The Cure For All Cancer: All 9 Seasons of MI-5 (Spooks)

I have this bubble. It is a cozy, amazing womb of a bubble.

I go into it, and magically, the memory of the fact I have metastacised breast cancer disappears. Anywhere else, including in my own house, or while driving in my car, the cancer invades my consciousness, zings my anxiety into high gear, and grips my heart with fear.

Here is what the bubble looks like: It is an old, turn-of-the-century, two-story house in the heart of downtown, on a leafy, residential street. It has five-foot high, black, wrought-iron fencing around the front yard. 

Behind that fence is a pretty Magnolia tree whose petals are sadly dropping early as they always do. The stone patio in the front, and French courtyard in the back, are covered in Apple and Cherry blossom petals, like a garden in a child's imagination. An ancient Apple tree grows right out of the stone courtyard. An unused sauna stands at the back. Bright, pretty flowers lean enthusiastically from pots high and low.


The bbq in the back serves up the best steaks in the country: The homemade bbq sauce has garlic, ginger, and Montreal Steak Spice in it. The meat is rare and tender and thick. In foil, next to the steaks, the thinly sliced onions and potatoes bubble away, and on the stove in the kitchen, a big batch of mushrooms to supplement. The world's best home-made Caesar Salad dressing (the secret is anchovy paste) is added to the Romaine lettuce at the last possible second so the croutons won't be soggy, when covered with home-grated fresh parmesan and lemon. This is the perfect meal. What I would order as my last meal on death row.


In the mornings, I am reading on the most comfy, deep sofas, and drinking the world's tastiest coffee. A frittata with asparagus and feta is served. The conversation is witty and affectionate, a loving, warm atmosphere, filled with laughter and love.


Overnight, in the guest room, Simba, a two year old goldendoodle lets me spoon her, and her soft ears feel like silk on my cheek. She rolls on her back and pushes out her breast bone, imitating the pup I first knew her as, at three months old. 

She guards me with the fiercest love a dog has ever shown me. I am her possession. Her brother, Poirot, a chubby, happy-go-lucky, soft-hearted Bernese Mountain Dog, occasionally braves Simba's bitchy possessiveness over me, and pushes her out of the way to lie close to me on the bed. The sheets are clean, crisp, high-count Egyptian cotton, the mattress envelopes me in softness.


But in the evenings! Oh the evenings!  In front of a five foot wide ancient old fireplace with a roaring fire in it, each of us in deep, soft, enveloping heavy couches (Michael in his man-chair, a Lazyboy..one big enough for his 6'6" frame) surrounded by dog flesh spread out on antique Indian rugs, Christine and Mike and I indulge our addiction, while drinking Diet Cokes, and snacking on popcorn, chips, chocolate covered almonds, nuts, and occasionally, ice cream. 

That addiction is MI-5, the BBC series still in production in its tenth season. We rent the previous seasons, and watch the episodes one after another. If anyone is lost, we order Mike to "Pause!" so we can clue back in. We are crazy about how good this show is, how smart, how contemporary, how fast, and occasionally witty it is.


Christine is my guardian angel, so smart, so loving, so pretty, so witty. She isn't even jealous of her daughter's--Simba's--abject adoration of me. I am like Mick Jagger or Sting to Simba and Poirot. Every little thing I do is magic. 


Once Simba slept at my house when Mike and Chris were out of town, and I would awake to her low growl, as she warned my own three dogs to stay away, when they tried to come in and jump on the bed. 

In a fog of sleep I'd see them huddled, wide-eyed, at the open bedroom door, a look of amazement on their faces as Simba would leap from the floor next to my side of the bed and appear in their faces, letting them know that the threshhold was hers, the body next to Dave's in the bed, hers, and that if they wanted to extend their lives a bit longer, they wouldn't try to sneak in again while she slept on the floor next to me.


Simba would hear me say her name in a sleepy admonishment of her, and she would be instantly next to me, standing on the floor, administering quick, tiny licks to the skin near my mouth, as if to say "Shhh, shhh, my angel, you go back to sleep, let me deal with these assholes of yours." Like a Jewish grandmother, at a sick child's bed. "Don't worry your fevered head, I am taking care of it all."


Sometimes Courtenay, walking Baxter, rouses the dogs in the morning while we lounge and read, Chris always working from her blackberry. I went off with Courtenay and Baxter, picking up Tulip and Sasha, nearby, on Sunday morning, to the dog park, to wear them all out for the day. Courtenay and I then had a great time strolling at the booths in the Landsdowne Market.


When I leave and return home Monday, I hear about a friend's mom, who has lost her voice. She has to live now without speaking. I am up all night, sobbing, phoning Liz in B.C., Dave trying to comfort me. My friend's mom has lost her voice because her metastacised breast cancer has formed a tumour in her brain. When it was removed by surgery last Thursday she awoke to the complete inability to speak. Her breast cancer was the same as mine: metastacised to two or three nodes in her armpit. 

