The next month and a half was full of several trips to the
hospital for appointments; here are a few of the major ones:
March 24, 2016
A little under a week later I found myself with my dad,
stepdad and mom in the office of general surgery. The girl that never broke a
bone, never has been really sick, the only surgery she had was a tonsillectomy,
was meeting with a breast surgeon. A surgeon that specialized in getting rid of
breast cancer—what was going on?! I sat there with my pages upon pages of
questions I had for this entire process I was about to begin. It hit me, right
there in that office, I had cancer and my life will never be the same, ever. I’m usually good at holding back tears, but
something about this topic made me cry, an inconsolable cry, and it has taken a
while to know that it is okay to cry. I met my nurse navigator, who would be
the middle man during this entire process. She explained the type of cancer I
had, and answered all the questions that she could answer. Then we met with Dr.
Gillott, the breast surgeon. He stated that I was the youngest patient he ever
had as he examined me. I have come in first several times from various things
in my life, and I have wanted to be first at the many things I have pursued,
but I never imagined nor did I want to be first at this. His recommendation was
a bilateral mastectomy (a surgery to remove both breasts), although I learned
that, that is not the only option when it comes to surgery. I really liked Dr.
Gillott, and I felt like we clicked, so imagine my emotions when he told
me he would be retiring in June and they hadn’t found his replacement yet. This added a lot of stress, panic, and
additional questions that I was not expecting during this process.
March 25, 2016
My cancer is fueled by hormones, which means that my birth
control (which controls my hormones) had to go. To remove the Nexplanon in my
arm; they give a numbing shot, and cut the skin where the Nexplanon is placed
to get it out. What would have been a five minute procedure turned into a half
hour procedure, as there was an issue upon removal. Scar number 1 of who knows
how many.
March 25, 2016
This was one of the more challenging appointments I had. An
MRI is a test that uses magnetic field and pulses of radio wave energy to take
pictures of organs and structures inside the body. A breast MRI is more
invasive than mammography because a contrast agent is given through an IV
before the procedure. You lie face down with your breasts almost in how I can
describe them as bottomless squares. The procedure itself is painless once you
get your IV put in, but it is extremely loud- it almost sounds like a
jackhammer. They give you headphones and let you chose whatever music you want
to listen to from Sirius XM Radio you want. They give you a call button that
you hold in your hands, you have to lay completely still for the entire
process. They take a series of pictures and midway through the procedure they
inject the dye (contrast agent) to enhance and improve the pictures. Overall, the entire process is probably an 45
minutes to an hour.
Almost one hour of lying there in your own thoughts, in a
machine that is as big as a car, that sounds as loud as a spaceship taking off-
okay that’s doable. They got me all hooked up and they pushed me into the
machine. When the machine first started the sound scared the living daylights
out of me, something that I just was not expecting. The kind staff at Guthrie-
Sayre, allow you to choose what station you want to listen to. I chose to
listen to Hits 1 (today’s hits), out of all the hits that could be played
during that seemingly short amount of time was Charlie Pouth’s ‘One Call Away’.
One week from being diagnosed, one day from being told I was going to lose both
my breasts that my appearance as a whole was going to change completely, was
this a joke? Was this song really playing during this procedure? I felt my eyes
start to water, and I knew that I was on the verge of ugly crying. I laid there
in complete silence as the tears poured out of my eyes. I was crying so hard,
my breathing became erratic, my nose started to run, and here I had to lie
completely still. I couldn’t sit up, I couldn’t wipe my nose, so I laid there;
I was determined to not hit the call button, I wanted to get this appointment
over with. It took the next few songs for me to collect my composure. However,
I was embarrassed when they pulled me out of the machine, for looking like such
a mess.
Charlie Pouth’s One
Call Away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxuY9FET9Y4
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