image_warrior3.jpg Deena Metzger, Tree, Photograph by Hella Hammid17″ x 24″ black and white poster designed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville.


Includes the verse: I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows.
There was a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered, but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart.I started this blog not so very long ago with the story of a woman I loved, and a poster on her wall of a post-mastectomy woman (Deena Metzger) with an amazing tattoo. Well, I found that image today – yes, today – even though I have been looking for it unsuccessfully for weeks. And today I found out from my pathology report, again, unexpectedly, that I am prognostically-speaking, cancer free and that my treatment has come to an end. Yeah I know, it’s really weird. I have not exactly adjusted to the news yet. But it’s amazing and real.

Think about the symmetry here — I get a tattoo on my chest in the late 1980’s to mourn the death from cancer of a woman I loved. I get this tattoo on my chest because of the post-mastectomy tattoo in the poster by Deena Metzger on Ange’s bedroom wall. And then like Deena Metzger, I get breast cancer, and that tattoo gets redrawn. And in the most unlikely turn of events, (a) the surgeon decides to save my tattoo, which looks virtually the same as before my mastectomy, and (b) I get a clean bill of health in the pathology report. And then life starts again. Hope you weren’t sleeping at the wheel. Ha ha.

I had to go to the surgeon’s office five days prior to what was supposed to be the unveiling of the post-surgical pathology report because I have developed a very common complication following a mastectomy – a fluid build-up that the body can’t drain in the space where the left breast was, which is known as a seroma. So, in we go to visit Dr. C and get the seroma aspirated. Back to the scary place at the hospital. The wonderful R, Dr C’s nurse, mentioned quite casually when we arrived that she had received the pathology report and so would be cancelling the planned follow-up on Friday. YIKES. I had kind of anticipated that the report might be there and so had figured out a preliminary set of questions for Dr C — questions about chemotherapy, radiation and hormone therapy — but I SO wasn’t actually ready to hear the news.

Ready or not, there was Dr C and in we went. She had the report in her hand and I can’t likely ever adequately convey the state of stark dread with which I was anticipating the information about the post-mastectomy pathology. “Well it doesn’t get any better than this.” is how Dr C began the conversation.

The pathology report was as follows: No invasive cancer beyond the DCIS in the ducts. No cancerous cells in the lymphs that had been removed for the sentinel node biopsy. Clear margins.

The bottom line from this kind of report is that any systemic treatment would have a higher probability of causing harm than the probability of stray cells going metastatic. End of treatment.

My reaction to all this has been disbelief and disorientation. I had so thoroughly prepared myself for systemic treatment that I am not sure how to reorient myself to no treatment at all. That’s ok. It probably is totally predictable.

I will have to keep going back to the surgeon’s office to get the seroma aspirated until it stops filling up again. But apart from that, I can now get on with the business of recreating my life, again.

I will have more to say about all this, but I wanted to post something as soon as I heard to get the word out. I don’t quite know how to thank all of you for your support. So for know, let me just say that I am incredibly moved and very grateful. You have been very kind and very courageous to step into this awful place with me and hold my hand.