Cancer AND mastitis???

While waiting for surgery, most cancer patients would be anxious and nervous of the upcoming event. I had little time to think about it. My focus was on Tyson and how strongly I felt about nursing him.

I became very ill with mastitis when Tyson was only 2 weeks old.... and exactly 1 week after finding out I had cancer. I was constantly sick over the next 5 weeks. For those of you who are familiar with this, you know that its an excruciating pain. For those of you who don't, allow me to explain.

Mastitis is a term used to describe breast inflammation, most common in nursing mothers. It can be caused by inflammation of cellular tissue, or formation of an abscess. In other words, it hurts like hell!

I was laying in bed with a fever of up to 103*, when I finally decided I needed to call my doctor. I had no idea something like this even existed. He knew right away what it was and prescribed some antibiotics as well as some home remedies. I started with the home remedies. I sent Paul to the store to buy bag balm and cabbage. I looked like a walking garden! The bag balm was used to heal any open cracks or wounds on the breast and the cabbage has some mystical power that's able to draw out the infection. I used those religiously as well as hot showers and the antibiotics to try and get rid of this. By now, I had a huge welt on the side of my breast that was almost the size of a baseball (I kid you not). And yes, I was dealing with this while going to my doctor appointments for cancer.

I kept trying to nurse. Every day felt like a burning fire in my chest. The pain was so bad that I cringed every time I knew Tyson was hungry, and he wanted to eat every 2 hours (he's now nicknamed The Tank). I would be in tears for hours from hurting so bad. After 4 weeks of this I went back to my doctor.

As soon as he examined the baseball growing out of my breast he immediately sent me to a local general surgeon. Seriously? Surgery?

I was awake for the entire procedure. The surgeon had to "drain" the infection. If you can imagine a needle the size of a pencil being jabbed into this "baseball" on the side of my breast.... ya... it was bad. He made a 2 inch incision on the baseball (my first vampire bite). I thought I was going to pass out, in fact, I almost did. I told him he had to stop otherwise I wasn't going to make it. He continued after about 10 minutes when some color came back into my face. He finished up and explained that he put a "shoe lace" down inside my breast. Okay, so it wasn't a "real" shoe lace, but that's what it looked like and reminded me of. He actually called it a "wick". This had to stay inside my breast for the next 4 days so the infection could continue to drain.

This procedure was a necessary evil. My breast continued to drain, I was on narcotics (okay, pain medicine) for the pain and was STILL trying to nurse. The next day the one breast that I could nurse on started showing the same signs as the one with mastitis. That's when I knew I couldn't go on with nursing any longer. I was so heartbroken and upset about my decision, but knew I just couldn't do it. I didn't give up, I fought and fought for this, but just wasn't able to.

A week after this procedure was done, and the shoe lace coming out, Tyson was 7 weeks and I was back working at my job.

My job was extremely supportive... knowing that I was going to be on medical leave again very soon.


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Waiting

Going to Seattle is usually due to a much needed get-out-of-town-to-a-big-city trip. So, on this particular day, heading to Seattle, we knew it wouldn't be fun. It was raining, of course, which suited our moods.

We again packed for a day trip with a weeks worth of diapers, still nervous about taking a newborn out of town. We found our doctors office, which was downtown Seattle (this is stressful when you don't know where you're going). His office was on the top floor, Suite 1500. When we finally found his office the words on the door jumped out at me like a freight train hitting me in the gut, "ONCOLOGY GYNECOLOGY SPECIALISTS". And underneath that read my doctors name. We were in the right place.

We showed up 30 minutes early, just to make sure we found his office in time. We found a seat in the back with huge windows that overlooked the Puget Sound.... well at least we had a pretty view while we waited.

And then we waited..... and waited... and waited.... and waited.

After 2 hours I decided I needed to make sure they didn't forget about me. They explained that my doctor had an extremely hard case that he was working on and we would be next.

