Dog Lived (and So Will I) (17 page)

It was at last time for the biopsy.

The operating room for the biopsy procedure was large and well-lit, with one exam table, a tray of instruments, and heavy overhead lights. Several women in white lab coats and scrubs were present, and their general good moods and casual demeanors relaxed me.

My tumor sulking there at ten o’clock, and far on the side of the breast, near the underarm, meant that for the radiologist fellow Dr. Overstreet (another woman) to get to it, I had to lie on the table on my left side but with my top half twisted back to the right and my arm moved even farther back. This is remarkably similar to the position one assumes for certain chiropractic adjustments…which I’ve been getting from my father the chiropractor since I was five or six years old. I moved easily into position. The needle that goes into the breast to numb it for the biopsy, however—not a lot can prepare one for that. It stung. Dr. Overstreet held my hand and squeezed with me when the needle was poked in.

The numbing worked mercifully quickly, and when the Pac-Man instrument was inserted I didn’t feel a thing. But I heard it. I heard it shoot and snap like a staple gun. When they numb the breast, they should do the same for the ears.

The process was quick. Five staple-gun shots and it was over. A cotton ball was pressed to my breast and taped down and then I was helped up slowly.

“How do you feel?” the doctor asked.

“Good, I suppose.”

“Good. That’s all we can hope for at this point.”

“So no one hops off the table elated?”

“Hardly ever,” she said. “You’ll go with Dr. Koo again now. She’s going to do a mammogram.”

“A mammogram? Now? After that?” I could feel the bruise growing in my breast. And now they want that same breast pressed between plates of glass and squeezed until the sides touched?

“Think of it as before and after pictures.”

And if you think a normal mammogram is painful, try it after Pac-Man has attacked your breast. Let’s just say there was bleeding.

Chris was again allowed to join us. While Dr. Koo bandaged me up again, we had a Harvard (where she went) versus Princeton (where Chris went) supremacy discussion. UC Santa Barbara (where I went) won. After all, I was the one with a 95 percent chance of cancer and a bleeding breast.

It was after business hours, my staff had gone home, and I was alone in my office when Dr. Karam called.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but it is what we thought it was,” he said.

“It’s a duck?”

“Close. It’s invasive ductal carcinoma.”

“Oh. Duct-al. Your accent is worse than I thought.” I could push this away with humor only a little bit longer before I’d be left alone in a room with cancer.

He did laugh, but only briefly. “It’s what’s known as triple-negative breast cancer, which is, unfortunately, an aggressive cancer. You are very lucky—it’s very good you caught it early.”

“I’m not feeling lucky right now.”

“No, I understand.”

“So surgery, of course. Will I need chemotherapy?”

“Most likely, I think. Yes. With this type of cancer chemotherapy is the protocol. But we’ll know more after the surgery, and then you will talk to an oncologist. I feel comfortable we can do a lumpectomy. We’ll know more after the MRI tomorrow.”

I already had it on my calendar. When I hung up with Dr. Karam, I called Chris.

“I guess we knew this was coming,” Chris said.

“Yeah. Still feels a little weird to have it confirmed—to finally know I have cancer. Like, as I’m sitting here talking to you there’s cancer running around in my body.”

“Weird, I know. You okay?”

“I think so. We have to go back to UCLA tomorrow. And I guess I should start to let my family know.”

“True. There’s still time for that though. Maybe come home early tonight?”

I looked at the files on my desk, the papers in my inbox. “Not like I’m going to be able to concentrate anyway. But I do have a few things to finish up. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Okay. I love you. Lots.”

“I love you, too. Kiss the beagle for me.”

I hung up the phone and stared at the wall in front of me for a few minutes before going back to work. When work quickly turned to a shuffling and rearranging of papers and rereading the same sentence without even vague comprehension, I went home.

Chris poured me a glass of wine, and we talked about what I should say to my family. How does one drop the word
cancer
? It can’t be done lightly, and since I hadn’t prepared anyone, I was going to have to start at the beginning with each phone call. I suspected they were each going to question why I hadn’t mentioned anything sooner.

I called my dad first, but I reached only his voice mail.

I called my brother next, and again I reached voice mail. Both times I struggled with what kind of a message to leave. How will I possibly sound normal? Maybe I should just hang up.

Beep.

“Hi. Um, it’s me. Call me back.” I hoped they’d realize I meant “tonight.”

As I dialed my sister’s number, my father did call back.

I was glad it was my dad. The child in me wanted to tell my dad first. I knew he’d be calmer than other family members, stronger, and more likely to respond in the logical manner I greatly prefer. He’d also likely have useful medical information. But I also needed my dad like little girls need their dads—to make the bad things go away. Or at least to make them better.

