My life was peppered with other curveballs and off-speed pitches, including being pregnant and unemployed, ventures losing funding, jobs turning out to be things I didn't believe in doing, and everyday curveballs everyone sees. The cancer curveball seemed relegated to family history as we approached 20 years since Mom's first diagnosis, and Mom was active and thriving.
My sister got engaged on Feb 14, 2003, and their wedding was planned for the next Feb 14 in a destination. My husband and I were blessed with our second child, due in mid-November 2003. Plans for the wedding were concrete. I learned when and how to get a passport for a newborn. My sister and her fiance trained and completed an IronMan Triathlon in August 2003. Everyone was enjoying my toddler, excited for the new baby, and looking forward to a weekend celebrating Thom and Tracey.
It was three months before their wedding, when I was 39.5 weeks pregnant, when my mother called twice in a row. She told me that the lump removed from Tracey's breast was malignant. My sister's surgeon didn't wait five minutes for Thom to get home to be with Tracey when she got the news. My sister, her fiancé, my parents, and I were devastated. I hadn't even known she was having a lump removed because she and her doctors thought it was no big deal. We saw the curveball release with no idea how fast it was moving or what trajectory it would take. We waited for pathology, oncology appointments, and a treatment plan. We were shocked and saddened. And we had no idea what this meant for their wedding.
My doctors wanted me screened by a radiologist immediately before my breasts were a "white-out" filled with milk to feed my baby. That's when I met Dr. Harriet Borofsky, founder and chair of the Mills-Peninsula Women's Center.
"Hi - I'm Harriet, and we'll take excellent care of you. Tough day?"
"Yeah. My 29-year-old sister was just diagnosed with breast cancer. What can you possibly see with my breasts so close to delivery?"
"Well, I can see a lot more now than when your milk comes in and it's a white out. And while the odds are very, very low that you have cancer, too, they're not zero, and we should get this baseline. Do you plan to nurse, and for how long?"
"Twelve months, if you think that's safe."
"It's wonderful. Let's go see what we see."
Harriet covered my belly with a lead blanket, and we did contortionism to ensure that each enormous breast was mammogrammed. Because my breasts are naturally dense and I was almost 40 weeks pregnant, Harriet also performed ultrasound exams. With a big exhale, she told me she didn't see anything, and please make an appointment for a few weeks after I stopped nursing. We joyfully celebrated the birth of my son with the sadness of knowing Tracey had to face the cancer curveball twenty years after my mother.
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