We again waited... and waited... and waited... and waited.

After 4 hours, that's right, 4 hours, we finally got into a patient room.

And then we waited... and waited... waited... and waited.

Seriously? I was ready to walk out. We had already changed Tyson's diaper 4 times, fed him 2 bottles and we had no signs of leaving anytime soon. I was so tired and spent just from waiting for so long I was ready to get in the car and go back to Spokane for surgery and deal with an anchor-like scar across my abdomen. At this point, I just didn't care.

Just when I was ready to storm out of the room, McDreamy/McSteamy entered. (I hope I have some Greys Anatomy fans following here...). Seriosly though... he looked my age. He was extremely nice and couldn't apologize enough for keeping us waiting for so long. He explained everything very thoroughly and let us decide what the best decision would be... of course his opinion was to get me in for surgery immediately.

I had other plans. I couldn't leave my newborn for an extended amount of time so soon... I decided to wait until he was at least 3 months old. They thought I was crazy for wanting to wait so long, but mommy duties trumped cancer evils.

Before we were able to leave I had my first CA125 blood test, the same blood test I'll have the priveledge of becoming friends with every 4 months for the next 5 years. This test will show different abnormal levels if cancer is present.

After 6 long grueling hours we were free to go, and had a major surgery scheduled for the near future....


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Humbly Reminded

I wanted to write again yesterday... but had a hard time finding the words. Over the weekend I was looking at other blogs with similar stories to mine and came across a woman's who's blog title had "ovarian cancer survivor". Only the last blog posted was from 2007, her family announcing she had lost her battle to this disease.

I was very quickly humbled and reminded of how lucky I am. I was very fortunate to find and be diagnosed very early and not have to endure much of what most cancer patients and their families have to go through.

Thank you to my team of doctors who advised and responded so quickly and thank you to all our family and friends who have supported us throughout.

Doesn't cancer have an age limit??

We made our first out-of-town trip with a newborn when Tyson was just 3 weeks old. It was just for one day, but we packed enough diapers for a week. We headed out to Spokane for my first oncology gynecology doctor appointment. Tyson slept the entire way there, of course I knew as soon as we got there he would wake up and be hungry, which he did and was. This makes any new mom nervous.

As I walked into the waiting lobby I was a nervous wreck. I B-lined it straight to the receptionist. For some reason I was nervous that people would see me.... not sure why... we were all there for the same reason. I turned in all my paperwork they had previously sent me, like it was homework for the teacher. I made sure it was all complete exactly how they wanted. I went to find a seat in the lobby, as I sat down and started observing the room I realized I was the youngest person there. You could tell who the sick ones were. They had lost there hair and were covering their heads with scarves, or they were weak and feeble in a wheel chair, unable to use their strength to walk. And, they were all much older than I was. I started imagining what other people were thinking of me. "Is she at the right place?" "Doesn't she know this is an oncologist not a pediatrician?" "Oh, I feel so bad for her, what a shame." "So young..."

As we were waiting, Tyson, of course, got squirmy and wanted food. We took him out of his car seat to try and give him formula for the first time, that was a joke. He wanted nothing to do with it. As we took him out an older lady sitting next to us turned to coo at Tyson. She looked like she was in her 60's. She had lost all her hair and had a colorful scarf covering her head. She was kind and looked happy, despite everything I can imagine she's already been through. My nerves took over and I couldn't respond to her like any normal person. I tried to show a fake smile, but I'm sure she saw right through it. I was nervous for the upcoming appointment, but more nervous that Tyson refused to eat formula and needed to nurse him right away or all hell was going to break loose. I knew the minute I started feeding him they would call my name for my appointment. I decided to go ask them how long I would have before being called in.

They decided I needed my own room. Thank you Lord! I really didn't want to nurse Tyson in front of everyone.