My bubble has definitely popped.

Parrrteeeee!!

I haven't told you about the amazing amount of love that surrounds me, from friends & family near and far. It lifts me up in dark moments.

I mentioned here it was my birthday a few days ago and I got so many good wishes on FB, and a wonderful birthday party was thrown on the night of my birthday at Dawn and Jordan's house. 

Courtenay and Dawn arranged the party and Christine and I were driven there by Dave, our designated driver, who himself had a ball.

Crazy fun!! It was my ideal of a perfect party. Music, music, and more music. Chris and I passed around a tray of lemon drop martinis which kicked it into high gear. The women shared our penchant for memorizing lyrics at full volume. How often do you find women who all love to sing ALL the lyrics?

We women danced, sang, and smoked in the garage . . . ostensibly to let the dogs wander onto the lawn...ar ar ar. With imaginary microphones, and air guitars, air drum kits. We knew the words to the same classic rock songs. Chris and I won't easily forget singing that love song to Canada, "A Case Of You," and Dawn's incredible memory for the lyrics of Led Zeppelin and Guns N Roses.

Later, the men and the women really enjoyed Dawn's word-perfect, animated vocal performance of "Patricia the Stripper" to Courtenay's excellent dancing in the living room. 

Then, everyone (cos it was my birthday) indulged me in my fave game: put the ipod or laptop in the middle, and each person nominates a song for "Best 20 songs of All Time." You really increase your top hits playlist by hearing the faves of your friends. So wonderful to share the most fun songs in the world this way with special people.

Great homemade food by Dawn kept coming all evening. A fabulous time. 

Can't wait for next time. Am thinking of having a follow up party for right before my surgery.

Pathetic Falsie

pa·thet·ic fal·la·cy

Noun: The attribution of human feelings and responses to climate, esp. in art and literature.

It has been raining for three weeks. Very bad for people in the dog walking industry. (Also bad for owners of white dogs. If you want a dog, do not buy a white one. For some perverse reason white dogs love diving into mud puddles. The dirtier they get the happier they are.)

Rain is bad for us. All my medical appointments over the last three weeks have been scheduled for the morning, prime time for our business. Poor Dave has had to do virtually all the work, and has been very unhappy about this. I have been horribly guilty about it too. Picturing him miserable in the rain with the dogs every morning.

One day recently, I had no appointments scheduled and I did the dogs. I screwed up. One client had sent me an email asking me to keep the dog at the house till seven p.m. and they would pick it up. Normally we pick this dog up and return it to its crate daily. Upon retrieving the dog I saw they had reminded us by leaving a note on the crate. Idiot that I am, I pocketed the note, rather than leaving it there. Yup. I returned the dog to its crate. 

Fortunately it was within the four hour period Cesar Millan says is the maximum time to crate a dog, and indeed it was tired going in. Still. I was in tears of mortification for this error. The client had given me a lovely cancer gift when she and her husband arrived at seven p.m. I was so mortified I could not even come out of the sunroom to speak to them. They phoned and suggested from now on they deal with Dave not me.

Hard to give up my business to my husband. I live for those dogs and need them so much. Hoping this stupid cancer will allow me some mornings to join them in the park. That is the true joy of my life, throwing balls for them, interacting with the pack.

Hard to believe I haven't posted a blog in a week. Today, May 20th is my birthday. 

Tuesday, May 10th, I meet with the surgeon, Dr. Lorimer. I hate him. All the books and info I skimmed since my diagnosis talk about the various surgical options available. I am unsuccessful in attempting any discussion on these.

Don't forget I grew up, since the age of ten, with a mother who deeply resented her lack of surgical options. She detested the ugly sewing job on the site of her mastectomy. She was bitter that other women had been offered options while she hadn't, despite the fact her tumour was tiny, and she could have had a lumpectomy. 

All the recent lit, including the lit I read when I raised $2500.00 for breast cancer and walked the 60km Walk For The Cure a few years ago, stress that the recovery of a breast cancer patient is related to her sense of general control, and taking that control away from her by allowing a junior resident to botch her sewing job, for instance, is not helpful, and indeed disempowering.

To my surprise, when I open my mouth and express the desire for a double mastectomy, instead of a single, my sister tells me I am not listening to the doctor and I need to button my lip. Later, having heard it from her, my brother admonishes me: My sister told him about my "speaking up". It's a sign of non-co-operation or a bad attitude or not listening or something. Ohhhkaaaaaayyy. But what happened to options and empowerment? And not ending up bitter like my mother?

I ask if I can have a double mastectomy, (a) because I have a twenty percent chance of a new breast cancer occurring in my left breast, if I have had one in my right one, and (b) because the surgeon himself said reconstructed single breasts never match the existing real one. 

Why would I choose to recover from two separate mastectomies? Down the road I am going to want two new breasts and that involves two operations itself. Speaking out is mandatory, not "rude" or "failing to listen" in my books. Who wants to end up bitter and resentful for the next decades like my ma?

