From Decaf to Quadruple Espresso

And thoughts on being #blessed

Such a perfect Saturday mood, from Julie in Chicago

In January 2017, my phone buzzed while I was in a meeting in Chicago. It was a call from Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, asking me to come in for an appointment to get the results of a biopsy. I confirmed the appointment, feeling fairly certain that being asked to get the news in person meant that the news wasn’t good. 

Those biopsy results indicated a papillary carcinoma, a rare breast cancer (about 1% of newly diagnosed breast cancers) but one that seems generally responsive to treatment. Mine appeared to be in situ, which was even better: I had a surgery to remove the tumor and went home the same day, and we all expected that to be pretty much the end of the story since these particular carcinomas are so rarely aggressive. When I described it to friends, I called it a “decaf cancer”—annoying, not something you’d choose to experience, but nothing to get that worked up about. 

As it turned out, that 2017 cancer experience was more involved that what we first expected. More carcinoma cells showed up in the margin after the first surgery, so I had a second more extensive surgery followed by radiotherapy. (You can read more about that experience here.) But everything was still in situ, a Stage Zero; a larger mug of decaf than we first thought, perhaps, but still barely cancer. 

Now here we are with “multiple bony metastases.” How did we get from an annoying little stage zero, decaf cancer to this vat of quadruple espresso cancer? We might never know for sure, but one theory is that the original papillary carcinoma was actually invasive, and cells might have escaped even before the original surgery. (If reading about journal articles is your jam, here’s a description of some recent research.) I do not have a local or regional recurrence, so there’s no way my annual screening checks would have caught this. There are no clear—and certainly no satisfying—answers to questions about my quadruple espresso cancer: How? When? Why? 

We continue to wait and hope that we do get more clear answers about how we might be able to respond now. We pray that the pathology team will be able to test the sample, and report the results quickly, and that the results will point toward treatment options. I might have a mug of quadruple espresso now, but let’s pray that some sweetness is added and that I’m able to sip it very, very slowly over a long, long time.  

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My Worst Facebook Post

November 2, 2020  · 
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If you’ve ever been to the doctor and had a scary diagnosis, you know how great it feels to get an all-clear. Grateful to be officially three years cancer-free!

For many months after I finished cancer treatment in 2017, a few people would ask me how things were going, and I would always reply: “Fine! As far as I know!” Because how would I know if things weren’t fine? I had felt great before we found that papillary carcinoma. I felt great again. But feeling great isn’t the same thing as knowing whether a tumor is currently forming somewhere, about to wreak havoc. 

My last breast cancer screening test was last November. I got the all-clear, which I shared with friends on Facebook. But in fact, I was not cancer-free in November. I had trouble walking into the hospital because of what I thought was an irritated tendon, but which was probably from the tumor in my hip—but no mammogram is going to catch that. The terrible irony is that when I declared on social media that I was cancer-free, the truth was the exact opposite. 

And then there’s the matter of that “blessed” necklace. I had seen it and liked it and Dave gave it to me for my birthday. I don’t subscribe to the kind of #blessed perspective that implies either “too blessed to be stressed!” or “if I say I’m blessed then good things will happen.” Nor do I think that #blessed is best used to describe a favorable or desired outcome—but that was the impression I created in my Facebook post by pairing that photo with the celebratory news about my scan. 

According to Jesus in Matthew 5, being blessed has nothing to do with whether my cancer scans come back clear. (This is not to say that these two outcomes are equivalent! Healing is a gift; cancer is not.) The blessed are those who recognize they need God: those who mourn, who hunger for righteousness and justice, who are merciful, who are peacemakers, who are pure in heart. 

So I will keep wearing my “blessed” necklace. I was not blessed then because I was cancer-free, and I am not blessed now because I have cancer in my bones. I am blessed because I need God’s comfort and mercy and presence. I am blessed because I am a child of God. I am blessed because I can have confidence in Jesus—even when there is so much I do not know. How am I doing? I am blessed.

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