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BY STEPHANIE LAW
Staff writer 07/22/2008

Editor's note: This story originally was published on July 13, 2008.

A year ago Saturday, on July 12, 2007, I had a bilateral mastectomy after a diagnosis of breast cancer. Last summer, I shared my journey in a series of columns.

The columns ended as I recovered from surgery and had discussed all further options with my surgeon and then oncologist. At the time, I had decided to follow the advice of my doctors and forgo chemotherapy, except in a limited fashion. I would take one pill, Arimidex, for the next five years.

This pill would find my type of cancer, if any cells remained after surgery, and nip it in the bud. These were my numbers: Surgery reduced my chance of a recurrence of cancer to 13 percent; Arimidex halved those odds. Now I faced only a 7 percent chance of the cancer coming back.
Further chemotherapy, the oncologist said, would add only another 2 percent insurance, so wasn’t really needed in my case.

Those were pretty good odds. With just Arimidex, I had a 93 percent chance of being cancer-free. As I recovered from surgery and began to get back my strength, I started thinking in a different way.

If I didn't undergo chemo, and the cancer came back, I would always wonder if chemo would have prevented it.

If I could increase my odds against the cancer recurring — even just 2 percent — I figured I should do it.

I explained my reasoning to the oncologist at my three-month checkup and she said, “Sounds to me you’re leaning toward taking the path of least regret.”

That was it in a nutshell. I wanted to do everything I could, and leave the rest to fate.
I started chemo the next week. My regimen was four treatments at the infusion center, each three weeks apart. The day after treatment, I would get an injection to convince my bone marrow to pump out more red blood cells than normal. My oncologist said I would lose my hair two weeks after the first treatment.

Any nausea or other side effects could be treated with additional medicine.

First treatment, no problem. I went in, spent four hours hooked up to intravenous drips and went home. After getting my shot the next day, I went to work, feeling like my old self. Piece of cake, I can handle this.

Three days later, I had a bout of pain deep in my bones that felt like a charley horse. The nurse said it was the bone marrow straining to pump out red blood cells. The pain was bad, but could be deflected by taking an over-the-counter allergy medicine.

My hair began falling out two weeks and one day later. I first noticed it in the shower. When I ran my hand through my hair, it came away covered, like I had turned into a werewolf.

It didn’t all fall out right away, but all through that day and the next, I could pull out clumps of hair by just tugging gently. And, like a kid with a loose tooth, I just had to do it. By the end of the second day, my head looked like a checkerboard.

It was time to buy a heavy-duty razor and shave my head. Bald is beautiful, so they say. I’m not convinced, but I didn’t have much choice. I opted for hats instead of wigs and, with the help of friends, soon had enough hats and doo-rags to match my outfits.

I was ready and eager for my second treatment. Since I had no bad side effects, not even nausea, I figured I was just going to take this in stride. Wrong. I had an anaphylactic reaction to the chemicals, and was given drugs to counteract that.

The next day, I felt like a truck had run over me. I missed the next two days of work because I had no energy.

For several days, everything I ate tasted like metal. I forced myself to eat but didn’t enjoy it much.

The next two treatments got progressively worse. I missed a week of work after the third treatment and two weeks after the last treatment. No energy means having to plan trips to the bathroom, weighing how many steps, how long it will take to walk them at quarter-speed, and how badly I had to go.

Surgery was easy; chemotherapy was hard. I understand now why some cancer patients forgo chemotherapy to maintain some quality of life.
I’m still certain I made the correct decision. I have used every weapon at my disposal to fight cancer. Now, it’s in the hands of a power beyond mine.

My hair began growing back about a month after my last treatment. At first, all that appeared was white fuzz and I was afraid I would be white-haired the rest of my life.

To my relief, darker hair began to grow in, still sort of fuzzy, but then it began to feel silky. Even though it’s still really short, I at least have hair all over my head again.

Last month, exactly 11 months after my mastectomy, I hit a milestone — I felt the wind blow my hair for the first time.

Stephanie Law is a copy editor at the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. She lives in Rockland and can be reached at doverfox51@verizon.net

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