Just A Salad

Last week I finished the first salad I've had in months. Of all things this is the last test you'd think of as a measurement for metastatic breast cancer. But it's just one of the many ways this disease can impact the lives and health of the women and men it strikes every year.  As with primary breast cancer, you can take two different women with exactly the same breast cancer and how it manifests itself will vary.
      The salad itself was simple. Measly even, compared with the vegetable-laden salad bombs I used to toss together. It was all spinach, with hard-boiled egg, some chunks of chicken, mushrooms and a smattering of some excellent French feta (don't ask me who did the labeling on that one) DH picked up at the market. DH had made the salad himself, in fact, after his internist not so gently suggested he make a concerted effort to work more "green stuff" into his diet. He was out cycling so I figured if things did not go well he would be spared knowing that his creation, like so much other food, was quickly spit out by my digestive system.
       That's been the problem. After my initial mets diagnosis and accelerating through the summer and fall I continued to lose weight from nausea and vomiting. Blergh. It took my energy and my strength. Suddenly I empathized with pregnant women suffering from morning sickness. I took ginger in every conceivable form, threw that up, carried saltines in my purse, and ate teeny little meals. My nutritionist at MD Anderson became my inner cheerleader. Yes! I could eat every two hours! I would eat nutritionally-dense foods! I would add peanut butter to everything! I could do this! But when DH returned from the grocery with a carton of Ensure I suddenly felt like we were in the middle of a senior citizen sitcom with a lousy script.
      During this time I learned another rite of passage of the metastatic underworld: familiarity with emergency rooms. Emergencies in metastatic illness can happen quickly. Ultimately I did not wrestle with this fact but learned what I needed to do. Dehydration from vomiting can send you down a bad path. When the nurse scolded me for waiting too long before coming in I was about to turn pissy on her until I realized that what she was telling me was that witnessing suffering is hard. It didn't have to get this bad, she was telling me. The next time it didn't.

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Beginning in June my regular oncologist was taken up by meetings, conferences and vacation.  DS (darling sister) and I joked about this upset by calling the substituting oncologist Dr. Today.  Unlike my regular onc, Dr. Today did not come into the exam room prepared. She usually appeared sleepy.  Or bored. Or both. I was convinced my cancer bored the hell out of her. Since I was on the vomiting end it was not all that boring to me. Not surprisingly, when my regular oncologist returned we talked for less five minutes before we had a GI consult arranged. 

      That brings me back around to my salad. As you know, metastatic lobular cancer was found in the lining of my stomach at the end of October. My oncologist told me that the aromatase inhibitor I was on, the formerly $4-now-$22 letrozole, would work at eliminating the cancer but it would work more slowly than chemotherapy.
       He was right.  It has been worth the wait.
       It was a year ago today that I was lying in the ultrasound suite at MD Anderson waiting for the results of a lymph node biopsy from my neck. You know the rest of that story, but the one I just told you is new.  There will be many more. As of now all systems are go in a gentler, slower way. Yesterday I just returned from five days in San Diego as part of AACR's Scientist-Survivor Program. I managed to practice self-care AND fully participate in the program.  No, I didn't get to the 7 am "Meet the Expert" sessions I wanted to attend, I missed some lectures, and I put up my feet instead of putting on heels for a late evening reception. When the mental fatigue and fog set in I remembered to keep my eye on the prize: learning, educating and advocated for women with breast cancer.
       And believe me, did I ever enjoy my salad.  Dear God, few things have ever tasted so good.

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