The doctor came and found me while I was still nursing Tyson. She looked my age. Young and full of energy. She let me finish with Tyson and then took me to her office. She started explaining what was going on in my body and explained what our next step needed to be. She was the first person that looked me in the eyes and said "You have ovarian cancer." That's when it hit me. I started crying in her office. I also tried to stop crying in her office. I didn't want her to see me so vulnerable.

Our next step was surgery. We needed to find out if the cancer had spread or if it was contained to one area. We also needed to remove any chances of cancer coming back in the future. This meant everything had to come out.

I decided I needed a little talk with cancer. Aren't I too young for this? Too young to have to make these decisions? Too tired with a newborn to make sense of all this?

I realized I was saying "why me? why me? why me?" a lot. It must have been annoying. Even I was annoyed! That's when I knew I could handle this. That's why it was me.

That's when I also decided that I needed to kick cancer in the butt.


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My first official test for cancer

I have had a huge amount of support and encouragement for writing this blog. I've also had a few questions I'll try to do my best answering.

Are you still sick? How did you find out? What were your symptoms? Do you think you'll meet Rob Pattinson someday through this blog? Yes, yes I do as a matter of fact.............................................. Now that that's been answered, we can get right down to it.

Ovarian cancer is one of the hardest cancers to diagnose. Its often found too late because the symptoms typically don't show up until the cancer is at a stage 3 or 4.

My story begins about 5 years ago. We decided to try for a 2nd child, nothing major, just "if it happens great... if not... okay" was our attitude. After about 3 years of this I started getting a little nervous (this should have been my 1st sign). I started seeing a doctor for unusually heavy bleeding (sorry guys) and started trying everything under the sun to get this under control (2nd sign). When I did finally get pregnant I miscarried. (3rd sign) The next few months after the miscarriage was a downward spiral for me, I wanted nothing to do with doctors (sorry husband) or hospitals. I started having a pain in my right side (4th sign). I, of course, ignored it.

I became pregnant again and was a nervous wreck the entire pregnancy. At my first doctor appointment I had an ultrasound done. This ultrasound found the culprit for the pain in my right side. Throughout the pregnancy it was monitored. They were unable to do any blood work to test for any cancer while I was pregnant and the true test was to go in and get the dang thing out in order to test it. We opted to have it removed at the same time I gave birth to Tyson.

This became my first official test for cancer. Results= POSITIVE.

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Vampire Bites

I suppose an explanation for my title would be a good start.

I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 28, just one month shy of my 29th birthday and exactly 1 week after my son Tyson was born. While pregnant with Tyson my doctor discovered a cyst on my ovary that was the size of a golf ball (ovaries are typically the size of an almond... so you can imagine what this must have looked like). My doctor did a good job of preparing me for "worst-case-scenario" although I ignored half of what he said since "that-won't-happen-to-me"...

So, here I am a week later with my newborn in hand when the news was delivered that this "cyst" which we will now call a "tumor" tested positive for carcinoma. It was around this time I went into the twilight zone. The next few days I'm unsure of how I existed. I was sleep deprived from having a new born, I was recovering from having a c-section, and cried non-stop for the first 48 hours. I was a wreck.

Now it was time for choices and decisions to be made. I knew I would need surgery to find out what exactly we were dealing with. I first made my way up to Spokane to speak to an Oncologist specialist, long story short they wanted to make a huge incision down the middle of my torso.. that and my already c-section scar it would have looked like an anchor! I decided to search elsewhere.

We ended up with a great team of doctors in Seattle. The surgery was done robotically, which meant multiple little incisions instead of one long one. I now have 5 scars across my abdomen, 6 if you include the c-section and 7 if you include the mastitis (different story, different blog!).

I am now 12 weeks post-surgery. Wow are things different. I was examining my battle wounds in the mirror one day when I decided these "scars" actually looked like vampire bites. I know, lame. But I had to laugh at myself when I said it outloud (since I immediately thought of the Twilight saga in my head).

 It just sounds so much more glamorous!