Booby Trap

By Allison Bially

First came boobs, then came marriage, then came baby in the baby carriage. Then came cancer. Who knew that having cancer would be so reminiscent of being pregnant?

Booby Trap provides this wacky perspective in order to help patients laugh through their dark days and to give caregivers the tools to try to understand. The heightened sense of smell, the nausea, the food restrictions, and the need for a new wardrobe are just some of the strange ways that these two situations are the same. This book chronicles the author’s first-hand knowledge of both cancer and parenthood and leans on the common experiences of pregnancy and motherhood to illustrate what undergoing cancer treatment is really like.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allison Bially
• Release date: Sep 17, 2013

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BoobyTrapCover.jpg

BOOBY TRAP

A SURVIVOR’S PERSPECTIVE

Breast cancer is just like pregnancy, only different.

ALLISON BIALLY

Edited by Erica Rimlinger

© 2013 BY ALLISON BIALLY

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author and publisher.

Cover design by Adam Murdoch.

ALLISON BIALLY

AB Publishing

30 Nobscot Road #3

Sudbury, MA 01776

facebook.com/AllisonBiallyAuthor

ISBN: 978-0-9886288-0-9

Dedicated to my daughters, Danielle and Jordan, whose mere presence every day helps keep me focused and continues to remind me what is important. And to their daddy, whom I love very much.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One: Basics

Chapter Two: Love

Chapter Three: Coping

Chapter Four: Medical

Chapter Five: Ultimately

Chapter Six: Resources

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

WHO KNEW?

Here I was, having trouble sleeping again. I was nauseous, my weight was fluctuating, I wasn’t allowed to eat sushi, I was on leave from work, and I found I needed go buy a new wardrobe. And my boobs! Oh my goodness, my boobs. They were so different.

I’d been down this road before. Or had I? It would seem that I was pregnant. Was I? And if so, why? Weren’t my two existing daughters enough?

Yes, they were. And no, I wasn’t.

Rather, I was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Treatment that spanned ten months and included a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction, lymph node removal, chemotherapy, and radiation (to say nothing of the five-year prescription drug regimen that followed).

But as I sat there one day, on medical leave, talking to a friend on maternity leave, I marveled at what she was going through. You see, I was going through the exact same thing.

Almost.

As I reflected on these similarities, the list started to grow and grow. (Yes, much like a child, or cancer.) The more similarities I found, the more I laughed at the irony of it all. It was laughter that kept me going. It was my own private joke, and I needed to share it. And as I shared it I found two things: other people laughed, too, which made me laugh even more, and other people started to understand; suddenly, they could almost empathize with what I was going through. And so I was less alone.

So join me as I dive into this big joke—the one in which something horrible can be just like something beautiful. Only different.

HOW DARE I?

But first, some disclaimers. Starting with the questions you may be asking yourself: Am I crazy, or just insensitive? Have I no humanity or sense of common decency? How else is it possible for me to take a life-threatening illness and compare it to the miracle of life? How dare I diminish either of these experiences in this way?

Of course, expecting new life and defending a current one are two completely separate entities. And I honor and respect them both. But I honor and respect them by making fun of them. It is just what I do. For that is how I laugh. And as I mentioned earlier, laughter helped me through a dark time. My intent is to share my experiences the way I lived them—and to laugh at the unlaughable. In my way of thinking, if I can’t find humor in something, it is not worth doing. Fighting cancer is definitely worth doing. Having children—well, most of the time I think that is worth doing, but I do have my days …

Enough disclaiming. Now for some context. Before we go off on this crazy path, it is important to note that I am sharing my experiences. These may not be your experiences at all, or they may only vaguely resemble what you went or are going through. That is okay. Because the very first similarity between cancer and pregnancy is also the basis for this book:

Every experience is unique

Cancer is one name for an infinite number of diseases, each one unique with its own symptoms and realities. Pregnancy is one name for an infinite number of conditions, each one unique with its own symptoms and realities.

