By Diane M. Simard
Pink, pink, pink. That nauseating, breast cancer shade of pink was everywhere when I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma four days before Valentine’s Day in 2015.
I have a mostly hate relationship with pink. In my early childhood, whenever I felt sick, I would freeze in place, get dizzy, then hurl on the spot. My instinctive mother learned to recognize the droopy look on my face before I unleashed. She always told me to run to the bathroom whenever I felt sick, but my brain didn’t work that fast. Once, when I was nearly four, I was in our kitchen, standing near the refrigerator before bedtime. My body unexpectedly felt like it was melting into my stomach and I was about to faint. Then everything turned sideways as Mom stormed across the kitchen, picked me up, and held me horizontally under one arm while making a beeline for the bathroom. But the damage was already done. I left a vomit trail of destruction down the hallway.
Mom got the floor cleaned up and helped me find a fresh set of pajamas, then sat me down and gave me a lecture. It was one of the few times I remembered her raising her voice when she spoke to me.
“You have to run to the bathroom whenever you feel sick. Why can’t you learn that?”
“I can’t, Mommy,” I said between sniffles. “I can’t move cuz it happens so fast.”
Getting sick or getting the lecture were not the worst part. The worst part was the punishment of having to swallow a spoonful of gut-rot dark pink Pepto-Bismol every time I got sick in an inappropriate location.
Reflecting back on those memories as I faced my diagnosis in 2015: Pepto-Bismol was pink, pink was the official color of breast cancer, and I hated both. The shock of my diagnosis was raw. My largest of three breast tumors was only 2 cm, and I’d had no symptoms. In fact, no one on my medical teams could feel any tumors, yet the cancer had already spread to the axillary lymph nodes in my left armpit. Thankfully, two of the largest tumors were close enough together that they indicated something was possibly clustering, which had appeared on my annual mammogram in late January and I was called back for additional testing.
After my diagnosis, when I was at work, I was able to keep my mind off of breast cancer, except when my coworkers wandered into my office to have what I called “cancer talk.” At night and on the weekends at home, though, my mind raced as I continued to contemplate the possibility of a terminal cancer prognosis. Oddly, I was filled with determination instead of panic. I was obsessed with becoming “good” at cancer for whatever time I had left, but I didn’t know how to become good at cancer because I didn’t know whether to plan to live or plan to die. So, I followed my standard business approach and assumed the worst.
I ordered self-help books on how to eat right. I fretted about the side effects of chemotherapy, searching for an explanation of what treatment was going to feel like. I had a paranoid obsession of gaining weight, so I drastically adjusted my diet. I speed-read through five books in three days, searching for the latest breakthroughs in cancer nutrition and self-care.
One of the books focused on the body’s natural abilities to heal itself, using those abilities to complement traditional medical cancer treatments. For example, the author suggested that regular physical activity tended to activate the body’s immune system versus living a sedentary lifestyle. Check. I had exercised every day of my adult life, yet I still had cancer. This book also suggested that cancer patients should choose foods with a low glycemic index (such as agave nectar) instead of foods with a high glycemic index (like white or brown sugar). Check. I was already doing that, too.
I appreciated the reinforcement that I was already doing some things right, but I needed new, innovative strategies. Something, anything, to help me survive breast cancer.
I implemented lists of self-help tips and bought anticancer foods and supplements that I read would keep me healthy during treatment and prevent cancer from returning, assuming I survived. I sprinkled turmeric on my food because it was touted as a potential anticancer “wonder seasoning,” but everything tasted like it was coated with mustard-flavored dirt. I drank green tea, overdosed on broccoli, and choked down kale salads. I pushed myself to do everything right according to the nutrition books, and I grasped onto a false hope that if I suddenly changed my eating patterns, my statistical chances for getting rid of cancer would improve. This type of diligence had always worked in my professional life, so I had no reason to think it wouldn’t work with cancer.
I dutifully read through the pamphlets included in what I called the “Welcome to Breast Cancer” packet provided by the imaging center where my breast MRI was performed. The pamphlets offered encouragement and pictures of pink ribbons and smiling bald women with carefully applied makeup and adorably fashionable headscarves. They were superficial and not helpful, because they attempted to present breast cancer in a gentle, peaceful manner.
I didn’t need the sugarcoated version of breast cancer; I needed honesty. I needed to understand what treatment was going to feel like.
All the philosophizing and reflection of why I had gotten breast cancer was useless and exhausting. Finally, I wisely began to shift my focus away from the why and toward the how of healing and recovery. Not to mention the preparation required for the unimaginable battle if the disease had indeed already spread beyond my lymph nodes.
I had been in training for almost 50 years to prepare for cancer, which I knew was going to be my ultimate challenge. I had learned how to achieve what I wanted, but also how to cope when life threw an unexpected twist, such as when I didn’t win, got rejected, or something imploded that I cared about but over which I had no control. I could control some things about my breast cancer experience, like attitude, diet, self-care, and schedules, but I couldn’t control whether any of those activities would actually heal my body.
After a month of testing and second opinion consults, I was staged as 3C, which my medical team agreed was the best approach, given all my anomalies. I was prescribed sixteen rounds of chemo, followed by surgery, then thirty-three rounds of radiation.
I slogged through active treatment over the next ten months. The chemo nausea was so severe I had three acupuncture treatments, which unleashed a crystal in my inner ear and landed me in the emergency room to deal with a whopper bout of vertigo. I couldn’t wear heels for six months and I didn’t switch driving lanes for another year for fear of launching another vertigo attack.
Toward the end of chemo, I became concerned about my mental health and how I seemed to be slipping into depression due to my heightened state of anxiety. When I asked my medical oncologist for a referral to a counselor who works specifically with cancer patients, she said she knew they existed, but didn’t know of any. Plus, if I did find someone they likely wouldn’t take health insurance. I was alarmed and incensed at the lack of mental health support for cancer care in 2015, and decided I would advocate for more educational resources. As a result, I seed-funded and founded a specialty at the University of Denver in Colorado called the Center for Oncology Psychology Excellence (COPE), which is now part of their behavioral health offering for clinical psychology students. COPE provided coursework and clinical education opportunities to over two hundred graduate level students.
In addition, I wrote a memoir-style book about my cancer experience, The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer, that won several awards, including being named one of the best breast cancer books of all time by Book Authority. COPE and The Unlikely Gift were what I called my life raft out of my breast cancer funk, and they opened the door to the second phase of my life when I turned fifty during treatment.
Today, I advocate for more attention and educational resources for the psychological impact of cancer through writing, speaking, and podcasting. My third book, Unlikely Gifts Unwrapped: Unfiltered Reflections on Life After Breast Cancer, is the sequel to The Unlikely Gift and will be released March 18.
In hindsight, cancer was a miserably unpleasant voyage, but it was also a test. It was an assessment of the strength of my character and the value I place on living. It provided a symbolic transformation for me from enabler to leader, from victim to advocate. It also helped me unwrap an unlikely gift and helped me discover the self-acceptance I had searched for a lifetime to find.
Read More:
On the Podcast: Breast Cancer Conversations
11 Years of Survivorship - A Breast Cancer Survivor’s Story
Share your story, poetry, or art:
SurvivingBreastCancer.org Resources & Support:
