Mary's Story: breast cancer

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Mary McNally: the Initial Shock

My name is Mary; I'm a professor at a University in Montana. I'm presently 45 years old. I've lived in Montana for 13 years, but I grew up in New England, and my family's scattered all over the country, and I don't have any immediate relatives in this area at all. I was diagnosed four years ago with breast cancer. I was 41 at the time, I was single, holding down a demanding, full-time job. I had been involved in a long-term relationship, but it was a long distance one at that point. So, in other words, I was alone and on my own when this came up. Obviously the diagnosis of cancer was totally unexpected. Isn't it always? I had found a lump doing a self exam, which hadn't shown up on a recent mammography. I went in, I pushed it, and had an ultrasound done, and it showed a suspicious growth, so a surgeon did a biopsy. I'd had one previous biopsy a couple of years earlier and it had been fine, so I was expecting the same outcome. So when the surgeon called me back about two days later, and he used the word "malignant", I just sort of went into shock. I was totally unprepared. And he was great, he was trying to set up an appointment to see me the next day, and I kept saying "Malignant!" and he would say, Well, yes, and we need to see you tomorrow, and I was like, "Malignant!" I couldn't get off it. But, and I just kept repeating it. And finally I said, "You mean I have cancer?" and he says, "Well, yeah." You know, that was a horrifying word to me.

Quick surgery

When I went in to see him the next day, I was still in shock, and I was still trying to understand and I kept telling him there's no history of this in my family, which is true. And he pointed out to me that now there was. I had thought I was too young, none of it made any sense, and it really didn't make any sense. But it was my new reality. I got the diagnosis on a Thursday and I had surgery the following Monday, I believe. In the meantime, I called family members and they responded by coming out here to be with me. That was an immense help and a relief because I felt pretty overwhelmed. Luckily it was May and the semester had just finished, and I wasn't teaching summer school then. So I wasn't immediately juggling work along with everything else. The surgery went pretty well, but the surgeon wasn't able to get good margins around the growth. I was clearly going to need radiation and possibly chemotherapy. I was busy trying to learn as much as I could about the disease, and my prognosis and treatment options.

A difficult decision

While I was recovering, I had made a trip back east to get a second opinion at a major medical center. The trip proved to be traumatic. The new surgeon wanted to re-operate, the pathologist looked at a new set of slides, and found that instead of having clear lymph nodes, there was evidence the cancer had spread. All in all, it seemed that all I could get was bad news. So, gearing up for more surgery, while I still had the drains in from the first round, I found another team from a different cancer center. This group didn't recommend more surgery, but instead advised against it. It seemed even the experts couldn't agree on what I should do. And this made it extremely hard for me to try and figure out how to proceed. It was a confusing and exhausting time. In the end, I left all the medical establishments behind, and I went to the Atlantic coast and spent two days at the beach, and then flew home to Montana.

Looking for answers and support

I eventually decided to do both radiation and chemo, and had what is referred to in the trade as a "sandwich treatment", meaning I had three months of chemotherapy, it was six weeks of daily radiation, and then three more months of chemo. I opted for a longer chemotherapy regime with the hope that I could continue to work throughout my treatments. I think I mentioned earlier that this diagnosis came at a time when I was living alone and working full time and totally removed geographically from family. And initially I was very concerned about how I was going to manage. Who would help me, when and if I got really sick from the chemotherapy? Who would know if I had a severe reaction? What if I got too tired to cook? Work? What about the mortgage? Who was I gonna talk to through the ups and downs? Who was I gonna laugh and cry with? And there were lots of other issues that came up, too, as I learned more about the implications of the treatment, for example, of going through early menopause. I had just turned 41, and it was overwhelming. And crazy. Finding out you have cancer is depressing and scary enough, but feeling like I was facing it alone made it tougher, still, emotionally. It turned out, of course, that I really wasn't facing it alone. From the beginning my family rallied around, and they continued to visit in shifts over the course of the following six to eight months. Even though they all live literally thousands of miles away.

A strange reaction

But what was equally remarkable to me was the reaction of other, non-family members, which ranged from the bizarre to the beautiful. An example of the former was a neighbor of mine, whose name was Vince. We had a joint garden in my back yard. He's an older man, and you know, we had this garden planted together. I was supposed to rototill it, the weekend I went in for surgery, or was preparing for surgery. So he was the first person I actually told about this, outside of my family, because he came over and I told him I wasn't going to be able to rototill, and I explained why. He stopped and he looked at me and he said, "Do you know how women get breast cancer? And I said, "no I don't", because I really don't. And he said, well, they "either bruise their breast or they let someone bite them". And I was horrified. I said, "No, Vince, I don't think that's it." He was very insistent. And the only thing I could think of to say to him was that that must be why men get prostate cancer." Which, of course, according to Vince, was not right, either. But, it was really weird to have that be the first reaction to telling someone about this.