That afternoon I realize I have forgotten to ask the surgeon an important question. In my past, three separate junior residents have made sewing errors on my body. The common thing in an operating room is that the newbie "closes" the wound. This is the person with the least experience in matching the weave and the warp of human skin together in a thin, neat line. The more experience the surgeon has, the sooner they wish to exit the operating theatre I assume.

I phone the surgeon's office and leave a request with his secretary to have him phone me. First, i want more info about why I cannot have a double mastectomy. (He'd told me I was free later, after my single mastectomy, chemo, and radio were finished, in a year, to pursue some surgeon for another mastectomy on my non-cancerous breast, and even recommended it.) I needed more info. Secondly, I'd forgotten to ask him to refrain from allowing a Junior Resident to close my wound.

Thursday I call Antonella, my help nurse at the Breast Program, for help. He hasn't called me back. She emails him and receives an email from the surgeon himself saying he would phone me. 

He waits until Friday evening at five p.m. to return my call. In it he says the following: (1) That is the way he does things. Single breast removal. He doesn't want me to take too long to heal from surgery prior to getting me into chemo. Take it or leave it. Time is of the essence. (2) The General Hospital is a teaching hospital. Juniors will close wounds. Take it or leave it. He says the Queensway Carleton is not a teaching hospital. I can unbook with him and try there. I ask how I can do that. I want that. "You would unbook from me and search for a surgeon who works out of the Queensway Carleton."

Well, thinking that he might be telling the truth about time being of the essence, in getting me quickly to chemo, of course I am not going to unbook for my June 7th surgery date. A bird in the hand and all... What if the Queensway Carleton surgeon is booked till August or something? 

You have to question a man who says time is of the essence (a fear-generating remark) yet who takes four business days to return a phonecall on these topics. After all, he had time to answer Antonella's email Thursday at noon. 

A friend of mine wonders if he isn't just lazy. Who would choose to stand over a patient for the five hours a double takes when he can stand over me for a mere two hour period for a single mastectomy? This man did not exactly demonstrate any especial concern for my welfare, when he took four days to return a call, and didn't even offer to close my wound himself? 

A big reason i want the double mastectomy is that I just do not want to wear a prosthesis, a falsie. I cannot afford one. They are ridiculously expensive. I cannot afford one. You wear one till the year and a half later when they let you get  two operations to install fake boobs. 

I hate bras period. They pull, and are uncomfy. I can't exactly run to the corner store with a giant, flattish uniboob and a man's profile on the other side. Everyone will look. And I just don't want that. So I will be forced into that stupid falsie bra my mom hated. Dammit. Damn the surgeon. 

So, deeply resentfully, I am about to go through the first of four separate operations on my boobs. Ridiculous, stupid waste of my time. Oh, but I forgot. It's the surgeon's time that matters here. 

The Prescription is Lemon Drops

Ok. Where was I?

Thursday was a day off from testing. I knew results would be in Friday. 

Friday

Elizabeth and her best friend from childhood, Mary, and I are in the doctor’s office at the walk-in clinic, awaiting the doctor. 

He is an elderly Vietnamese man and, as Eliz will later imitate me, on reflection, I kind of set him up for what would follow. 

I had already determined it was metastatic breast cancer from eyeballing the ultrasound on Monday, so what was to follow was no surprise whatsoever to Elizabeth and me. Mary, however, was very taken aback.

I made sure to get a referral ...well let me tell you the way Liz recounted it later to me:

(High squeaky, polite, arch voice) “Um well I have this little bump on my left finger that I think is a bone spur? And um, I would like a referral to the kind of doctor that removes bone spurs? And um, I have this widdle pwoblem with my left knee? Like I had an ACL reconstruction there so there is like this arthritis pain? And um, like I heard I need a referral from you? Cos, like there is this Dr. Kabir who can inject fake cartilidge into my knee with a needle?”

The doctor is writing all this down.

“Oh and can u re-up my anti-anxiety meds? And um, oh, can you please check a biopsy report?”

After a lot of phoning around and fax wrangling, the doctor receives the report, studies it, and reenters the examining room in tears.

He is wiping his ancient eyes, removing his glasses, openly weeping, while we sit staring at him.

“I am afraid I do not have good news. Your MRI and biopsy have revealed a very advanced breast cancer that has spread to the lymph nodes in your right armpit.”

He has to stop twice to wipe his tears.

After he leaves, Liz pops out and returns, to whisper, “He is still crying!! He is sitting crying at his desk!”

I gave him a warm hug. What a sweetie. See? Walk in clinics aren’t that heartless after all!!

After we leave I phone my husband and tell him to come down to the clinic. He can find us in the bar next door to it. I order a bunch of lemon drop shots while Liza phones our siblings. If there was ever a time to drink, this is it.

