I'M STILL HERE!!

My title today refers to two things: your response to my poll and my health as a breast cancer survivor.

I was overwhelmed by your beautiful emails to me. I am so very pleased that so many are taking the time to read this blog and that so many of you feel it is enlightening and has enhanced your lives. So you have my very deep appreciation and as a result I am pleased to say "yes, I am indeed still here!"

This being breast cancer month I also felt I should address the fact that I am very much still here three years later. Breast cancer did change me, but it did not kill me, and this is why I believe it did not. This is for all of you gals out there whether you've gone through it or not.

When I got my pre-diagnosis in August of 2006 after I went for a mammogram on Broadway and 57th street in New York City, I remember using the prase "it doesn't faze me' to my kids when I called to tell them. In fact I had walked home enjoying the beautiful New York day, gotten my puppies, and trotted them off to Niko's, my steady lunch spot on Broadway and 76th
street.

What had happened during the mammogram was the following:

First off I could see the picture being viewed from where I was standing at the machine and I immediately saw an area lit up. Next the technicians left the room and when they returned they asked me to step into another examining room. First one of the technicians came back and did an ultra sound, then after she disappeared for a minute, a doctor came in and said how surpised he was at how much the spot he had seen in March had grown. (Had we decided to, we could have made a case of this in itself). I then told him that I supposed he was about to do a biopsy which indeed he said he was.

Now here's the really kooky part.
I was a devote of Guiding Light and had just gone through the whole breast cancer thing with 'Reva' who had of course pulled through after being close to death. I therefore had the biopsy doctor laughing as I told him exactly what I figured would happen to me. When he asked how in the world I knew so much, I told him about Reva's course of treatment on Guiding Light. The actual biopsy taken was painless. He simply shot into my breast like a quick stab and that was that. I then got dressed and left. They said I'd have the results as soon as they came back from the lab.

That week I had dinner with my friend Paula who had had a bout that had turned out to be nothing, but who liked the doctor from NYU Med very much. She gave me her name. I figured I would most likely need a breast cancer doctor sometime soon, so the next day I called to get an appointment there and they said that the doctor could do nothing unless she had the pathology in her hands. Up to this point I only looked at the whole thing as though I had something inside my breast that simply had to be removed and that would be the end of the story. I never never looked at it as though that something would cause my death.

Well I won't bother you with the details of how much it took to discover the lab at which my pathology was, and how only making friends on the phone with a secretary was my means of going over to this lab at Beth Israel hospital and picking it up and hand delivering it to NYU
Med.

Long story short, this first doctor messed up big time...I got a staph infection from the operating room where I had a lumpectomy and she left what they call the 'margins' unclean. Between the doctor and the infection I knew that the only place to go for treatment was Memorial Sloan Kettering. I truly had avoided this hospital as it was where my late husband Barry was treated. But if one has a cancer diagnosis it is the very best place in this country to go as far as I am concerned.

I had a second operation there in November and during the course of my stay they sent me for tests and scans if I had as much as a hang nail, and I had a lot to be looked at---lungs, spine and more. And every department that looks at you reports on the computer immediately so that every doctor involved with your treatment is aware and sees immediatly what's happening with you. Your Medical Oncologist is the 'captain' of your case and there is no need for you to have to do anything. You are truly 'in their hands'. I had several women going through it at the same time I was and we made friends. Some of them were on the same radiation schedule as I...a true sisterhood was formed there.

My point in telling you all this is that taken one step at a time, even with ridiculous complications, it is not a big deal. Yes the residual about it all is that you are left with less strength and energy than you were before the cancer...it took me over two years to get it back. Indeed I had help (especially since I had four dogs to care for) all throughout the process provided by my long term care insurance. But as I said early on: "I'm still here!" At no time did I ever allow myself to think this was a death sentence. I looked at it as though I had this 'to do' at this time and then I'd move on to the next thing I had 'to do'. I was always 'positive'.

If you or an acquaintance get this kind of diagnosis...just say "Oh Shit" now I have to deal with this, so I'll just have to put off my writing or teaching or whatever till sometime later. But know that 'you will get back to it' and crazy as it seems, find a way to enjoy the process. The gab fests we had waiting for the radiation were terrific. So you see there is something fun to be found in everything. The only loss I really had is that Guiding Light went off the air a few weeks ago.

May the Good Lord bless everyone going through this disease and hope that He will guide them through it in the same way as He did me.

Hope you enjoyed the session.

Dr. Mimi Scott
917 846-2449