THIS IS WHERE THINGS start to get tricky. The day finally came when Gina got to go to the doctor. We kind of knew what lay in store at the doctor’s. Dr. Jackson was going to need to perform a core needle biopsy on the lump, which is a typical procedure at that stage. A core needle biopsy involves removing small samples of breast tissue using a hollow “core” needle. As much of a big step as it is, it’s a fairly routine procedure.
I remember rationalizing with myself, thinking that if you can do the procedure at the doctor’s office, how serious could it be? I mean, if it was that serious wouldn’t they make her go to the hospital? Since the procedure was a routine one, Gina took herself to the appointment and I went to work. It was on my mind, but my way of coping was to ignore it. Distract myself with work.
She called me in the early afternoon with the news; the tumor was three to four centimeters in size.
You’ll hear me say this often as we continue, but at this point, my naivety was probably my biggest ally at the time. I knew it wasn’t good, but still I took it in stride as merely more family news, not much different than if my son twisted his ankle in a baseball game or if my daughter got a D on a test.
Gina told me the news but immediately afterwards said to go ahead and do what I had planned, so I did just that. She was a mentally tough woman. I talked myself into an okay sort of state, which in hindsight is probably what kept me from going into a panic. I finished out the day like I normally do. I wrapped up at work, went to play some basketball at the YMCA and then got home around 7pm for dinner.
For Gina, life was about checklists. She made checklists for everything. To-Do lists, grocery lists—you name it and she had a checklist for it. This was no different. When she got the news, she made a checklist of what we needed to do: who we needed to tell what, what doctors we needed to see, and in what order we would need to set up affairs at home. Now that she was armed with this news, it was just on to the next step.
My mom and I talk every day so she was the first person that I told. Her first reaction was panic. Obviously I was concerned too, but I didn’t really understand why my mother was flipping out the way she was. Again, maybe it was my being naïve but I didn’t quite grasp the picture. Not until we conferenced in my sister Robyn. Robyn is a critical care nurse but she had worked in oncology at Northwestern Community Hospital so she sees and lives in it every day. When I told her, she went right into professional mode. In the blink of an eye she went from being my sister to an oncology nurse peppering me with questions and blurting out terms I didn’t know.
I remember feeling like my head was going to explode. You know, that feeling you get when you’re flooded with information and terminology that you have no idea how to explain? That’s when I felt the gravity of the situation for the first time, and it’s a moment that I can honestly say I’ll never forget. Don’t get me wrong, I was still just as optimistic as I was before Robyn came on the line, but when she started breaking things down into laymen terms for me, the picture became a little clearer.
My wife might have breast cancer.
All of a sudden, I felt like we were part of everything I had ever seen with pink ribbons. Susan G. Komen, breast cancer walks…all of it. We could be a part of that now.
My wife might have breast cancer.
I kept repeating it over and over in my mind and no matter how many times I said it, it never seemed to lose its gravity. It’s an odd realization when you find out you’re a part of that. Cancer. The word even sounds ugly. And now we’re a part of it.
I went to bed that night with a feeling I never felt before and to tell you the truth, I never really felt it again until after she had passed. It was an odd hazy process of trying to realize and grasp something that I never really considered possible.