Here We Go Again

For over a month I've had a small, scaly, red patch on my left breast not too far from my lumpectomy scar.  I kept an eye on it and would put lotion on it after my showers, hoping it would go away.  Yesterday morning I noticed it hasn't gone away, but grown.  I showed Eric and told him rashes could be a symptom of breast cancer, and he told me I should call my doctor. 

I called my oncologist's nurse, Barb, and left her a voicemail describing the rash and asking if it was something to be concerned about.  It was a crazy day at work, so I didn't get a chance to answer when she called.  But once I had a spare moment, I noticed I had two voicemails.  One was from Barb saying that Dr. U wanted me to get it biopsied in my breast surgeon, Dr. G's office.  The next voicemail was from Dr. G's nurse trying to schedule the biopsy for the next morning. 



Really poor picture of the rash.

I called back and took the 9:30 for today.  This is when I started to get a little worried because I thought initially I would be told to hold on until 2 weeks later when I had a routine follow up scheduled with Dr. U.  The fact that he wanted it biopsied without even having seen it, and so soon, was kind of a red flag.

So then of course I go to Google.  Eric told me to stop searching, but when you feel powerless and out of control, you seek out information to gain some sort of control.  I googled, "rash on breast."  A slew of hits come up for IBC: Inflammatory Breast Cancer.  It's a rare and very aggressive form of breast cancer that impacts the lymphatic system.  The stats scared the hell out of me.  Automatically staged at a 3 or 4, and 1 in 3 cases when diagnosed it's already distant somewhere else in the body, and life expectancy is an average of 57 months for stage 3 and 24 months for stage 4.

I found a friend at work, cried and prayed with her, then found my boss and cried and prayed with her.  Then I went home for the last 2 hours of my day because I just couldn't focus.  As I was driving home I thought to myself, "I don't know if I have the fight left in me to do this again."  The fact that the thought entered my mind scared me.  I don't like thinking I can't fight it.  I stopped at McDonalds and got myself a McFlurry and then hunkered down on the couch and watched I Love Lucy.  I picked up Julia, and of course that made me feel better to see and be with her. 

When Julia was in bed, Eric and I talked.  He hates talking about the possibility of me having cancer because he believes if he doesn't talk about it, it's not real.  Which then creates conflict for us because for me, I can't not think about it, and it's helpful for me to talk it through.  So what we both need is conflicting for the other.  We did talk about it though, and I told him how scared I was about it being IBC and this could be it.  We thought outloud about what we would do and how sad it would be for Julia to not have me around growing up.  He said, "She misses you when you're gone for an hour!  I don't know what I'll do if she says she misses you and there's nothing I can do."

I didn't sleep well, and I cried a lot, to the point where my pillow was quite wet.  But I went today, and Dr. G was great.  She said she agreed we needed to biopsy it, and by looking she couldn't tell if it was a recurrence or just a dermatitis thing.  I asked her if she thought it could be IBC and she said, "No, I see a lot of that and that's not what this looks like.  If anything it's a local recurrence and then me and Dr. U will talk about what to do."  That alone was a relief to me.  IBC felt like a death sentence.  A local recurrence I can do all day long. 

So we did the biopsy and she used a scalpel to take a chunk of the skin, put a dissolvable stitch in there, and that's it.  I'll find out Monday or Tuesday.  But I feel like I can rest easy this weekend knowing it's most likely not IBC and it could just be a local recurrence.  I've done every treatment there is, so now nothing is foreign to me. 

Biopsy #4 - check!

I pray that it's nothing.  I pray that I can have a carefree summer unlike last year.  I want to fly kites with Julia, blow bubbles, garden, swim, go to a Cubs game, and just enjoy life.  But what I realized yesterday, is even if it's nothing, my cancer will always follow me.  Always.  It's always a factor, even if it's nothing and we have to take every precaution.  So here's to the weekend, prayer, and hoping I just need to buy some cortisol cream.