Today I went to see the plastic surgeon who is working on my breast reconstruction. As I sat in the waiting room, I looked at each of the other people who were waiting in the room with me. Most of them were women, some had a friend, child, spouse sitting with them.
A nurse would come to the door and call out a name. Patients who had finished with their appointments walked through the waiting room on their way out the door. I saw a few patients who had drains, a few patients stopped at the front desk to make their next appointment. A few stopped to purchase the small, expensive tube of scar cream that I purchased several weeks ago.
It occurred to me that I had been all of these women during all the stages of my diagnosis, treatment and after care. I am almost at the end of breast reconstruction – the tissue spreader that was placed in my chest during mastectomy in February is filled and I’m ready for a final surgery that will replace the tissue spreader with a permanent boob.
For several minutes a woman was standing in front of me. Her two teenaged daughters were waiting across the room. I could see that the left side of her chest was flat just like mine had been right after mastectomy. She was walking down the same path as I had (I was several steps ahead of her). I thought about the terror I felt in the beginning, right at the time I heard the words, You have breast cancer. I thought about the insurmountable and continuous stress I suffered as I walked into my diagnosis, the MRI, the ultrasounds, the numerous doctor visits that lead to a mastectomy. And I thought about coming home from surgery with drainage tubes hanging out my chest, my left hand and arm useless after sentinel node extraction. Going home to bed where I spent the next couple of weeks propped up with too many pillows as I drifted into sleep, waiting for pathology to tell me what came next.
I was overcome with love, compassion, empathy for the woman who stood before me, I felt connected to all of the women I’d seen in the waiting room. We were all sisters, connected by our diagnoses, walking similar paths – at least in the beginning. I’m lucky. My breast cancer was removed by mastectomy, no cancer in my lymph nodes means no radiation, no chemotherapy. I have climbed to the top of my mountain and am now descending down to a normal, if things go well, life. I know many women’s cancer will take them down paths I hope to never walk, but all these women are my sisters. I have lived their fear, shared their pain, suffered through their stress.
There are other countless unknown women who have walked the path before me, shared the path alongside me, and who will walk the path behind me. The future before me has been reset to a future with many unknowns along the way, but it is comforting to know that I really am not alone in all of this.