As an adult, though, I knew that regardless of his outward response he’d likely take it the hardest. I’m not what anyone would call a “daddy’s little girl,” but we are close and always have been. Also, he’s suffered a lot of losses. His parents died together in a car accident when he was two years old. One of his sisters died in childhood. It was his wife who died on December 23. I saw how torn apart he was when my brother had that motorcycle accident, and I didn’t want to be the cause of that kind of pain again. It can’t be easy to hear that your child has cancer. Even if your child is forty-five years old. I was in that not unusual place of wanting a parent to care for me while also feeling I should be caring for him.

When I told him, he said he wanted to go to my doctor’s appointments with me. I was sitting on my bed in my own home, still in a suit and high heels from work, glass of wine on one side of me, Seamus on the other, but I may as well have been in jeans and braces, sitting on my yellow canopy bed with a can of soda and Tippy beside the thirteen-year-old me in La Habra Heights—the last house my parents lived in together before their divorce. I smiled. I liked the idea of having my dad with me at my appointment, but I assured him Chris could handle it for now.

“He’s going with you?”

“Yes, of course. He went with me yesterday, too.”

“He’s a good man. You tell him to take care of you. Doctor’s orders.” He paused, and I knew he was, as I was, gathering strength. “No. You tell him those are Dad’s orders.” He stopped again and in a softer voice said, “You sure he can handle it?”

“I’m sure. He’s been really, really good. And he’s been handling it fine for a few weeks now.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us sooner. You should have told us.”

“Jay and the kids were there. It was Christmas. I wanted everything to be okay, at least for a while. Plus, I didn’t know anything for certain yet. You would have done the same thing.”

He only had to think of that for a brief moment. “Yeah. You’re right. I would have.”

I hung up the phone and immediately began to reconsider. Maybe I should have my dad come with me. Maybe this was too much for Chris alone. Was I being selfish? Having Chris, and only Chris, with me so far had been comforting and stabilizing for me. But should a thirty-three-year-old have to deal with his girlfriend’s breast cancer? His friends were all married and having their first and second children. He’d be even more removed from their life experiences. He’d have no one to empathize with him.

I resolved to talk to him about that. Later.

Telling my mom was difficult for other reasons. I am not prone to drama. Mom is…let’s just say “not like me.” Making matters worse, she and my stepdad, Ted, had retired and moved to Missouri to be near my brother and his family, and the distance was likely to increase, not decrease, the drama. At the time of my diagnosis they were on a driving vacation, headed west. When I called my brother, I mentioned that I’d wait to tell Mom until I could tell her in person once she arrived in California.

“Mom’s not going to California,” Jay said.

“What? I thought they were driving out here.”

“I talked to them yesterday, and they decided to just go as far as Arizona. California is too complicated.” If a voice could put air quotes around a word, my brother had just done so with “complicated.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. She’s your mother.”

“Who drives all the way to Arizona from Missouri but doesn’t go another couple hundred miles to see her own two daughters?”

“Your mother.” I could see his smile through the phone. Much like parents refer to a misbehaving child as belonging exclusively to the other parent, my brother and I did that with our mother. “Look, she said there were too many people to see in California and she didn’t have enough time, so why bother. But you should call her. Obviously she’ll come out now.”

And there was the tricky part. Did I want her to come out now? Chris was taking me to the MRI, and my dad and I had agreed that he’d be accompanying Chris and me to the surgery consultation with Dr. Karam once we had the MRI results. That was enough support for me. And, thirty years after their divorce, my parents in the same room was still not a comfortable situation. I put off calling her for one more day, telling myself it would give her one more day to enjoy her vacation.

• • •

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” I said as Chris and I drove to UCLA the next morning. “It would be the great irony of my life if Seamus lived, but I did not.”

Chris knew more than anyone that I have never been able to read a book or watch a movie, a cartoon, or even a commercial with a dog in it if there is any possibility that the dog suffers or dies. I once made him turn off the Disney movie
Underdog
because the opening scene has a beagle about to be used in a lab experiment. Note, the beagle was in fact Underdog himself, and since this was the beginning of the movie, it seemed fairly obvious the dog would survive. No matter. I could not watch even simulated potential suffering. Chris pointed out that this was a Disney children’s movie and thus the dog was not likely to die or suffer. I reminded him what happened to Bambi’s mother. Not that I could watch that either, but I had heard rumors.

“That’s not funny,” Chris said.

“Well, it’s kind of funny. And that would be so typical of how my life goes.”

“You’re not dying. I forbid you to die. The dog lived, and you will, too.”

“All we can do is hope I’m as lucky as Seamus.”

