elevator, and pushed the button and I was more afraid than I had ever been in my whole life. The results were back the next day. Come in for another mammogram, we definitely found something.
