Guest Blogger: Surviving Breast Cancer

Surviving Breast Cancer

I have so much respect for Moms.  We go through so much and most of the time still manage to smile about it.  I think sharing our stories, not to compare hardships, but to find community, bond and let everyone know that we are not alone in our struggles, is so important.  Far too often we try and pretend things are so perfect when we all know, nobody is perfect.  I salute Jessica Pickholz, Mom of two, breast cancer survivor and Mompreneur.  She runs Kidville in my hometown, Ridgewood, NJ, and her story is one I wanted to share. “Surviving Breast cancer,” Jessica told me, “Was easier than running my own business and trying to be all I can to my two girls at the same time.”  Those are some powerful words.  Read her story here and find out about the wonderful classes she is offering in Bergen Community for mom, baby, toddler, child and kids with special needs.

Jessica with her daughter, Samantha.

“A champion shows who he is by what he does when he’s tested. When a person gets up and says ‘I can still do it’, he’s a champion.” – Evander Holyfield

When I was a teenager, old enough to understand what my father did for a living (he was a very well known child psychoanalyst) I would ask sometimes what diagnosis certain patients had.  Dad always said the same thing, “I don’t like pigeonholing a person by slapping a diagnosis on them.  I use diagnosis for the insurance companies.  Otherwise, I don’t like to label people.  Labels are for soup cans, not for kids.”  Much like my father, I don’t love pigeonholing people, nor being pigeonholed.  A person is not just her genetics or her temperament or the sum of her experiences, but rather a combination of all of those things.  That said; some labels are okay.  For example, I have no issue whatsoever being labeled as a breast cancer survivor.  I wear that label like a badge of honor.  I’m a badass.  I am breastless but stronger for the experience.  I learned how little breasts mattered to me (or my husband).  I learned that a combination of Percocet and Valium could put you to sleep for the better part of an entire day.  I learned how strong my own mother was/is/had to have been, to survive a cancer that was likely four times larger than mine.  I learned that it was much more important for me to raise, enjoy and do right by the two daughters that I have than it was for me to have more children.  I learned that who one is isn’t and cannot be defined by their body parts alone.  Breasts or no breasts, I’ve still got my soul.

Believe it or not, breast cancer is not the only illness (or loss) that I have survived, and having it was not the closest I have been to death (those stories for another time). I’d like to imagine that after 14 surgeries, one bout of literal death-cheating sepsis, the loss of three pregnancies, five fetuses, my father, and one ovary; I’d have seen it all. But I hadn’t. Nothing made hearing the words “you have cancer,” more palatable, less surreal or easier to handle.

My mother had breast cancer when she (and I) was very young. She, too, is a survivor. Because of her experience, when I was an adult, I was tested for the BRCA gene, and I am positive. BRCA1+. This means, in a nutshell, that I am 79% more likely over my lifetime, to the age of 79 (the average life expectancy for a woman) to develop breast cancer. That’s not 79% more likely every day, or every year, but 79% over my lifetime. So, in actuality, it is only about a percent or two higher year-over-year than the average non-BRCA woman (assuming I’ve done my math correctly).

However, due to my mother’s history and the BRCA gene, I was vigilant about getting mammograms. On my last mammogram, the radiologist found “non-suspicious micro-calcifications.” I was told not to worry, but to come back in for a more detailed look. I called my OB-GYN with a lump in my throat and enough trepidation for a small pod of dolphins. He told me to go straight to the breast surgeon and let her have a look at the original films. He recommended Dr. G at the NYU Cancer Center. Like a schoolgirl calling her crush to hang out, I kept dialing her office number and then hanging up the phone. How could I be calling a breast surgeon at a cancer center for myself? I think it took me four attempts before I scheduled the appointment, and it was three weeks before I took myself there – just long enough for me to get busy with life and lull myself into a very false sense of security. My first meeting with Dr. G. was a blur. I only really remember that she told me nothing on my films was “blowing [her] skirt up.” But (because there’s always a but when you don’t want there to be one) I should have the Cancer Center’s Radiology Department do an enhanced mammogram just to be sure. To that point in my life, certainty had never seemed so scary.

