My best advice to anyone dealing
with cancer: Get to know your doctors. I threatened mine. He warned me about my
vocal cords. Said he has to cut into them sometimes when he removes the
thyroid. “Your voice could sound like this… “ He made a raspy sound.
“No,” I said.
“I’ve removed
vocal cords to save people’s lives.”
“No. I’m not
living without a voice. Ever.”
“If the cancer
spread—“
“Sew me back up.
I’ll find an alternative treatment. Do not go near my voice box.”
“Roni—“
“I’m not f--king
kidding. I don’t care how bad it looks, sew me back up.”
A week later, on
the morning after the surgery, my eyes popped open at 5:30 a.m. The doctor
stood near the door, staring at me, waiting. He grinned. “I didn’t go near your
vocal cords.”
Papillary
carcinoma—gone. Found by mistake, during my second Pet/CT scan to monitor the
effect of chemotherapy on the breast cancer. The creepy crud had moved from my
breast outward, to my sternum and my lymph nodes, but the cancer in my breast
had nothing to do with the thyroid cancer that showed up a year later.
I told the thyroid
doctor, “I’d be healthy if it weren’t for all of this cancer.”
He laughed. “Did
you hear yourself? Ha, ha . . . ”
My breast surgeon
started me on the path to make sure your
doctor cares even if he thinks you’re crazy. She and I got along really
well. I told her about my vision, all my parts intact. I knew my breast would
remain on my body—first a dream, then a real strong intuition when I showered
that morning.
Later, after the
surgery, she said, “I got in there and . . . oh my. That was the largest tumor
I ever removed.” Her eyes got real big. “I would have taken the whole breast,
but I said, Roni wants to keep it. I have to try.”
I wanted all the
doctors to cut as little as possible, don’t stir things up—allow my body time
to heal. Don’t entice those ugly cancer cells to run amuck. But never
did I go against my medical team. I made informed decisions and pushed back
when the doctors wanted to go too far.
We knew the cancer
went into my lymph nodes because they did a biopsy, a deep, painful one. We
knew my sternum lit up like a Christmas tree on the PET/CT scan, but the first
doctor wanted to do another biopsy, this one on my bone.
“Why? Is the
treatment the same?” I said.
“Yes, but we want
to make sure.”
“Sure of what?
Will the treatment be any different?”
“No,
chemotherapy.”
I refused to let
them cut into my bone to find out what they already knew and what took them
three weeks to discover—the cancer had spread. Most people catch breast cancer
long before it progresses. Not me. Stage IV is the place I began my battle.
A cancer diagnosis
of any kind is difficult. I’ve lost friends and family to the disease. I’ve
seen patients not ask questions, blindly follow doctors’ orders, and not share
everything with their medical team. Some of them are gone now.
How did I get to
be the chosen one? In remission from stage IV cancer, feeling better than ever.
I resisted the
temptation to look away and let the doctors do what they wanted—difficult
because it felt like confronting death. I questioned and re-questioned. I
understood what I needed and pushed back at times—active every step of the way,
either through my family or on my own.
Six rounds of
aggressive chemotherapy, surgery, two years of Herceptin infusions, a month of
daily radiation, active involvement in my treatment . . . and my entire life
rebuilt because it went to crap during my victory. That’s how I beat stage IV
cancer. Not easy, but darn, I think I’m pretty lucky. Now I’m working on
turning my journal into a book, RUN—expected release date, early 2015.
Roni Teson is the author of Twist, March 2014, and Heaven or Hell, August 2012. RUN, her book about the cancer battle
will be released in 2015.
