My Pink Peak - Part 3

The waiting game.

Thursday I went about my day, we went to Liberty Park in Salt Lake and enjoyed the day. Surprisingly it went by pretty quickly. Then came Friday.

Friday, July 8th, the day we would find out where we were placed for clinical rotations.

Friday, July 8th, the day we would find out the biopsy results.

10:00am rolled around and nothing, so I called the imagine center to ask if pathology had come back.

I spoke with a really nice receptionist and she said while they hadn't heard yet, they would call the hospital to try and expedite the process and said that the report would be sent to both them and my primary care office.

Oh, good.. so then I called my primary care office to leave a messaging requesting the information.

In my family we reference "ordering the pizza". This refers back to when my brothers were in high school and when mom and day would say, "someone needs to call the pizza place and order the pizza" they would get all squirrelly, run away, or refuse. I on the other hand, would grab the phone and say, "I'll do it." Since then, it has referred to me basically taking charge in various situations and just going and going, 'ordering the pizza' as it were.

So, I was ready to order the pizza.

After leaving the message with my family doctor, Ryan and I talked about what we were going to do about clinical placement. We anticipated hearing our placement in late afternoon, and right as we were able to call and explain the situation we got the email...

Georgia! We got Georgia! Our first place!

We should have been excited, elated, happy, on cloud 9. We had anticipated that email for over a year, known the date for roughly eight months, and I had been waiting patiently for over four months after submitting our preferences.

It was supposed to be a day of relief, celebration, and studying (for Ryan).

Needless to say, it was quite anticlimactic.

Welp, I guess we won't be calling to ask their advice and see what they say.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

Luckily for me, my sister friend, Heidi, came over that afternoon. She had had no idea. I told her and we spent the afternoon together.

At 4:00pm I had had enough waiting and called the imaging center back. They said they had called the hospital twice and that last they had heard that the pathology was just waiting on a physician's signature. Okay, I can deal with that, but it was a Friday afternoon.

The office was going to close at 6:00pm, and when I didn't hear back by 5:45, I called one last time.

Yes! They had received it, but they had sent it over at 4:30 to my doctor and to the radiologist (oh great) and that I should be expecting a call.

Finally, minutes after 6:04pm, Lisa called.

Mind you, she doesn't work Fridays or Mondays and was at a family reunion in the mountains. She asked how I was doing and what I knew at that point. I explained everything that I knew and basically that no one had been telling me anything. She felt really bad about that and then she told me...

"I don't know how you knew, but you did," she said.

She was in the mountains and her reception was cutting in and out and I could hear the urgency in her voice when the phone was cutting in and out as I said, "Lisa? Are you there?"

After a little prayer that the service would just even out it did.

She said, "it's cancer and like you thought, it's aggressive." She was so nice and sweet and really amazing, even in the awful jaws of breaking such bad news.

I'm 29. Healthy.

Not just healthy, but like best-shape-of-my-life healthy.

I could tell she was in a little bit of shock that this was really happening. I was too. I had known.

But no one really expects to hear, "You have breast cancer."

She told me that it was grade three and stage three. Much, much more aggressive than I had anticipated, but it was okay.

She said we needed to move quickly. We would call surgeons first thing Monday morning. We talked about surgery and that big M word. She said it was going to be likely.

I cried. Not for my figure, but for my baby.

My little tiny, NICU baby, who in actuality is a bouncing baby boy. I wouldn't be able to nurse him and have those special moments any more.

Lisa said she would text me the pathology report (like I said, I'm not the average patient), definitely not the norm. She said she was there for me and I knew she was.

I walked back in the house and up to where Ryan was studying. I told him and he held me as we both cried. But as I got myself back together I told him,

"I'm going to kick cancer's butt." 

(Although let's be real, in that moment I didn't say butt, and for those of you don't who know me, I don't swear.)