The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer

© Diane M. Simard

ISBN: 978-1-54395-619-1

ISBN: 978-1-54395-620-7

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Nearly 50 and Not Yet Fabulous

Chapter 2

Bambi and the Biopsies

Chapter 3

The Situation Is Well in Hand

Chapter 4

Dog Days

Chapter 5

Suck It Up, Buttercup

Chapter 6

The Death Row Wait

Chapter 7

Painful Healing

Chapter 8

A Cancer Pyramid Scheme

Chapter 9

The Last Night of the World

Chapter 10

The Chemo Contradiction

Chapter 11

The Shot Heard ’Round the World

Chapter 12

Pop Gets an Earful

Chapter 13

Welcome to Thunder Dome

Chapter 14

My Father’s Daughter

Chapter 15

Tripping with Yellowjackets

Chapter 16

The Crucible

Chapter 17

Back to the Pearly Gates

Chapter 18

Alive

Chapter 19

Wet Dead-Chicken Feathers

Chapter 20

The Big 5-0

Chapter 21

The Shep of My Midlife

Chapter 22

The Face of Cancer

Chapter 23

The Gift of COPE

Epilogue

Thank you…

The Last Word

Prologue

That moment. That terror-filled moment when breast cancer disrupted my comfortable, orderly life.

That moment was Wednesday, February 11, 2015, at 10:45 a.m.

I was in my musty office at work, finishing up the morning’s projects so I could dash off to a business lunch. In the midst of performing one last e-mail check, I was jarred by the sound of rolling bells from my cell phone. I had selected the ringtone for its soothing resonance because I detest unexpected phone calls in the midst of my meticulously organized workdays.

I froze, rapidly pondering the consequences of ignoring the call.

When I glanced over at my phone, I realized the call was from my primary care doctor’s office. A shot of adrenaline spiked through my stomach.

Please God, no. I don’t have time for this right now.

I picked up the phone, swiped right, and said hello as I briskly got up from my desk chair and shut my office door, then sat down to receive my sentence.

The caller was my primary care physician’s nurse.

Hi, Diane. This is Marcy. Have you received the results of yesterday’s breast and lymph node biopsies?

Uh, no? My heart began to gallop.

I’m sorry to have to tell you the cells from both biopsies came back positive for cancer. Infiltrating ductile carcinoma, to be medically exact.

I was silent, although I felt like I was seated in an electric chair with the power abruptly switched on, jolting what felt like 2,000 volts of electricity from my core to my extremities. The reverberating shock wave catapulted me backward into a concrete wall as the aperture of my vision began to collapse. My ears filled with imaginary cotton balls as Marcy’s voice faded.

Do you need a minute? she asked.

Yes, I said in a whisper.

That was one of the few moments in my life when time stopped. For ten long seconds, I couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

When the shock wave subsided, I came to my senses. Somewhere from deep within, a fighting spirit I had gotten to know well over the years was reignited. Game on, I thought. Then I grabbed a legal pad and pencil from the corner of my desk.

I’m ready.

We don’t know the extent of the cancer yet, but it’s likely an intermediate stage. Infiltrating ductile carcinoma occurs when cancer forms in the milk ducts of the breasts, breaks outside the walls of the ducts, and spreads to the closest lymph nodes.

Cancer in my lymph nodes? Perhaps the cancer has spread throughout my body! Will I survive? What if I only have a few days, weeks, or months to live?

Since I am a trained journalist, I hastily scribbled what Marcy was saying, but I couldn’t get past the cancer, cancer, cancer echoes in my head. She told me I would likely have to undergo chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, and to expect several phone calls to schedule a breast MRI and cancer gene test.

Thank you for calling, I said. I know these are not easy phone calls to make. I appreciate your and everyone else’s efforts, and I will be on stand-by.

What? I appreciate your efforts? What is wrong with me! Why am I playing cheerleader, actually thanking Marcy for telling me I am cursed with cancer?

A—A—Are you all right? Marcy sounded shocked that I was being so courteous.

