The Big C

 

   I came in here to start writing this post and thought that my app must not have updated because I couldn't believe that my post about the gastroenterologist was the last one I had uploaded. Turns out, when you hear certain things, a bookmark is placed in your life. I've heard about this concept in other arenas before, catalyst points. After them, you see your life as before x, and after x. I was surprised to not see any other posts because so much happened last week, and in my mind I had written several. I think I just felt like I couldn't actually post them here until after I had put them into context. It's funny, I have no readers for this blog at this point, but I was afraid that if I put my news up here before I shared it with my children they might hear about it the wrong way, and it was really important to me to not have that happen.

    Last Tuesday I spoke on the phone with the dermatologist office about the results of my biopsy. I had fully expected it to come back as normal, as most of my tests do, but it didn't. The doctors assistant shared with me that the growth that had been removed was a basal cell carcinoma, AKA, skin cancer. This should not have come as a huge surprise to me. My grandfather has had this form of skin cancer several times and with my very fair skin I am predisposed to it. I think I've always expected to be diagnosed with some form of cancer at some point. The same grandfather has had colon cancer, and I believe his sister died of breast cancer. That, and I have struggled with more than my fair share of hypochondria, so I have imagined myself to have most forms of cancer at some point. As cancer goes, this may be the simplest, easiest to treat, least dangerous form you can get. But the fact is, it is still the first time that I had actually been told that I have cancer. It shook me. I was still trying to process the SIBO diagnosis from the day before and this felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under my feet. I was knocked off kilter. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for this being so easy to deal with, but I also struggled because I felt like because it was not super dangerous or requiring chemo or radiation it hardly counts as cancer. This left me with a sense of limbo, feeling disconcerted for having received a cancer diagnosis while at the same time not feeling justified in saying that I have cancer. I've struggled with this feeling through many of my medical diagnoses because so many of them are not widely accepted by the medical community, or else not widely understood, or else I do not have clear testing or labs to prove my diagnosis. I have Lyme Disease, but my Western blot test came back one stripe short of a CDC diagnosis. Many conventional doctors would thus say I do not have Lyme Disease, but my doctor at the time shared with me that it was impossible for me to have the bands I did and not have Lyme Disease.

    So now I have two appointments set up for next month with the dermatologist: one to cut deeper and remove the rest of the current basal cell carcinoma in my shoulder and another to do a "skin check" to determine if there are any more spots that need dealt with.  Not gonna lie, my imagination has run rampant and self-diagnosed with 8-10 more possible spots as well as questioning if the spots that she diagnosed as psoriasis are actually cancer.  

    When talking with my PCP about it, she recommended that I get a second opinion since the dermatologist I saw wrote off one particular spot as being "just a scar" but she and another of my doctors are fairly certain it is cancerous.  So I spent hours searching for another dermatologist to look at it and found that most of them are primarily aesthetic specialists doing fillers and acne treatments.  Not sure where to go with that, but I'll keep trying.

Here's the thing: I live in this tension between "I'm blessed" and "You've got to be kidding me!"  All day, every day.  It's confusing and exhausting.  I don't know how to feel.