Chocolate and tears

What do you do when, after loads of great news, you get a whole face full of shit?

You sit down and eat an entire chocolate bar, that’s what.

I went to see the radiation and medical oncologists today. I have been dreading it because I knew I didn’t want radiation or endocrine therapy (Tamoxifen) and I knew they would tell me that’s what I had to do. I was not disappointed in my expectations.

I can’t even get into all the stats and details because frankly my head is swimming and so were my eyes. Radiation takes your chances of relapse from 30% down to 3%, or something like that. So I grudgingly agreed. I go in on 12/14 to get prepped and tattooed (37 years without a fucking tattoo and now I have to get one and it’s not even a black cat). I’ll be starting off my new year with radiation, so so far, 2016 is not looking much better for me than 2015.

Then off to the medical oncologist for more devastating news: chemo is not actually out of the question, and no matter what, they strongly recommend I do the endocrine therapy. As previously mentioned, this is five years of medication that stops your breasts from receiving estrogen and basically gives you five glorious years of menopause like symptoms. Given that I am 37, that means essentially I’d have five years of menopause before going into actual menopause. Additionally, Julian and I have been seriously discussing trying for a third and final baby, starting the process this summer, and you should not (and by should not I mean cannot for health and safety reasons) get pregnant and/or nurse on Tamoxifen. He started talking to us about seeing a fertility expert, harvesting eggs, etc, and I just got SO fucking angry. First of all because I hate the fact that it’s a foregone conclusion that they recommend Tamoxifen so therefore I will take Tamoxifen and it doesn’t matter what else I have planned in my life or what I want to do. Second, I hated being told that by a man because what the hell does he know? Has he been through menopause? Has he had breast cancer? Has HE taken five years of Tamoxifen?

Finally after years of feeling like I can do most anything adequately but nothing excellently, I found out what I am really good at: being a mom. I love it, I enjoy it, I am confident in it, and I make awesome little people. And now that I am hitting my stride and ready for the final installment in our fantastic family, BAM. God says eff you, no more kids. Instead you get five years of hot flashes and possible uterine cancer, and guess what? You might still get breast cancer that goes systemic and kills you. HAHA GOOD ONE RIGHT?!?

I am sad and angry. I know I need to see some other doctors and get second opinions but right now I just want to say screw it and pretend like I never had cancer and do nothing. And if it happens again and kills me well at least I will have gotten to live what remains of my life in the way I want to, doing the things I want to do, instead of burning the hell out of my boobs and ingesting copious amounts of chemicals.

I just keep repeating again and again, “I am not taking that drug. I’m not. I won’t do it.” But I’m afraid too, that if the breast cancer returns I will blame myself like crazy.

We’ll be out of town next week so I guess I will use that sort of down time to research doctors and make appointments for second opinions before rushing ahead with anything. But this all sucks and really has me down.

And oh yeah, someone broke two windows on my car on Saturday so they could steal the kids’ diaper bag, which Araceli left in the car. Fuck you, 2015. No seriously. Fuck you.