Yes, I’m fine. This is just another challenge in a long line of challenges. I’ll deal with it. Take care. Thanks again for calling. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Please let us know if . . .

Before she finished, I hit end on my phone screen, then dropped the phone on my desk, where it landed with a dull thunk. I exhaled, cradled my face in my hands, and wished I could have my moment of mourning. But I couldn’t. I was behind schedule. Before I could mourn, I needed to notify one of my lunch companions that I wasn’t going to make our meeting, call my husband, and corral my emotions.

My thoughts were in disarray, and I began a mental conversation.

How about if I do the irresponsible thing and not show up for lunch? I’ve got the best excuse ever. Seriously, what could possibly trump my reason for missing lunch? Tornado? Nuclear holocaust? The rapture?

The logical part of my mind grabbed the controls.

I can’t not show up for lunch because I’m the dutiful, conscientious one who could never leave anyone hanging.

The possibility of me intentionally disappointing—hell, inconveniencing someone for that matter—was impossible to comprehend. Even though I had just gotten the dreaded cancer phone call.

I sat in dizzy disbelief. My fluttering gut reminded me of when I was three years old and watched my paternal grandmother delicately place newborn beagle puppies in a burlap bag and drown them in the square galvanized aluminum washtub she used to presoak dirty clothes on laundry day.

Fucking cancer.

As my thoughts sprinted, I covered miles of contemplation in a few moments.

Why me? Why now? Am I going to die? Will I be sick from chemo? Will I recover?

How am I supposed to feel right now?

I decided to make the easier phone call first, and called my dear friend, Sheryl, whom I was about to stand up for lunch.

Hi there. Hey, I am so sorry, but I just got slammed at work and can’t get away for our lunch. I really wanted to introduce you to Sarah, but would you be comfortable meeting her without an introduction from me?

Sheryl understood, as true friends do. Even more importantly, she didn’t press for details.

I completely understand. We’ll be fine. Don’t you worry.

I hated lying, but I was not ready to start telling the world I had breast cancer until I talked to my husband and soul mate, Rene. He deserved to be the first one to hear the news.

Thank you so much, I said to Sheryl. I’ll be in touch soon.

Of course. See you soon.

I exhaled again, took a deep breath of courage, and called Rene (who pronounces his name ree-nee). He answered right away.

This is Rene. His voice was deep and self-assured, the way he usually spoke whenever I called him during his workday.

I paused, realizing I was about to shatter my poised husband’s methodical world. My mood plummeted, and I struggled to find proper words.

Hi. [Long pause.] I just got a call from Dr. G’s office, and I don’t have good news. My voice was barely above a whisper.

I could hear Rene gasp.

What? No! Then he paused and calmed down. Oh babe, I’m so sorry.

We both cried and shared dead air time. Eventually, I stopped sniffling and gathered up the strength to share the details.

Marcy told me I have infiltrating ductile carcinoma, whatever that is. I’m scared because the cancer is in my lymph nodes and may have already spread throughout my body.

Should I come home from work? I can meet you right away. Rene, my husband of nearly four years at the time, is a tall, brawny, courageous man whom I met when I was in my late 30s, although we didn’t start to date until four years later.

No, I will feel better if I stay at work the rest of the day and monitor phone calls from here.

Somehow, staying at work brought me comfort because it meant I was in control of my actions. Breast cancer was tormenting me, but I refused to rush home to bawl like a toddler and accept defeat. Failure had never, ever been an option for me in business or in life, and cancer was no different.

Everything is going to be all right. I will be here for you, he said.

Thank you. I am so grateful you are my husband. I love you.

After the two calls were completed, I sat motionless at my desk and stared out the office window. Cars drove by every few seconds, and I tried to remember what it was like to have no cares or fears. I was stunned. Overwhelmed. Filled with lead.

