Questions

     If I gauge what to document here by how much the incident impacted me emotionally I have today’s topic.
     By all accounts, I’m in the waiting zone -- on the approach to surgery. As soon as I feel 100 percent from my final bout of chemo (give me two more days) I’ll ramp up my workouts so I’ll be in good shape for surgery. Apparently, surgery is equivalent to an intense workout.
     The purpose of the pre-op appointment is to make the surgery plan. The first thing Dr. Garreau asked me was if I wanted anything done with my right side. She started to speak and I started to speak and then she waited for me to go first.
     “Well, no,” I said. There’s no cancer on my right side. Why would I want anything done?
     She nodded. “Okay,” she said, “because nothing you do to your right side will cure the cancer on your left.”

     I started tuning into the nuances of language. Thought we were going to be laughing about this in a year. Thought she had promised, “I will cure you.” My mind rewound to the negative news couched in positive terms by the breast center nurse who called me at Disneyland. “If you have to have anything, this is good to have,” she said. Then the follow-up call from a doctor from my OBGYN office on my return home. When I told him I’d already heard the news, that it’s a low aggressive cancer, the best kind to have, he stopped me. “Well, cancer is cancer,” he said. Add to that, the weeks of conversations with the doctors including all of the unknowns about my case. And now the discussion of lymph node involvement, how the imaging doesn’t reflect any involvement, but we won’t know for certain until after surgery. We won’t know for sure. 
     What do I want done with my right side? The question hung over my head. She didn’t say “statistically speaking you have a higher incidence of … or medically speaking, chances of recurrence are greater on the right when you have it on the left.” She simply posed the question.
    The more I thought of it, the more uncomfortable I became.
    The next day, I had my last chemo and met with my oncologist, Dr. Vuky. She said “Did you make a decision with Dr. Garreau regarding surgery. Will it be a bilateral mastectomy?” 
    “No, just the left side,” I answered.
     Dr. Vuky nodded. And days later, here I am, still wondering what was that about? Why are they asking me if I’m having both breasts removed when this all started with a lump so miniscule you could hardly feel it?
     I brought it up with the nurse coordinator, Ellie, who checked in with me during chemo.
     “Many women make that decision for cosmetic purposes.”  She went on to reiterate that if a double mastectomy was something the doctors recommended, they’d have specified that. “Sometimes in very young women, they recommend both,” she said. I asked her lots of clarifying questions and none of the answers were that satisfying. 
     I’m focused on the left. That’s the problem area. That’s what my gut tells me to do.  If they’re going to ask me the question, I’ll give them my answer.