“You will be.”

“I’ll do my best. And speaking of thinking I’m going to die…I’ll call my mom now.”

I reached my mother in her Scottsdale, Arizona, hotel room and asked her to put me on speakerphone so my stepdad could hear, too. He’s calmer. Much, much calmer. I thought he would help soften the news. But to my surprise, my mother was also quiet.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I know, Mom. No one does. But I feel fine, and we caught it early so the prognosis is good.” I already felt like this was becoming a canned response.

“What can we do?”

“Nothing right now. Chris is taking me to all of my appointments, and Dad is going to meet the surgeon with us. So for now, everything is under control.”

“Well, that’s good. Thank Chris for me. He takes good care of you.”

“He does. He takes very good care of me.”

“And I suppose it’s good to have your dad there to meet the surgeon. That will be helpful. But I still want to come out. We’re only five hours away.”

The phone call was much easier than I expected.

She must have been stunned momentarily. Shortly after, it was her repeated return phone calls with new questions, concerns, and thoughts about whether to drive out to California now or later, among the calls from my younger sister and a few friends, that prompted Chris to say, “You should set up a blog.”

“A blog?” At this point, I read only one blog—the one written by the writing instructor responsible for Chris and I meeting. This hardly made me a candidate to blog myself.

“Well, think about it. You write anyway. This way, instead of group emails, you can just post what’s going on and whoever wants to check in can. You won’t have to spend as much time on the phone, and you won’t have to guess who you should include on the emails.”

“Hmmm.” I would have given more thought to it, but my cell phone rang again.

We arrived on time at the UCLA radiology department. I repeated my hospital mantra: “Teresa Rhyne, February 17, 1963, but you have it in the system as March 17,” and waited while the staff person promised to fix the birthdate. Dr. Karam came around the corner, tousled, grinning, and holding a grande Starbucks cup.

“
Hola
, T,” he said, all smiles and good energy.

“Sure, you can be happy. You have Starbucks and you’re not getting an MRI,” I said.

“This is true. Do you like Starbucks?”

“It’s more like lust.”

“Then you’ll be happy to know there is one on campus. I’ll show you where later.”

“Don’t bother showing me. Just bring me one when I wake up after surgery. It’s that ‘no liquids after midnight’ rule I’m worried about.”

“I will do that!” He said this in a way that made me believe him. Or at least gave me hope that the surgery would be simple and in the end, he’d be standing at my bedside with a cup of French roast. He was that comforting.

“So, what are you doing down in radiation?” We were two floors down from his office, and I wasn’t expecting to see him. He’s a surgeon, after all.

“I decided to go with you. I will watch what they do.”

It did not occur to me to wonder why he would do this. I just thought he was an amazingly kind and involved doctor—which, of course, he was.

In the MRI tube, while Chris and Dr. Karam chatted outside, I planned out the blog. It made a lot of sense. I had anticipated calling friends to let them know what was going on but had a hard time getting past “Hi, I’m sure you want to know every detail going on in my life, so yeah, I’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer and this is obviously a big cry for attention.” And where’s the cutoff for who gets a call? People I’d known many years? A few years? Months? People I loved? Liked? Tolerated? And who has the energy for all those phone calls? A massive group email seemed the logical answer. But then, how do I continue to keep informed those who want to be kept informed, without perhaps oversharing with folks who maybe didn’t want to know or didn’t care?

A blog made sense.

I could set up the blog and send a mass email letting everyone know at once, and if anyone wanted any more detail, they could check the blog when and if they pleased. This seemed eminently sensible. The planning going on inside my head blocked out most of the loud gonging, ringing noise in the tube.

Just about when I started thinking I’d like to scratch my nose and maybe turn my head, the radiologist’s voice came over the intercom.

“Great job, Teresa. You were really calm. We’re going to bring you out now.”

They backed me out of the machine, like a tray of cookies coming out of the oven (but let’s hope I wasn’t overbaked).

Dr. Karam had to leave before I was done (what? For a surgery?), but Chris remained waiting patiently, tapping away at his iPhone.

“So, I decided you’re right. I’m going to need you to set up that blog,” I said.

“It’s already done.”

“What? Doesn’t it need a name?” I’d come up with one during all my tube thinking.

“You’re registered at
thedoglived.blogspot.com
.” He turned the iPhone screen to me.

Yep. That was the name I’d wanted. “Thanks!”

“No problem. But the full blog title is
The Dog Lived and So Will I.
”

“So, no irony?”

“No. For once, you’re going for positive thinking.”

I smiled. “Seems like a good time for that.”

When we were home, I posted my first blog entry and then sent the massive group email sharing the blog address. Seemed easy enough.