Friends in Need

I also had an interesting, sort of sad reaction, from my former boyfriend. He was a medical doctor and we'd been friends and involved for over a decade, and I thought I could rely on him for some help through this, even though at this point it was a very long distance relationship. So I last spoke to him the night before I went in for surgery, and he never even called back to see how things had gone. I didn't hear from him again until well over six months later. And I was stunned by that. But once I sort of worked through it and you now, got over my sense of abandonment, I realized that I now knew who I could really count on. And I needed to appreciate and rely on those people.

I think I learned a lot about myself and others while dealing with this disease, and most of the lessons have been wonderful ones. I learned just how many friends I really have. People wanted to help and I learned how to ask for help when I needed it. I made sure to have someone accompany me to doctor visits and consultations so I would have some verification of what I was hearing, for example. I had company during my visits to the oncology clinic, friends would sit with me while I was having chemo administered and then take me home. I began spending the nights immediately after each treatment at a friend's home in case I had trouble or got very sick. An acquaintance, someone I hadn't known very well at all, regularly dropped off a cooler of homemade food, and I had weeklong visits from several friends back east who came out to stay with me and keep me company. And at the end of it, my light at the end of the tunnel, was a trip that was organized by four women friends of mine, the chemo was over, about a month later, we went to Belize for a week. And that was wonderful. It just kept me focused on something, that that was my light at the end of the tunnel. Basically, the support and love I received was tremendous and overwhelming in its own way, and it really helped shape my attitude.

Moving on with life

I began these treatments in July, and I returned to work and I was teaching full time beginning in September. I scheduled the chemo sessions for Thursday afternoon so I had the weekend to get back on my feet. I was able to schedule the daily radiation treatments for early morning, hospital or clinic was within a half mile. So I would generally walk to those radiation appointments and then walk back. And that sort of helped me normalize the treatments. It helped me put them within the context of my life instead of my new medical condition sort of overwhelming everything. I had good days and bad days and it got harder as the treatments progressed and I got weaker, but it worked out well in the long run. I told my students what was going on and in part so they would understand my situation, and in part so that they could learn, as I was learning, that a cancer diagnosis isn't a death sentence. And I had two teaching assistants help me that fall, and they went out of their way to make sure I was doing okay. And that, too, was a really enriching experience.

The miracle of love

Late in the fall semester, towards Christmas, in the midst of radiation and treatment, I met Monte. He came to my office looking for some technical assistance, and we worked on a project together. My situation wasn't immediately obvious to someone who hadn't known me. I hadn't lost all my hair, for example, just a lot of it. And I had had long hair, even down to my waist, all my life. My mother has had long hair all her life, and her mother had long hair, so it was sort of a tradition. Anyway, faced with chemo, I cut it very short to make the hair loss less traumatic. I couldn't face huge clumps of my long hair sort of coming out. So anyway, my hair was very thin but I wore a lot of hats. I thought I was looking sort of thin, too at that point. But we spent some time together and got to know each other, and I told Monte about the cancer. And how that uncertainty was part of my life, that if he was going to be a friend that he needed to be able to deal with that reality, too. And he did, and he does. We got married two years ago in May. It's been, a, it IS, a wonderful relationship.

Points to remember

I do have several thoughts I'd like to pass on. One is something a close relative said to me, immediately after learning I had cancer. He's a retired general practitioner in rural New England, and I called him early on, just for comfort. I think. He told me to remember that I hadn't caused my breast cancer. At the time I was startled by that remark. It hadn't occurred to me that I had caused it, at all. But as I read up on the literature, I came to understand what he meant. And it's a statement that I came to really treasure, and that I believe.

Another thing I had to learn was not to be overwhelmed by the medical jargon and all the processes. I was extremely happy with the medical care I received, but I had to learn to act like a consumer, to ask questions and persist until I understood the answer. There seemed to be a lot of medical disagreements in my case, and I learned quickly and somewhat painfully that there was not going to be one clear option for me, I was going to have to make the best decisions I could and deal with the consequences. And I have. Some of those decisions, for me, involved supplementing mainstream therapy with additional treatments, for example, working with a naturopath to make sure I was getting necessary vitamins to help me handle the chemotherapy. And I had been practicing yoga for several years before the diagnosis, but I found a lot of physical and mental strength in that practice. That's not for everyone, but yoga helped me learn how to remain calm and focused in difficult situations. And I believe that pretty well describes the reality of dealing with cancer.

Finally, my life has changed in many ways over the last four years, and nearly all of those changes have been for the better. Cancer frees you up to live fully in the present, which is sort of a gift. I think we all live with uncertainty, but having cancer has taught me to be much more aware of that. It means I don't take anything for granted. I love my life and am grateful for every day.