My Own Private Bethlehem: a Fertilizer-Free zone

Wednesday, May 5^th

Elizabeth now has the sedan. I am so happy to have forced her to accept it, as I want her to stay in Ottawa as long as possible. I am aware her children and grandchildren in British Columbia need her. But I do too. I want her to have wheels. It's a bribe and a talisman that she stay.

She drives me to my MRI out at the General Hospital in the East End. We mistake the Children’s Hospital for the General and she goes to move the car when we discover the mistake, and I jog over to it. Gee I can jog just fine this huge distance. I can’t be sick enough to have metastatic cancer.

The machine itself is frightening. Every once in a while deep, loud tuba notes bellow from it. They have told me not to move and I chafe at it. I am Pauline in Perils of Pauline, tied to the railroad track. I am thinking of Pauline cos I actually "starred" as a kind of Cruella deVille hottie in a cabaret style high school drama production of it, in which my character FAILS TO seduce a simple, pure farm rube who is looking to keep Pauline out of the hands of me and the mustache twirling bad guy. "Nora has more energy in her little finger," I still hear British Mr. Saunders saying to the limp farm rube, poor boy, "than you have in your whole body."

When I am lying as still as I can inside the machine, thinking of how strong and healthy i am, I realize that it is of no use to comment on the fact I can jog in a pinch for a mile or more. It is a misleading reflection.

I recall two things; both about Steve, my brother. 

We would both lead the Sunday nite family singsongs as we shared the gift for loudness...and memorizig Irish lyrics...bawdy lyrics. And we were funny. We were partiers. Six kids, two parents, one tiny two up two down house: more fun than I have ever had with anyone else. We were scrappy Irish opinionated headstrong, and loud. Very loud. The funniest was apparently Barry, cos he won contests around the province for talent where he did his impressions like Rich Little. But for impromptu wit, Steve was self deprecatingly fast and really funny. But Rose and Ade were and are very funny women too. Really funny. Eliza was always laughing her guts out at her younger five and, like my mom and dad, the desire for a belly laugh, to get someone to retell a hilarious story was like a sport, almost, adding to it from the sidelines. Everyone, esp my parents, loved a belly laugh. My parents, left to their own devices after their kids grew up could even be caught cracking each other up, tears of laughter rolling down their faces.

I recalled how, for example, opening night of Perils of Pauline, my brother BOTH cracked up and appalled the audience and cast alike, by heralding each of my seductive appearances with screaming, hooting, and wolf whistling, shouting most memorably at the limp farm rube, "SAY YES TO HER YOU STUPID JERK, YOU'LL NEVER GET ANOTHER CHANCE AT ANY WOMAN!" and secondly, I am recalling how, at my wedding, Steve, at 6’2” and well up in the 260 pound region, threw me around the dance floor.  In my fairy-princess, strapless white dress with all the crinolines built into the skirt, I was helpless as a ragdoll. He could really jive well. Super strong, throwing me this way and that, there was no way to know he would be dead from cancer inside a year.

It is a mistake, I realize, to judge someone healthy simply because they can jog a mile. There is no relationship between the healthy appearance of a person and the invisible-to-the-eye fact of a dark presence chomping away inside a body, creeping towards your lymphatic system so it can expand its kill zone to your vital organs. 

To pass the forty minutes in the foghorn I try counting. Then I recall what the cancer reminds me of. It is a poem by W.B. Yeats called "The Second Coming." 

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

How surprising, I think, with little emotion, that my time is up.

I don't want to gnash my teeth and rail against the Fates. I want to be smart. I want to know when the end is near, like I didn't know when, at 47, my brother, Steve died.

I told Rosemary this by long distance. I said that everyone pretended things were positive for Steve for so long that when I sensed the end was near and asked my other brother how much time Steve had left, Barry admonished me for not having faith that Steve would prevail. Hence, seven weeks later, when he died,  I was up in Algonquin Park, far from any phone that might have told me to get to his bedside in the hospital. I wouldn't do that to people, I decided.

People are already beginning to advise me to "think positively" long before the facts are even in.  I know they say this to be kind. But kindness is also available after the facts are in too. What was it Voltaire said, "to the living we owe respect; to the dead, we owe the truth?"

I thought about what agonies of grief my siblings and I suffered when Steve died. Comparing our grief when our parents died to our grief over Steve's death I reflected that Alzheimers and NPH were these wonderful grief-assisters, that mitigated the pain of sudden loss. 

The advanced ages my parents died at also helped the survivors who loved them. I'd said last night to Rosemary that it was the duty really of the living, to take care of the survivors afterwards, if advanced age and dementia weren't helping out. You have a responsibility, sort of, to help those who love you to get over your death.


I don't blame Steve, at all, I think as I lie in the foghorn. He had two daughters, one of whom was only thirteen years old when he died. He had to think positively, for them. The alternative was unthinkable.

I am thinking about our conversation on the phone the previous evening. Rose and I reflected on how extravagant was the grief. It was an independent force like gravity; or like a baseball bat that would come out of nowhere and smash you across the guts just when you thought you were okay. 

