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Patti's Story
For
the second time in seven years, I found a lump in my breast. My doctor
assured me it couldn't be cancer after performing the lumpectomy, but
he would be calling after running the tests on some odd looking tissue.
Three days later his report was positive for cancer, and the news was
heartbreaking since I had survived breast cancer seven years before.
How could this be happening? Didn't they always 190 say if you survived
five years without recurrence that you were "safe"? My husband and I
just got custody of his two young sons, ages 4 and 8, the day after I
found my lump. How do I explain this to these children? They barely
knew me and now I was going in for surgery and then chemo fc5 therapy
(again) . My surgery was a month away and it was going to be a long
month. They took the news better than I thought and we got to know each
other during that waiting time.
Surgery was extensive, mastectomy and reconstruction at the same time.
What should have been an eight-hour procedure turned into twelve
because of complications with scar tissue from the previous cancer
surgery. Now I had to heal to get ready for chemotherapy treatments.
Two months later I began the treatments, and I got sick right away. The
anti-nausea pills were $100 a piece! My doctor told me I would lose all
the hair on my body within two weeks. I didn't believe him, but he was
right.
This was such a stressful time, not only for me, but for my new family
as well. The bills were piling up and I had been off work already for
three months. Suddenly, we were a one income home, with two more mouths
to feed.
A friend told me about Cancer Patient Care. My first visit I was
exhausted from treatment and worry over finances, but I found Ray, my
social worker. I knew that he would make sure we got the help we needed
. Soon, we were getting financial help with all the prescriptions I had
to take and there were a lot of them and they were all very expensive.
The boys like to eat a lot, constantly it seems, and our grocery bill
was shocking. One day, Ray brought us a grocery voucher for $100 to the
house. We also had two months of our utilities paid .
It wasn't just financial help either. Ray would call to see how I was
doing, his support and encouragement meant a lot to me. It helped me
make it through a lot of hard days.
A fun time at Cancer Patient Care, was when my four year old stepson
came with me to choose some wigs to wear when I was bald. It was a
chance for us to have a good time and I valued his honest opinion of
what looked good on me. We took a red one, a blonde one and one that
was really big and long (like Dolly Parton). The boys even tried the
wigs on themselves so that they would know what it felt like.
It's been over a year now and two more surgeries later and thank God
I'm OK. My family had been in such a dark and dreary place and there
weren't very many rays of sunshine, but Cancer Patient Care always had
some for us.
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