I doubt I will ever meet two cancer patients who have had the same experience, or even the same disease. You see, cancer is a generic term applied to everyone with fast, uncontrolled cell growth. The cell growth could be in your pinky, your left nostril, or your belly button. It doesn’t matter, it is still cancer. This must be why the medical community further narrows down the definition to the type of cancer. For example, my cancer was in my breast. At the same time, a friend had cancer in his sinus. Did we have the same disease? Uh, I don’t know.

Now, let’s look at breast cancer specifically. This is yet another generic term for fast, uncontrolled cell growth—this time in the breast. But within the breast the particular cells that are growing can be in different places. (Lobular is in the lobes, and ductal is in the milk duct.) Along with that, many different types of mutant cells, down to the chromosome level, can cause the growth. The growth can be aggressive or nonaggressive. It can respond to some treatments but not to others. It can be early-stage or late-stage¹ or somewhere in between. The variations are endless. And the responses to each variation are also endless.

Side effects of chemotherapy, radiation, and even surgery are not guaranteed, and some folks will have some, some none, some all. You won’t know it until you try it (which is not to say you should try it. Better to never know, in my opinion). And so, cancer is a ubiquitous term that is misleading.

This book is about my breast cancer. Your cancer may be similar. Or you may look at what I write and find it completely unfamiliar. But since I only know what I have experienced, and the few tidbits others have told me, I am writing about me. You know what they say: write about something you know. So I am.

This book is also about my pregnancies. I had two. Each was very different from the other. Just like cancer, no two pregnancies are alike. How often, when I was pregnant, did someone come up to me and tell me what I would experience. Oh, you shouldn’t eat [fill in the blank]. Everyone knows [fill in the blank] will make you sick. Yet, [fill in the blank] never once did me wrong. With either kid. The givers of such advice weren’t wrong. For them, that was the absolute truth. But my pregnancy was not their pregnancy. As I mentioned earlier, even the same woman going through pregnancy multiple times does not have the same experience twice. I carried my first daughter in my hips and thighs—meaning I got quite heavy all over. Everyone thought she was a boy. My second daughter I carried only in the front. I was so proud that I didn’t look pregnant from the back. Everyone thought she was a boy. (Everyone knows you carry boys in the front, right?) So, like the cancer, I can only write about what I know, and what I know is based on my two experiences carrying and raising babies. It is worth noting that this book will dip into early infant-dom; it is not limited to the physical act of being pregnant but, rather, covers what is involved in getting your fetus to an age that is less labor intensive—for me, that was around nine months old.

So while this book is about my cancer and my pregnancies, it is my hope that you’ll find some of the items quite familiar. Perhaps some others will be brand-new and even enlightening. And while this is meant to be a lighthearted look at the subject of cancer, it is still cancer we are talking about—it simply can’t all be humorous. But I’ll try.

Before I do, though, I need to give you just a few more disclaimers and a bit more context. Then, I promise, I will be done with that, and we can get on to the serious business of laughing.

Throughout the book I sprinkle excerpts from my blog entries (but not in chronological order). The blog was a way for me to communicate what was going on to my many, many caring and worried family and friends. Further, throughout the book I make statements regarding medical treatments and conditions. I come off, at times, sounding scientific and like I know what I am talking about. But it is important to note that I am not a doctor. Nor do I play one on TV. And when it comes to disease, medicine, or the human body, listen to the doctors in your lives, not me.

I hope my attempt to provide a new, somewhat skewed perspective of this awful disease will help you or a loved one slog through, to find a way to laugh about all the baggage that comes along with the cures. So, laugh away, because laughing never hurt anyone. (Except perhaps after surgery, but that is just a risk you’ll have to take!)

MY STORY

This is how it began. I’m sure you’ll recognize the roller coaster ride of diagnosis from your own journey: the early optimism, the setbacks, more optimism (maybe this time more forced), more setbacks, more reasons to hope, and so on.