I recall going on a lengthy bike ride on a forested trail with Dave, my husband, after Steve's funeral, and how suddenly I was curled up in a fetal position crying, in a wee cave I'd spotted for the purpose. Dave riding ahead had no idea where I'd disappeared to.

Seven months later, at Christmas time, decorating the house, I'd had a mixed tape of carols on, and one of them was Ave Maria, played at Steve's funeral. Again with the baseball bat across my abdomen.


After the MRI, Elizabeth and I get a table and a pair of coffees in the cafeteria. She breaks down at one point, and seizes my wrist. I am her baby too, really. She was thirteen when I was born. She is recalling going to see me when I entered the world, at the hospital at the air force base in Cold Lake. 


"You had this thick black hair when you were born," she is saying. She can't continue cos she is weeping and holding my wrist. I am stronger now. I don't cry. I thank her for her tears. They are like prayer words, or words in a moving poem. They speak what we dare not use words for. They are the truth. Unpolished, and snake oil-free.

As a new member of the "group to be known from now on by the symbol Omerta" I am indeed owed the truth. From now on I won't settle for anything less.

Biopsy Is Reality

My sister, Elizabeth, has changed her plane ticket to open ended return. She is here to take me to appointments. 

I really enjoy picking her up at my late brother, Steve’s house, where his widow, Ingrid and my nieces live. I am happy because she is here for ME.

We drive to the biopsy. She wants to park the car a few blocks away where the parking is free, so we stop at the Breast building and let me out. 

“Hurry back, okay?” I close the door and head up the elevator.

I am led to the same room where I had the ultrasound and aspiration. I am comforted by the familiarity of the room. I know how to open the blind from lying on the table so I can distract myself from the procedure by envisioning pretty decor inside the mock Tudor houses across the street.

I am fighting with the new tech. How did this happen? What happened to Marijana, the smooth Yugoslavian tech?  This tech is rolling her eyes at me, upset. 

“You were instructed to wear a bra,” she says.

“I don’t have one,” I lie. The truth is that I have one. My friend, Kate, gave me hers in January when I visited her for about five days at her loft. It is too uncomfy to wear though.

Like the tech, Kate was puzzled why I didn’t own a bra. I told her that in the previous year I found bras too uncomfortable; too small, too big, too uncomfortable. I had tried to buy myself a bra that fit, back in the fall or so. None of them fit right. Time to go on a diet, right? If one cannot even find a bra to fit?

The new tech is upset at me. 

“How are you going to keep your breast secure when you leave here? There is a lot of blood. The breast has to be kept strapped into something.”

“How about a tensor bandage?” I suggest brightly. 

She ignores me and goes on and on about what I was told to do, how I was to have brought a bra. How these suggestions are put in place for solid reasons, and how I should not just ignore their advice.

“Can you please just lose the attitude?” I venture. “I mean I am sorry about the bra, but you don’t have to roll your eyes at me, right? I mean look what I am going through.”

To my shock, the new tech flies to the door, saying “you obviously don’t want me here so fine, I will get you another tech.” She slams out.

I am stunned. I lie back on the table wanting to cry.

The door is opened, ages later, by another beautiful radiologist. She is a fellow in radiology. Is that a senior resident in radiology? Not sure. I instantly love her. She has a Middle Eastern accent I cannot pin down. Not Persian, I figure. She hits the consonants too hard for that. 

I tell her my side of the confrontation and she apologizes for the tech and says they are all so booked, would it be alright if Sylvie returns. I am okay if she is, I say. I have this beautiful, soft-spoken Indian/Persian/Morroccan goddess in charge, so I’m safe.

Over the next two hours fourteen pieces of meat are tweezed from inside my right breast and lymph nodes. I can communicate with this radiologist, whom I have by now learned is Egyptian. She is bright, sweet, and in control. I would do anything she asked.

I fix my right hand at my eyebrow the whole time. I answer her questions with a voice round and bright. She asks if my hand will be comfortable there for two hours. 

“Oh yes,” I reply. The real reason my right hand is so comfortable there is that I am shielding them from seeing my eyes in case I cry. I am so glad they have asked me to keep my right arm up the whole time. There is something either too intimate or perhaps too "Jeffrey Dahmer" about two people removing pieces of meat from your breast while you cry. I am protecting them from my feelings, as they have a job to do.

I glance, once, at my breast. It is bathed in blood. There is blood on the women’s transparent plastic gloves. I am amazed that it doesn’t hurt. It is uncomfortable: the pressure, the leaning in on the breast, but no sharp pain.

To help them out, I launch a merry monologue. I tell them how I read in Michael J. Fox’s autobiography, that Woody Allen was asked by the actors in one film what age he would have liked to have been born in. Woody listened to all their responses and then said, “I would never have liked to have been born before the invention of antibiotics.” I say I would personally change that to the invention of anaesthesia.

The radiologist is so sweet. Her voice is low and soft; her hair is long and loose in natural ringlets. She talks with enthusiasm and pride of the revolution in January. 