I went for the enhanced mammogram and the radiologist and I were chatting and laughing because I let myself forget (though I was half-naked wearing an open hospital gown) that it was, in reality, my breast that was under scrutiny. I really thought that non-suspicious micro-calcifications would be just that (and I’d done enough reading online to know that roughly 90% of the time these are nothing). After the enhanced mammogram, I was sent to sit in a little, internal waiting room and was told that if the radiologist thought it was warranted, I’d get a fine needle aspiration biopsy right then. And that’s exactly what happened. All of the chitchat and laughter of the previous hour were supplanted by the racing beats of my heart. The hallway seemed at once too long and too short. I had not told my mother about the enhanced mammogram because I didn’t want to worry her, and though I had told my husband, I skipped telling him about the biopsy possibility because I didn’t want to burden him with something that I couldn’t believe would actually happen. The biopsy isn’t pleasant, due to the awkward positioning on a rock-hard table that has a hole that they then pull your breast down and through (oh, and the needle arm that is shot into you at a high velocity). I vaguely recall a few thoughts throughout the procedure. One was, “I’m not Gumby and I wasn’t meant to be manipulated into this pose.” Another was, “Wow…I want my mom.” But the one that I repeated to myself over and over was, “I can do this.”  Biopsy complete, I was told the results would be ready in five days.

On the day the results were in, I had already had something good happen that morning, and so I just had the sneaking suspicion that the results of the biopsy would not be good. It just isn’t possible to have two really good things happen in one day (not in my days, anyway). You know, that darn Murphy’s Law. So, I put my guard up and listened, as the breast surgeon said, “Well, seems like you have a little problem. You have breast cancer.” I heard her, muffled as if my head was submerged in water. She waited for me to reply that I understood, which, of course, is a cognitive reaction, not an emotional one. I understood what she had said. I just didn’t want to believe her. Denial is the most predictable of human emotions. My “little” problem was a couple of centimeters, located on the upper, outer quadrant of the right breast. From the results of the biopsy, there appeared to be no spread, but one of my lymph nodes would have to be removed to make certain of that. My awesome surgeon told me my options were lumpectomy with radiation, or a bilateral simple mastectomy (simple, incidentally, is a total misnomer; there is nothing simple about this surgery). When I asked her what she would do if she were in my shoes, she said, “You have the breast cancer gene. Why do you want to live with that cloud over your head for the rest of your life? I’d go with the bilateral mastectomy and not have to worry about getting breast cancer ever again.”

I tried to keep myself together, to not let the weight of the breast cancer reality keep me from appreciating every day, every minute with my darling of a husband or the two absolute little loves that I am lucky enough to have as daughters. I scheduled my surgery for only three weeks from the day I was told I had cancer. I kept myself busy with work and organizing my family (a lot of arrangements had to be made to help in the care of my two girls, who were three and seven at the time.) My husband was incredibly supportive and I remember him saying to me one night, totally unprovoked, “I always thought you were beautiful, but when I married you, it wasn’t because of how you looked. It was because you’re my best friend. And that will not change, breasts or no breasts.” I admit I was probably more concerned with what he would think of my new look than what I would think. God love him – he looks at me now as if this is just the way my “girls” are supposed to be, whereas I still have trouble looking in the mirror sometimes.

I feared having surgery, what the outcome of that surgery would be and what it would look like. I just feared all of that less than I feared dying. So I went off to the plastic surgeon to discuss the kind of “breasts” I wanted with which to be reconstructed. What I asked for was, “18-years-old, firm and perky, immune to the effects of gravity and never needing a bra…” What I have is decidedly NOT that. At this point, years later, I don’t blame the plastic surgeon for not telling me that filling a gaping hole will not yield the same beautiful result as, say, getting an augmentation, or for skipping the part that it’s possible to be allergic to Alloderm (a collagen matrix that helps hold the Tissue Expanders in place) and that, in total, I would need five surgeries to have “breasts” with which I’d feel comfortable, if not happy (and I’m only done with four of those five surgeries). I think if surgeons stated all of the possibilities, all women would run screaming in the opposite direction, kind of like how you aren’t quite sure you should take a prescription when you hear the two minutes of disclaimers that are rattled off in a commercial. In truth, nothing any doctor said could have prepared me for running my hands up to my chest, post surgery in the recovery room and realizing that I had no breasts.

Some people ask how you get through something like this, and I guess the answer is a lot of support from family and friends and a really good dose of humor. In reality, there is no time when a doctor looks at you and declares you have cancer to be all “woe is me.” I had a husband I adored and two little girls to raise and I wasn’t letting some no-rent-paying tumor get in my way. I chose, instead, to get up and say “I can still do this.” I chose to beat it, to survive it, and now have the opportunity to wear one of my all-time favorite shirts that read “Yes, these are fake. The real ones tried to kill me.”

To find our more about Kidville in Ridgewood, NJ click here. For class schedules, click here.