· · · · ·

May 20, 2011

From my blog

On Wednesday, May 18, I was diagnosed with Stage 0 Breast Cancer. The good news is this was caught early, and thus it seems it is very treatable. Now I’ll back up and tell you how I got here, and what comes next.

Several months ago I felt a lump in my breast. I spent some time making excuses for the lump (my muscles were tight from my workout; it was because I was having my period; that wasn’t what a lump was supposed to feel like, etc.), until finally I told myself to buck up and call the doctor. The doctor felt the lump and, thinking it might be a cyst, sent me for a mammogram and ultrasound. The ultrasound did not show anything, but the mammogram showed a string of calcifications. Since there could be many causes for this, I was then sent for a biopsy. I honestly believe (and have had this confirmed by both doctors and breast cancer survivors) that the biopsy was the worst part. Yuck. The string, to my untrained eye, looked more like multiple (three to six?) small clusters of calcifications in a string/necklace pattern—like a decoration for my breast. Two of those clusters were biopsied. The results show that both clusters are noninvasive, which is often referred to as pre-cancer. The technical term, should you want to look it up (or pester the brilliant doctors you may know or may be yourself), is ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS)—meaning, essentially, that I have caught this early and the cells are confined to the ducts they are in and have not branched out into my body.

The solution for this is surgery. (For what it is worth, I explained to my daughters that I am having an operation to get rid of some bad cells in my breast to make sure I don’t get sick. Danielle asked me if the bad stuff was milk!) Given the large area the string covers, I will need to have a mastectomy. Given my (now) higher risk to the second breast in future years, the odds are quite good that I will opt to have a double mastectomy. Women who have had breast cancer in one breast increase the risk that they will develop it in the other breast 1 percent every year—and those who remove only one breast have a lower survival rate after twelve years than those who remove both. At least, according to my doctor. Some research suggests that this is not actually the case, while other research suggests that the research disclaiming this research is incorrect. Phew. It is difficult to keep track. I guess we all have to do whatever makes us most comfortable, as there are no hard and fast answers here. I will also have reconstructive surgery at the same time, which means that when I move to Southern California I can blend in with everyone else because I’ll have fake boobs! (You can ogle my amazing boobs when, at seventy, they don’t sag!)

However, there are two issues that need to be resolved. First of all, apparently it is unusual for DCIS to be detected by feeling lumps; as the cells haven’t spread out of the duct, they don’t present as lumps. Secondly, not all of the calcifications were biopsied, so we don’t know for sure that they are in situ. So, the rest of the cells will be biopsied after surgery (along with some sample lymph nodes, just to be safe). If it turns out that there are invasive cells, then I will need to undergo further treatment. I will also be undergoing tests over the next week to be double and triple sure that the cancer is contained to the area already identified. For now, my working assumption is that this is all noninvasive, and after the surgery I will be done with this obnoxious chapter of my life.

May 28, 2011

Post-surgery for bilateral mastectomy

with reconstruction

I was released from the hospital within about twenty-four hours of waking up, with painkillers that get pumped into my chest through tubes and a drainage system that gets rid of any, well, drainage, from my armpits. I look like I still belong in a hospital with all the tubes attached to me.

I am not allowed to lift my arms above my shoulders, since I have temporary implants stretching out my muscles, but I don’t think I could anyway. I have exercises to do that would be simple under normal circumstances but that I find quite difficult. I need to retrain my arms.

I am thrilled that there is no cancer in the lymph nodes. In a few days we should know the biopsy results for the rest of the calcifications that didn’t get checked originally. Feeling pretty positive that I’ll get the all-clear then.

June 2, 2011

Got the test results back—they all look good!

Ron and I have an appointment with the surgical oncologist tomorrow, and will find out what happens from here.

Being superstitious, I am not willing to call myself Cancer Free until I hear it from the doctor’s mouth tomorrow.

But HOORAY!

June 3,