The Other Mountain: Life After Cancer Diagnosis

The first part of any journey is taking the first step.  Right?  Maybe that’s the scariest step for most people.  Starting.  I know that I balked and got angry talking to God about starting another book.

I like to write.  Always have.  Like so many I have enjoyed a good story since I was little.  I used to come up with these crazy stories in my middle school years, most of which no one, not even my sister, has ever heard about.  I spent hours illustrating parts of them.

But I’ve never self-identified as a writer.  Even though I literally write something every day now.  Poems, fiction plots and blog ideas, talks I might give.  My conversations with God.

Writing my first book has been like climbing a very steep, very scary mountain.  When I first talked with God about following through on my book ideas it was so scary to me I got mad.  Anger seems safer than fear sometimes.   

Stepping out, I wrote a book outline.  It still seemed ridiculous.  Me writing a book.  A whole book.  Sure, I’ve started like 5 or 6, but how is a mother of 5 kiddos supposed to find time to write?  For real and not just for fun?

Isn’t it crazy?  Here I am, one year later having written an entire inspirational non-fiction manuscript in 1 and 2 hour chunks.  God meeting me in my broken days and redeeming my broken dreams.

One.  Small.  Problem.

Climbing to the top of this particular mountain has been a miracle.  Several miracles maybe: 1 – I’m alive to write; 2 – Each and every week that I was able to get out of the house to write for a few hours; 3 – God helping me organize my thoughts and providing the insights to record in a book.  In climbing this mountain there have been several points along the way I stopped to look back and admire the view, and then I was there!  At the top!

    
I had to climb through a bit of fog at times, common in climbing to such a high peak.  Foggy steps moving upward and closer to my goal were still energizing.  My feelings at the summit when I had written the final words.  Placed the final period.  Indescribable. 

    
Having been watching my feet through the fog so I wouldn’t miss a step, I finally looked up.

    
What. On. Earth?

   
This wasn’t the top at all.  How come I didn’t know that this wasn’t the top of the mountain?

I climbed a really long way.  It was an incredible journey.  But crap.  I thought this climb WAS the mountain. 

    
Yeah, I climbed from sea level to base camp. 

    
The climb up that mountain?  It begins from here.

    
It felt crazy to begin a book I knew I would finish.  Scary.  But I really didn’t know scary until I finished my climb to base camp.  Until I printed my manuscript and saw what I really needed to do to turn my manuscript into a book.

    
Getting to what I thought was the top but was really base camp, that realization of the largeness of the true climb, reminded me of when I finished treatment for breast cancer.  Only minus the whole chemo and surgery and radiation recovery thing.

    
Being diagnosed with cancer is like being invited to climb a mountain too.   Only it’s like THIS and you are running up a steep slope while being mauled by a mountain lion.  I have loved this post ever since I discovered it back during my own treatment.  The analogy is so apt, especially that part where at the end people are like, “Wow, you are finished!”  Only you stand there beaten and bleeding.

    
There is another mountain to climb.  The mountain of recovery from treatment for you and your family.  The mountain of daily living with horrible side effects from treatment.  The mountain of recovering your energy and stamina.  I think I lay at that base camp of ‘Thank God I finished and I don’t think I can take even one more step forward’ for 2 or 3 years.

    
At which point I was diagnosed with heart failure from my breast cancer treatment.  Which was helpful because it gave a name for the fatigue and general feeling of being mauled.  Not so helpful in actually getting me up that mountain peak.  That second summit called “Thriving After Cancer Treatment.”  Or something like that.

    
So here I am at base camp again.  Only for a book this time.  The initial journey was much more peaceful :).  But it’s still a place of recouping and looking up.  The mountain looks so, just, high from here.  I don’t know that I have what it takes to climb.  I’m afraid.  Afraid of starting out and failing.  Of falling.  I hate to fall.

    
Will God catch me when I fall?  Again?  I will only find out if I get off my cot, put on my big girl boots and climb.

Mayo: not just a sandwich spread

     Being diagnosed with a serious heart condition changes a lot of things, one of them being the lengths to which Josh and I will go to get medical care that we can trust.  My (previous) cardiologist thought I was nuts for even considering driving to Florida “just” to get another opinion.  But Mayo isn’t just the name of that white stuff you put in potato salad, or if you are my mother, all over your sandwich. 