Finally, I got up from my desk and staggered from office to office, sharing my diagnosis with my business partner and teary-eyed coworkers. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone with medical professionals, scribbling notes on my legal pad while cancer, cancer, cancer continued to echo in my head. By the time I left work, I had referrals for a breast surgeon, a medical oncologist, a cancer gene counselor, plus other healthcare professionals to call to set up appointments. But first I needed to give in to my emotions and grieve.

I was despondent because I was going to be forced to let go of an idyllic life. I was scared because I was clueless about breast cancer and embarrassed to let anyone know I had no idea what cancer was.

I had purposely never learned anything about cancer because I never thought it would impact me. Cancer wasn’t prevalent in my family, so I had chosen to worry instead about dementia and heart disease. The latter had taken the lives of both my parents and most of my aunts and uncles.

Who am I?

I am an enigma. An ambitious, organized, compassionate woman who listens to grunge, pop, or hard rock music Monday through Saturday, and new age or classical music on Sunday. I burn fragrant candles in floral scents and wear floral-scented perfumes, but I refuse to wear clothes with flowery designs. Despite chronic foot pain, I routinely wear high-heel pumps or sandals that cover up my ghastly bunions and draw attention to my toned calves. I dread vacations because they are too much work to plan and execute, plus by the third day I am bored from relaxation. My parents produced a daughter whose mind never stops analyzing, whose ears never stop listening, and whose eyes never stop observing.

Professionally, I am the Senior Vice President for Investor and Media Relations at Bye Aerospace, an aerospace engineering company I invested in that is integrating solar and solar-electric propulsion and advanced aerodynamics technologies in the general aviation, aerospace, and defense industries. Since one day job isn’t enough, I am also an investor in several other companies, a philanthropist, and a connector of passionate people who are driven to create impactful change.

Physically, I am a five-foot, four-inch muscular brunette who is half Czech. I grew up in a small town in central Nebraska, but now live in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, a planned community southwest of Denver. Highlands Ranch is targeted for family living, so there are schools and walking trails in every direction. Plus, there are scores of senior living facilities close to the schools and soccer fields and parks, which is brilliant since generations of families never have to move away. I was single for the first few years I lived in Highlands Ranch; then I married Rene. But we don’t have children, so we don’t use the schools. We have a room in our basement filled with gym equipment, so we don’t use the recreation centers we are required to pay for to be a resident.

My ride on sunny Colorado days is a powerful, gas-guzzling sports car. I don’t drive it around a racetrack, but to work. To the grocery store. To lunch with a girlfriend. To a brainstorming session with a new acquaintance at a coffee shop. To visit a sick friend in the hospital. The car gets 12 miles to the gallon, yet I invested in a company developing energy-efficient electric airplanes and solar-electric drones. I like being a nontraditional, contradictory, unpredictable change agent, the one who willingly gets the shitty projects done with a smile. Knowledge is my crutch, and I am the go-to person with the suggestions and the common-sense solutions.

I enjoy bending the traditional norms of society, of philanthropy, of business, of everyday life to the point where more efficient, positive solutions become so obvious that everyone else thinks change is a masterful idea. Their own masterful idea, of course, not mine.

Given my unconventional approach to life, within hours of receiving the dreaded breast cancer phone call, I had already decided to experience cancer in my own way, focused on extrapolating every ounce of meaning I could about myself and the treatment process. I wanted to experience cancer in a way that gets people talking about how much it sucks to receive a diagnosis, not to mention how a diagnosis impacts those we know and love.

Breast cancer was in me. Even though I couldn’t feel, hear, or taste the rapidly multiplying cells, cancer was there. Taunting me.

The night of my diagnosis, I opted out of having wine with dinner, determined to not mask my anguish with alcohol. Rene and I sat at the kitchen table afterward and talked about the future, trying to imagine how our lives were about to change. We took turns crying and proceeded to build a pile of crumpled tissues six inches high between our dinner plates.

I am embarrassed to be crying, because my time in the Air Force and my place as the oldest sibling in my family taught me to be tough, Rene said, his face freshly stained with tears.

I know. But you need to express your emotions so we can begin to garner the strength to develop a game plan.

