Finding My Purpose through My Wife’s Breast Cancer

In the spring of 2000 Susan, my wife then of 33 years (now of 48), was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It all started with her annual check-up and her internist saying she felt something “funny” in Susan’s right breast.  She suggested Susan see a breast surgeon. While I was surprised, I wasn’t alarmed.  It was going to be Susan’s fourth breast biopsy.  Unlike the three previous ones, this one was done as an out-patient procedure in one of the then relatively new surgical centers now found in shopping centers everywhere.  No frozen section this time, just wait to hear what the surgeon found. He literally skipped into the recovery room to tell us that “it was just scar tissue from the old biopsy site.”  While we still needed to get a lab report, there was no tumor and we shouldn’t worry because it was just old scar tissue, he was “sure of it.”   The call came three days later that the surgeon wanted to meet with Susan and me as soon as possible. Like all of those “moments” in our lives that are unforgettable (where were you when President Kennedy was shot, where you on 9-11, etc.)  I remember the moment of that visit like it was yesterday.  “Stage 3,” he said, “because the size of the tissue with cancer, because there were no margins and because cancer was in both the ducts and the surrounding tissue.” As he was sketching out his explanation on an 8 ½ by 11 lined piece of paper, I knew immediately what it meant. I knew in the deepest pa...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs