Hope

September 27, 2008

The hardest part after hearing the initial diagnosis was telling my children what we were dealing with. At this time, I thought I would most likely die within the year. My daughters were 10 and 13 at the time and they were my life. Nothing was more precious to me. I loved being their mom– it was the one thing I had always felt I had been born to do. And now, this cancer was threatening to take all this away. Although the medical information I was receiving was overwhelming, I knew I had to get past that and find my way out of the hopelessness. I needed to learn more.

I decided to go for another opinion. I couldn’t help but think that a mistake had been made and maybe, just maybe, someone would see that I was going to be OK. The next doctor was not much more encouraging. He made comments to me such as “I can see you are going to be one of those patients”. He told me my options were going to be chemo or chemo with a clinical trial because I was stage IV and he “understood my disappointment”. MY DISAPPOINTMENT?? He did, however, take it to the tumor board, where all the doctors review the new cases and it was through this meeting that I met my surgeon, Dr. Mathew Ninan. Dr. Ninan (who now practices in Memphis) met with me the same day and told me he thought maybe the scans had been mis-read and was at this time not going to believe the extent of cancer burden I had been labeled with. He discarded the initial two-page scan reports describing the extent of metastases throughout my body. With that aside, however, he said he was concerned with the large tumor in the left lung and was equally worried about the right lung. He wanted to do a surgery on the right lung to check for cancerous tumors there. I was so relieved. I thought for sure I had found my angel and he would be able to sort all of this out for me.

At the end of that week, I had the first of what would eventually be 5 lung surgeries. The plan was to open the right lung up, take a sample and if it were negative then he would proceed to the mediastinum and check the lymph nodes there. If all were negative, then we would go ahead and plan a surgery to remove the left lower lung. If positive, then I would be back at stage IV and chemo would be my best option. As I woke up from surgery, I moved my hand to the top of the sternum to check for the incision that would confirm no cancer in the right lung. There wasn’t any incision. My heart sank. This meant there was cancer in the right lung and there wasn’t any need to go further. My cancer was bilateral. I couldn’t open my eyes from surgery yet I could feel the hot tears streaming down my face.

Dr. Ninan arrived shortly afterward, explaining what I already knew. The cancer was stage IV and inoperable. He was quiet and subdued. We thanked him for his efforts and he left quickly. Later, as my best friend, Annette came into the room a new fear came over me. It was the overwhelming grief in her eyes. I knew then that the news she and David had been told was ominous. We spent the rest of that day talking, crying, laughing and silent. We talked about how I wanted her in my girls lives, how we would fight for as long as we could and how every day would be precious. We prepared our minds to accept what would surely come to pass. I think back now and know that was my lowest day; my day I was willing to give up and accept my death sentence. Then something miraculous happened.

That evening, Dr. Ninan called back and said he had been thinking about my case. If I still wanted him to, he would go ahead with the surgery. He said “I don’t know that it will change your prognosis, but I don’t know that it won’t either.” That was all it took to re-ignite my hope. That one phone call. I kept thinking that IF he didn’t think I had a CHANCE, then he wouldn’t have offered to do the surgery. He believed I could fight this cancer. Now, I could believe it, too.

I had my hope back.