Rene grabbed both my hands. I will be strong from this moment forward, he said. I promise.

I know you will, I said, his hands remaining clutched around mine.

That night before falling asleep, I had a long conversation with God about why I had been thrown a cancer curveball. Although petrified, I vowed to live with dignity and purpose and not whine, no matter the outcome. Instead of praying my breast cancer had not spread throughout my body, I asked God to provide me with strength and courage to address whatever lay before me. I also asked for compassion to help capture the essence of my experience so others could understand what it felt like—physically and psychologically—for me to experience intermediate-stage breast cancer.

This is my story.

For Mayor Hogan, Nikki, Cherine, Nancy, Ray, Mallory, Nano, Aunt Lucille, Aunt Mary, Laberta, and our beloved Enzo.

Chapter 1

Nearly 50 and Not Yet Fabulous

Well, hello, January! So nice to embrace a fresh, clean start again this year. Time to detox from a grueling December and that emotion called Christmas.

Ever since I transitioned into adulthood in the mid-1980s, I have endured the same drill every December: crowded holiday open houses, congested business lunches, peppermint-flavored drinks, and the wonders of exterior illumination. But I struggle to bask in the seasonal joy. While others marvel at the quaint twinkling lights that adorn neighborhood streets, I search for the solitary burned-out bulb and worry whether I have enough boxes of candy in my stash of emergency gifts for the neighbor or colleague who unexpectedly gives us a Christmas gift.

Given my self-generated annual holiday stress, in early January 2015 I was glad to be starting a new year. I was feeling healthy, yet anxious about turning 50 on September 1. My comfortable, yet dull, life seemed to be settling into a loop of predictable Hallmark Christmas movies.

My husband, Rene, and I had just hosted my three siblings and their families from central Nebraska for a post-Christmas gathering at our home. They had driven in a three-car convoy across eastern Colorado during a blizzard, and as Rene and I watched them pull into our driveway, we commented how the front grills of their cars looked like they had beards made of snow and gritty black road de-icer that later fell off in chunks and melted into oily pools.

My niece organized a reindeer games contest the night they arrived, but my team came in last because I am worthless at competitions that require athletic skill. All 12 of us took turns preparing meals, and unlike the last time Rene and I hosted them four years earlier, we ate meals off of paper plates instead of china, a painful but practical adjustment. Paper plates feel like a humiliating reduction in the excessive expectations I place on myself. But I didn’t want to spend my time loading and unloading the dishwasher like their previous visit, so I bought the most glamorous paper plates I could find and called them an acceptable compromise.

After they departed, Rene and I performed a quick housecleaning, sorted the used sheets and towels by color in the laundry room, then drove to Colorado Springs to relax for a few days. We enjoyed a delightful getaway, complete with post-Christmas bargain shopping. The only downside was the biting cold. On the second night of our stay, the temperature dipped to 25 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. We had driven my ten-year-old sport utility vehicle, and I couldn’t sleep most of the night because I was afraid it wouldn’t start the next morning. My restlessness woke up my considerate husband, who got up at 5:00 a.m. and ventured into the piercing, still outdoors to see if the car would start. Thankfully, it did. I felt guilty afterward when I remembered the possibility of a dead battery was the reason we had purchased an auto club membership.

My obsessive compulsiveness was fed by a relentless quest to achieve self-perfection, an accomplishment I had yet to realize. Given my ambitious spirit, I had detailed but unrealistic hopes. I was looking forward to a peace-filled, reflective chapter after turning 50, when every component of my complex life would begin to make logical sense. I would find more time to exercise, finally be satisfied that my hair was long enough, take up yoga, read more, say no more often, watch all the history DVDs I had purchased, and stop copping out on evening events I registered for but was usually too exhausted by day’s end to attend.

Somehow, I believed the mere act of turning 50 would result in a complete behavioral change. Why? Because 50 was a symbolic midway point, a time when I could finally give myself permission to relax and focus on my priorities.

The previous decade had been challenging, yet I had learned more in my 40s than I had during the first 39 years of my life. During my 40s, I had married the love of my life and experienced the death of my faithful dog and constant companion, Enzo. I had also experienced significant financial losses from the 2008–09 economic crisis. After my former husband and I divorced in 2005, I used some of my divorce proceeds to invest in and help local entrepreneurs launch innovative business ideas. Some referred to my generosity as angel investing, although there was nothing virtuous about the majority of the outcomes. By the time I was ready to turn 50, I had accepted that angel investing was tedious and frustrating most of the time, and statistically, usually not successful. At least not for me. Yet, anyway.

On the upside, during my 40s I had discovered the joy of philanthropy, particularly of donating the initial dollars to fund well-managed projects that emanate hope and invite volunteerism and collaborative growth. My deceased father’s service in the Korean War had been my motivation to volunteer as the first large donor to the Colorado Freedom Memorial near Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado’s third largest city located east of Denver. The Colorado Freedom Memorial was dedicated in May 2013, and the names of over 6,000 Coloradoans killed in action since Colorado became a state are etched on the memorial’s glass panels.

In a poignant twist, during my 40s I discovered a mysterious ability to skillfully maneuver my way through adverse situations. I simply needed to develop, then implement, a plan. Sometimes the plan meant I had to take financial losses, lose friendships, or separate from business partners, but I always managed my way past the challenges, wiser and more confident from the experiences. I felt like a seasoned survivor, but I needed a break from the monotony that had become my daily life.

Although I was exhausted in early 2015, I was still optimistic. I served on the board of directors and worked at one of the companies I had invested in, Bye Aerospace. My focus was media and investor relations, corporate governance, capital raising, and special projects. Special projects: a glamourous term for the endless ideas in business that everyone talks about, but no one is willing to voluntarily spend their precious time planning or implementing.

Every day I wondered how my 40s would end. Who did I want to be in life’s second act? I had visions of me as a 50-year-old woman strolling down a tree-lined path wearing flattering, patterned leggings that hiked up a supple, slightly jiggly ass that resembled the bottom of a ripe Palisade peach from the western slope of Colorado. The outfit would be completed by a black yoga tank top. A ponytail of wavy hair would cascade down to my lower back, swishing back and forth between my toned, muscular arms. I would be listening to birds, enjoying a cloudless, royal blue sky in the spectacular Colorado outdoors. Perhaps a small herd of deer would be grazing nearby. I would be walking to soak in Mother Nature’s wonder, not to burn 200 calories.

While I was pondering the possibilities of a peaceful utopia in life’s next chapter, in late January I had a routine annual mammogram. A week later, the breast imaging center called to inform me I needed to return to the center for a follow-up diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound. I was not concerned because 11 years earlier I had gone through the same experience and a lump in my left breast had turned out to be benign. I felt invincible because I thought I deserved a break. I had dodged a breast cancer bullet before. While it was certainly an upsetting experience, I had emerged victorious. Why should the outcome be any different this time? A breast cancer diagnosis wouldn’t make sense. I felt as normal as any uptight type A perfectionist could feel.

A light snow fell the night before my follow-up mammogram. Not enough to make driving difficult, but enough to slow Denver traffic down to an infamous, time-consuming creep. Fortunately, since I plan for these types of inconveniences, I arrived at the imaging center in plenty of time. Once the check-in process was completed, the registrar acknowledged my military retiree health insurance.

Did you serve in the military? she asked.

No, but my husband did.

Please thank him for his service, she said as she handed me my file.

That comment, like the I’ll Be Home for Christmas TV commercials that feature dogs and cats forced to spend Christmas in an animal shelter, triggered the floodgate of tears response, which I knew was going to mess up my carefully crafted eye makeup. So, I smiled at the registrar and bolted. Once I was through the double doors and in a changing room, I lunged for a tissue and dabbed at my right eye. Crisis averted. I have such pride and admiration for those who give selflessly to serve others—whether in the military, as teachers, as first responders, or in other service professions—that the very