She warns me before she hits the “stapler” as I call it, which chomps down on a bit of meat in my breast. Her voice rises loud and sharp: “ONE TWO THREE” before the “stapler” crunches. I giggle inside. She sounds hilarious shouting like this. Still, it proves she is willing to sound silly to do the right thing by the patient. Someone in med school must have told her to raise her voice to warn the patient; that her voice was too soft.

After two hours and fourteen bites of meat from all three tumours, we use hi-ho, happy, cheery voices to end this intimate experience.

I stride out to the waiting area where my sister, Elizabeth awaits me. She has already popped her head in earlier and told me she was there, which I completely appreciate.

I motion to her to follow me quickly. Her footfalls match mine. I appreciate that she is rushing. 

I push open the door to a small bathroom I used earlier and pull her inside. I throw my arms around her and sob loudly into her tiny shoulder. She breaks down and does the same. We are hugging and sobbing. I finally feel safe enough to tell the truth.

“I am sooooo scaaaaared! I am so scared.” We rock and weep together.

My big sister, Sasa, Liza, Liz, is here. I am alright. And I don’t have to be positive.

First is the Ultrasound

Monday, May 2nd, 2011.

I put an hour’s worth of coins in the Ruskin Street meter. I intend to return to the car after the ultrasound.

The ultrasound tech, Marijana, with her Yugoslavian charm, is professional and cheery, but still the room is heavy with our silent alarm.

The plum-sized tumour appears apple-sized in the small screen. I study the main tumor and two small satellite tumours while she measures them. They are black like inkblots. I comment that one of them appears to be in my armpit.

“Is that a tumour in my lymph nodes?” I ask. She confirms.

She fetches the beautiful radiologist, Dr. Seely, whose radiant, made-up face hovers above me within a minute of reading my ultrasound. She is telling me I must have a mammogram immediately. 

Before that Dr. Seely wants to rule out the highly desirable alternative that I’d deluded myself into believing for my right breast: the harmless, round, liquid-filled tumour. 

“Well you saw the rough edges,” I say. 

I'd forced my husband, the night before, to read to me the descriptions of various types of breast lumps from the computer next to the bed where he had been reading about stocks and bonds. 

We have always had the tradition of his reading aloud to me, whatever book he is reading in order to get to sleep. I only ask him to do this when I am feeling insecure or nervous. When Kitty and Basil, my cats who died late last year, were alive, we had the tradition of his telling me stories aloud in bed, which he made up as he went along.

My eldest sister, Elizabeth, thirteen years older than me, used to sing to me before I slept, as a kid. I loved that Dave could make up stories so easily, and tell me these in bed in the dark. They always involved our dogs heroically rescuing our cats in some enchanted forest. I loved these stories. Now I wanted him to tell me about things somewhat scarier.

I listened to him reading the descriptions and decided mine was the round, liquid-filled, non-cancerous type of lump. You just pierce it and the liquid drains. No need for surgery. After all, you could feel the round sack in my breast, its edges smooth and firm.

The lovely radiologist wants to do a procedure in order to have it recorded that it was done. It will rule out the idea of the liquid tumour with smooth edges.

She performs a Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) in which a very small needle is inserted into the breast and individual cells or fluid is removed. She freezes the skin first. No biggie.

She now wants a mammogram. Stat. This time I do not fight the dreaded mammo. This one knows what she is doing. 

“The mammo won’t smash the tumors accidentally, will it?” I ask. “Oh no, believe me, they do it very gently here, after knowing the tumours are in there.”

I am led to the waiting area and in two minutes the mammogram tech appears with a student  by her side. We walk the ten feet to the mammogram room.

She asks if the student might feel my breast. I am still in shock so I am amenable. They read the results and hover together in whispering, pointing collusion over in the corner. 

The beautiful radiologist is fetched again and I am asked to again wait in the waiting area. I pass the three of them now, hunched and whispering, and out pops the radiologist. She pulls me a seat further away from the other waiting women. 

“There is calcification in the tumours so this is quite worrisome,” she says. 

I feel a specialness, I am sort of proud to have given them some kind of interesting work today. It must be so boring to look at pictures of breasts without cancer. I am strangely unworried.


The beautiful radiologist pulls me into the lab room and hands me a pen and a paper.

“We have a pilot program here at the Breast Health Centre,” she is saying. “It is called Rapid Assessment Program, or RAP, and you will be the twelfth woman to join the program. We will be assigning you your own nurse who will coordinate your appointments with you.” I sign without reading.

Next thing I am led to is a small, cheerful, corner conference room where lovely Antonella, my RAP nurse is explaining that normally an appointment for an MRI can take weeks to materialize, but in my case it will be “very soon.” She has already booked me a biopsy for tomorrow morning at 8:30. My MRI will be the day after.