     Mayo is also the name of 3 hospital centers across the States.  The first Mayo Clinic was opened in Rochester, Minnesota in 1863 with the start of Dr. William Mayo’s practice there.  Dr. Mayo was then joined by his two sons in the 1880s.  As the Mayo family’s dedication to their patients, collaborative approach to knowledge, and love of innovation and the advancement of the science of medicine drew in too many patients to serve, the Mayo family asked other doctors and scientists to join them.  The Mayo Clinic in Rochester has consistently been voted the best hospital in the country by both patients and practitioners over the 150 years they have been in service.

      Integrated, patient centered care is how the Mayo family made their name in medicine and is still the core of the values held by all of the Mayo Clinics: Minnesota, Arizona and the one we went to in Jacksonville, Florida.  If you moved across the country, were then diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and having difficulty finding medical care you could trust what would you do? 

     I’m not always brave but I am consistently stubborn.  I struggle with anxiety if things just don’t make sense to me.  Why am I experiencing heart failure?  What does this mean for my life expectancy?  Am I dying?  If I am expected to live a few years, a decade, until I’m 80, then how does heart failure change the way I will experience that life?  Will I be sick the whole time?  What is happening to me?

     I guess I also struggle with really high expectations of doctors.  I mean, why go to all that school, why choose a career taking care of people if you aren’t dedicated to, well, caring for people?  So, I hear Mayo Clinic and I think, maybe the doctors there won’t patronize me, and maybe I could trust in my care instead of fighting for good care, and maybe, just maybe, we will get some answers.

    Worth a 5 ½-6 hour drive to me.  Unless you drive down on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  Then it needs to be worth an 11 hour drive, but, whatever.

     That feeling of a Father’s tender care?  An acquaintance-level person from Josh’s work opening their home to us, 20 minutes from Mayo in Jacksonville, when we can’t afford to stay in even the cheapest hotel.  That same couple buying us dinner Monday night.  We don’t even know them.  Gas at $2.39-2.79 per gallon over a really long drive.  We made a trip from Greenville to Jacksonville with no money in our bank account for the cost of gas, coffee and $3 all-day parking.

  That feeling of hope exploding across your chest?  Passing the entrance with the big stylized marble stones emblazoned with: “patient care”, “research”, “education” and entering the Davis Building connected to a huge hospital and the patients there don’t look afraid.

     We checked in on Monday morning really early; Josh, Matthew and I making a tour of registration just after 7 am.  I had the second appointment of the day with our cardiologist.  The minimum time the doctor spends with each patient? 45 minutes.  Yep!  Not 15 minutes while looking at his watch, 45 minutes and gave us his personal cell number as we were leaving in case we had more questions with the instructions, “Use it, don’t abuse it!”  There was a long waiting room-like couch in each exam room.  All the staff smiled with their eyes.  The doctor was waiting for us as we entered the exam room. 

     Can Mayo open a center in Greenville?

Birthday & Cancerversary

By Stephanie Sanders — Mar 6, 2012 10:53pm

I found the lump in my breast a year ago last Friday.  This Friday is my birthday, I turn 34, but
March is now a bitter sweet month for me.
A year ago, March 2nd, I found a lump in my breast feeding
Kate. 


Cancerversary

It’s not quite spring time
There are not yet buds on the trees
But we still watch the fountain outside as it bubbles over blank rocks

Late Friday afternoon we wait as a family
It shouldn’t take long, I shouldn’t be here

I switch to reading my kids magazines with
Pictures of women my mother’s age as I nurse my baby

It shouldn’t take long to look at this lump because
I’m too young to have breast cancer

A trip to the back to don pink gowns that do nothing
To hide our vulnerability as we wait to be released from death

Another picture, another view
A mammogram
and ultrasound
As the staff get quiet
And look at me with pity

“Please wait while I talk to the radiologist,”
And
“Is your husband in the waiting room?”

What do you do when the doctor cries?
My mind grows numbI stare at the pictures

No one believes until the biopsy
But forever
I will remember
2 days after I turned 33

I heard the word "cancer"