29 Aug Emily Zarecki – The silver lining of breast cancer
Emily Zarecki – The silver lining of breast cancer
I had a feeling I would get cancer someday. I realize that’s a strange way to start a story, but it seemed inevitable, especially given my family history. On my mom’s side of the family, my grandmother and my cousin (who is 10 years younger than me) had breast cancer. My mom’s aunt and my mom had ovarian cancer. Although it felt like cancer was surrounding me, I was still shocked when I got THAT call.
In October 2020, I had my annual mammogram. Like the year before, I wasn’t surprised to hear I needed to have follow up testing. Dense tissue was the problem. Test results showed a mass that I was told most likely was benign. I was worried but breathed a sigh of relief. I’d need a biopsy to confirm it was benign. The day after the ultrasound-guided biopsy, I got a notification the test result was in the patient portal. I have no medical training to understand a test result, but I immediately went to read it! I scrolled through the report not fully understanding what I was reading. From what I gathered, I thought everything was ok.
On Oct. 28, 2020, I was expecting to receive a call from my doctor’s office to say everything was fine and I’d have another mammogram next year. When the phone rang, I answered it, fully expecting to hear the familiar voice of an office assistant I had talked to many times. I was surprised when the voice on the other end of the call was my nurse practitioner. I didn’t process the first few things she said to me because it wasn’t supposed to be her voice I was hearing. I heard the phrase, “invasive ductal carcinoma.” I interrupted her and said, “Wait, are you saying I have cancer?” That’s exactly what she was saying … I had breast cancer.
I ran to tell my husband what I’d just heard. We were in shock. Everything was supposed to be ok. We pulled up the report of the biopsy again, and there it was in bold type … invasive ductal carcinoma. I didn’t process those three words when I read it the first time. I just scrolled right by.
My head was spinning. Days later, my husband and I were at a cancer center to meet with an oncologist. I learned there are different types of breast cancer. Although we caught it early at stage 1, the cancer was HER2+, an aggressive form of breast cancer. Treatment would involve three phases and last for one year. The first phase – chemotherapy. The second phase – surgery. The final phase – IV antibody and anti-cancer treatments.
I was scared. My heart sunk when I learned the treatment plan included chemo. Just two years before this, I watched my mom go through chemo. She lost her hair and lost so much weight. She was weak. I swear she aged a decade in a matter of months.
I didn’t know what I was in for, but I did know having a positive attitude was going to be critical. I needed more than a positive attitude … I needed a mantra. My brother and sister-in-law gave me a bracelet that was inscribed with a familiar quote. “Fate whispered to the warrior, ‘You can’t handle the storm.’ The warrior whispered back, ‘I am the storm.’” That was it! My mantra was going to be, “I am the storm!” I could do this.
Before my first chemo treatment, a friend of my brother’s reached out to me. She had gone through treatment for breast cancer a few years prior. She shared something that she had done and recommended that I do the same. It sounded a little strange and not something I’d typically do, but I followed her advice.
She said that as the nurses start the medication flowing into my body to look at the bag on the IV pole and say, “I am inviting you into my body to kill the cancer and to spare harm to the rest of my body.” Even saying these words in my head, I still felt silly. But, I did it at every round of chemo.
Chemo was brutal. I can’t say the chemo spared other parts of my body or went easy on me, but it did its job. At the end of the six rounds of chemo, an MRI confirmed the cancer was gone. Even though I had what was called a complete pathologic response to the chemo, I needed to have surgery and continue with the third phase of treatment if I wanted to achieve the 95% cure rate.
On May 13, 2021, a week after my bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction, I got a call from my surgeon that there was no evidence of disease in the tissue or lymph nodes that had been removed.
Unexpected blessings
When you first hear the word, “cancer,” it doesn’t evoke the most positive images. However, through my cancer journey, I experienced some amazing blessings.
- Relationships with family and friends deepened.
- Gained a new perspective on what’s really important in life.
- Small gestures, whether a text, phone call or a card, meant so much.
- People reached out, regardless of how long it had been since I saw them or talked to them.
Cancer gave me a new appreciation for so many things.
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