I’m a bit dazed, but less for the fact I obviously have metastacized cancer, having seen the lymph node tumour myself on the ultrasound screen, than the fact I am enjoying American style, personalized medical care, like Suzanne Somers got when she had breast cancer. Is this the same city in which having one’s own family doctor is a rare and special situation to be in?

I leave the clinic and walk to my car. A ticket is being placed on my windshield. 

“Excuse me!” I run to the meter man. “I was told I was just having an ultrasound so I only put in an hour’s worth of coins, you see, but it turns out that I have cancer so they kept me for two more procedures!” 

There. It is out of my mouth. Am I exaggerating? Am I lying to this meter man? I don’t know.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he says. “I can’t unwrite it. But you can look up online where to go and argue this, and they might let you off without paying it. Really sorry, ma’am.” He is so nice i don’t mind.

Amazingly, there is a two hour limit on this three-bucks-an-hour street parking. The beautiful houses that line this residential area normally don’t require paid street parking. It is obvious the paid parking area is for those being put through medical procedures, either at the Heart Institute or the Breast Cancer building. Strange that the city wants to profit from the hardships of people.

I drive home in a daze. Dave will be pissed at the ticket.

I stand on the back deck as he steps up from the driveway. We hug. I tell him what I think I have. The dogs try to join us in the hug.

“Think positive,” he says. “Let them finish their testing before you conclude anything.”


But I am positive. I am positive I have metastacized breast cancer.

The Walk-In Doctor and the Rough Edges

I am fighting with the walk-in doctor. He is casual with the fact I am refusing to have a mammogram. I won't have a mammogram because "if you put a plum between two boards and smash down, you spray the wet contents everywhere. I want an ultrasound instead."

His hand is on the doorknob to leave the examining room. "I will record that you refuse a mammogram and that will delay the whole process of getting an ultrasound," he chatters, in an infuriatingly casual patter. I go over to where he is.

"Your hand is on the doorknob. You are saying I am delaying matters, yet I do need the ultrasound as soon as possible," I say. "Can I at least have more than forty seconds of your time?"

I realize he has all the cards and I am beggared by comparison. I change my tune and act all conciliatory with him. He doesn't have any intention of explaining anything to me. He has measured the lump and it is nine centimeters in diameter. "It is the size of a plum," he has said.

After I have made him feel better, he promises to write "urgent" on the request for the ultrasound. He throws in the generous offer of the state of the art Breast Clinic at the Civic Hospital. He tells me that Merivale Medical Imaging (which I recall from two and a half years earlier) staff will be "extremely cross with you for refusing the mammogram and these women are extremely busy, and don't have time for things like a patient refusing the correct protocol." He says if I want, I can try to find the Breast Clinic on the internet, and see if they will kindly ultrasound me instead.

I walk out with His Worship's ultrasound requisition. I phone Merivale Medical Imaging, and indeed, they point blank refuse to ultrasound me without a mammogram first. I look up the Breast Health Clinic at the Civic and they ask me to fax the requisition.

I walk over to the convenience store from where I have previously faxed stuff. The lone Korean worker has no English. With sign language I point at the fax, and with sign language he tells me he has no idea how to work it. I offer to try. I fail. I sign to him that he can phone the boss for help. He does. They chatter in Korean back and forth, and voila, the fax goes through.

I phone the Clinic and they tell me yes the fax has arrived. Later that day they call with an appointment. It will be the next Monday. "That is soon!" I say, and am starting to get very nervous. It is an uncomfortable weekend.

I have already decided mine is indeed the round, liquid filled cyst kind of tumour. I do not have breast cancer.

Well it turns out I am wrong.

I am lying on the table while the radiology technician and I watch the screen. The ultrasound is clear. There is a gigantic tumour and two satellite tumours. She is measuring a tumour in my armpit. "Are those the lymph nodes?" I ask. "Yes," she replies.

Bummer. The edges are jagged. Rough edges after all.

Finding the Breast Cancer

The day before my father dies, I find a lump. 

Well, not a lump, exactly. More like a giant, death-filled, grapefruit.

I have been on the Dr. Bernstein diet for less than a week and have lost almost ten pounds already. For the first time in years, I stand in my athletic top and sweats and examine the profile of my belly, to see if my "omentum," as Dr. Oz taught us to call it, has reduced itself. Omentum is belly fat. I examine the contour of my omentum.


What I see in the mirror, beside my flattish left breast, is a nicely rounded right breast, like that of a woman half my fifty years of age. (The age my mother was when she had breast cancer and a mastectomy. She went on to live another thirty-five years with a deep scar instead of a breast. "Thanks be to God, they caught it early," she used to say, "they didn't have to cut into my armpit, where the lymph nodes are." She saw other women having a terrible time moving their arms when the lymph nodes had been operated on.)


As I look at the nicely rounded right breast I see the left breast is really quite flat. I start at the collar of my gym top and push my finger tips down the right breast to see what is making it so full. My finger tips find the top of a cyst of some sort, like an implant. Spongey material like a liquid cyst begins half way down my breast. 

