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| Goya - Sleeping Giant |
I keep hearing how looking back and assigning blame doesn't help much, and I'm sure that's true. I mean, even if I had knowingly and willfully doused myself in carcinogens in my younger days, once the cancer's there it's there and there are no points granted for good behavior.
But I also know full well that part of the reason I can put guilt out of my head is almost certainly because I was blessed with the luxury of not happening to be able to point to any of the avoidable risk factors for breast cancer in my past. I don't think women who have should blame themselves, either--hindsight is always 20/20--but I know it eases my mind to not be able to identify anything that I could say, "Why didn't I just ___?" about and believe it would have made a difference.
I don't have a family history, I ate well, exercised, kept a good weight most of the time (there was about a year when I bumped up into the "overweight" category but I'm not going to pin all of this on that one stupid year), all the things you're supposed to do. I don't have either of the BRCA mutations. I went through all my stage III treatments, took vitamin D, refilled my tamoxifen prescription before I was out and took it as directed. Every single day.
I even had a "clean" mammogram 6 months before my diagnosis (of course, we weren't talking about density in 2012, and I have no idea if it would have mattered or not. But probably not because in the world of breast cancer, 6 months isn't that long, even at grade 3). And still here I am.
And unfortunately for the world, my blessing of not feeling like I have to blame myself is, for the rest of the world, kind of a curse. What I mean is, if you could just point to something and say, "that's what happened, that why she got cancer, that's why it's back," then you might be able to say, "that's why it won't happen to me." And, unfortunately for everyone else in the world, that's not the case.
All kinds of women at all ages from all kinds of locations and all walks of life end up here.
And I'm sorry about that. I really am. I wish I could tell everyone in the world that they don't have to worry (not that I actually want to blame myself, either, of course). And the truth is I can't.
The same thing works the other way, too. There are women who live for decades with metastatic breast cancer. Lots of them. And there are also women who don't. At my Dana Farber appointment, the oncologist there ran through some things that bode well for my future survival (ER+, bone only, not so agressive that it was everywhere at diagnosis) and some that were possible signs of worry (tamoxifen resistance, less than 2 years to mets), but the truth is, despite good signs and bad signs (and more good signs than bad signs), there is no way to know for sure what will happen until it happens. And so I keep listening to people who know as much as anyone knows and keep doing the best I can. But, despite fervently wishing for it, there's no guarantee (well, ok, let's be real, I really only want a guarantee if it's positive, anyway).
I try not to worry too much about the things I can't control. If nothing else, I don't want to spend my time as a freaked out mess any more than can help. And I try really hard not to worry about things I can't control. That goes for reasons why this happened to me and and reasons why I may or may not have a good run at stage IV.
Sometimes I'm good at not worrying and sometimes I'm pretty bad at it. Clearly, at least for me, sometimes it's easier said than done (as you can tell by just reading back a few posts on this blog).
I don't know what woke the "sleeping giant" that is cancer in my own body and I don't know for sure what it will take to slay it or at least lull it back to sleep.
And so, while I certainly hope the best modern medicine has to offer does it the trick, both for me and the thousands of other women looking at this kind of diagnosis, I'm trying really hard to live in the moment and leave the rest to God, whatever "the rest" turns out to be.
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