I am not afraid. I have heard of these pseudo implants. They are called cysts and they are non carcinogenic and inoperable. You leave them in and they eventually disappear.


The next day my father is in the General Hospital. I find this out because my brother phones me and asks me to go visit him. He says "touch and go" were the words the doctor used, and "the next 24 hours are crucial" so I do not think he is anywhere near dying, but that because he is elderly and frail, he would be subject to extreme concern and care.


I have to wait till my husband returns to the house with the sedan. He will need the van to transport the dogs when he returns to our house with the downtown dogs in the sedan. He will add them to the van with our three dogs, and Jaida. Then I will take the sedan to the hospital.


I arrive at the hospital fifteen minutes after my father has died. You know he has died by the way the nurses look alarmed when you tell them who you are. One nurse will not let me go see him until the other nurse gets off the phone, and finally she asks if she can take me into a small room to talk to me. 

A tear appears in my eye, blurring her face, as she tells me he has passed on only fifteen minutes ago.


She allows me my privacy alone with him, where he lies behind a curtained off barrier in the emergency ward. 

I am stunned by how cold his flesh feels. I huddle over him, trying to warm up his skin. I stay there praying over him, and talking to him, as if I can revive him with words and touch. 

I phone my sister, Adrienne, in South Carolina, where she lives, and break the bad news. She is crying and heartbroken. I try to phone my sisters in White Rock, British Columbia, but the calls fail. I can't get hold of my brother.


Eventually my brother and his older son arrive. The hospital had informed him before I got there. Thank God Barry is there as he knows what to do now, and he says the prayer for the repose of the soul while Brendan and I pray with him. He covers Dad's face with the sheet. I have earlier closed Dad's eyes.


The funeral is not to be for another week. It is Easter Monday when we go to the funeral. Adrienne has been staying with me at the house all week. We are all so very sad. 

The wake is on Easter Sunday, the funeral Monday, the cremation Tuesday.  

It pours rain for the internment ceremony and the canopy installed above us by the funeral home for the graveyard ceremony catches pools of it at the outer edges. Once in a while the pools just let go and fall on our backs.

My second eldest sister, Rosemary, cannot come at all as her husband, Bill, is in a touch and go health crisis involving cardio myopathy and heart fibrillations. He has had nine of them and is awaiting an ablation to his heart. He could go at anytime into another one, the doctor said. He cannot be left alone, and cannot travel. Neither can Rose.


Elizabeth, my eldest sister, is here from White Rock, and I haven't seen her in several years. She is a size 8 now, and although we haven't spoken in ages, falling out over some stupid thing or other, it is like she has never been away. We have grown up in Ottawa, and in general, it seems, we have grown up.


I decide that since Adrienne and Elizabeth will be flying back to where they live soon after the funeral, that I will host a luncheon after the cremation ceremony today, Tuesday.

It has been over a week since my dad died. The breast with the cyst in it is always on my mind, but I have firmly decided it is only a cyst, having read somewhere that cancer has rough edges and this cyst is most definitely round and liquid filled, if my fingers can be believed.


At the luncheon at my house I take my sisters' hands, both Adrienne and Elizabeth, and then Barry's, too, and I run their fingertips down my right breast, where the round ridge of the cyst begins, halfway down. They all say "get to a doctor asap."


They make me promise, as they leave in the rain, to go that afternoon. I say yes, but then am too tired after cleaning up the dishes, so I vow to go tomorrow.

The next day dawns with more rain. So many pockets of rain would fall after that.

Medical Mistake That May Cost Me My Life

November, 2008

I do not have a family doctor. Cannot find one. Have been through all the lists given by the community centre, on How To Find A Family Doctor in Ottawa. Common knowledge that it is almost impossible to find a family doctor in Ottawa.  It is time for a mammogram.

I finally decide to start going to Appletree Clinics. When I go to their website they say you can request a family doctor there. I sign up with one. I never end up seeing him, though. I book my mammogram and they have me doing it at Merivale Medical Imaging, a place so jam packed it is to women's health care as McDonald's is to fine dining.

Not long after that a letter comes in the mail. My mammogram has unusual results so they want me to do another one. I go through a lot of anxt and put it off. My sister, Rosemary, is visiting me. She makes me go. I repeat the mammogram and wait. Rosemary is as worried on my behalf as I am. She goes with me for the results to the Appletree Clinic. We huddle in the wee room, both of us nervous and holding hands.

The doctor I have never before met enters, reads the results. We breathe a sigh of relief. There is nothing wrong at all with my right breast. We are good. We leave. He tells me to get another mammogram the following autumn.

The following autumn, 2009, comes and goes without my getting another mammogram. After all, I had that follow up mammogram within the past year. They are painful and yucky enough to avoid anyway.

Looking back now, in May of 2011, I realize the initial mammogram was correct. It was the follow-up mammogram that was wrong.

My breast cancer is at least two and half years old and will have spread to the lymph nodes by the time I find it, two and a half years later.