This Is Nothing or It’s Your Death
By: Taryn Hillin
Tags: Health, Cancer, Cancer Treatments, Chemo, Biopsy

Cancer + Covid = Merry Xmas!

A few weeks ago a friend of mine died of cancer. He was diagnosed a few months after me in the early winter of 2020. He reached out asking for advice on chemotherapy — I did the same thing before starting treatment. I wanted to know all the tips and tricks, and former patients were happy to get on the phone with me for hours as I soaked up every last detail (bring a blanket, get an iPad, take CBD). I was happy to do the same for him. He had a rare cancer too (not the same as mine). We were in this fight together. As the months passed I became NED (no evidence of disease) but he worsened. The chemotherapy wasn’t working, the radiation wasn’t enough. Then, around late summer he told me the doctors had started discussing palliative care. In other words, he wasn’t expected to make it very long. When he spoke of his losing battle he did so with grace and strength. He said he would keep fighting. He was always thankful for small victories and his resolve reminded me to be grateful for mine. He died in October. His death hit me very hard. His Twitter and his Twitch were still active. It’s like he was still there but he was gone. His survival time from diagnosis to death was less than one year.

Being in the cancer world you know that some people around you will die. And the dirty secret is that you hope it’s not you. Another woman, with my same rare cancer, was diagnosed at the same time as me (in another state) and we went through parallel treatments. When my October scan came around I told her I was clear. A week later, she told me she was not. She’s back in chemo, back in the battle I’m still hoping to avoid — but now at Stage IV.

I saw my oncologist yesterday. I had her check every node and push on my abdomen. We reviewed my blood tests. They even put my blood under a microscope to make sure some other cancers weren’t forming (or something like that). She told me she was “proud of me” and I felt so good. She even mentioned spacing out my three-month PET scans if I could score a zero on a CTC test (circulating tumor cell test). I was doing it, I was beating this rare-asshole-nasty-kill-you-quick-cancer and I looked great doing it.

Then, last night, I noticed something on my lower abdomen, near my one-year-old hysterectomy scar. The one that took my organs and my womanhood with it. Right there, near my radiation tattoo was a new lump. A hard, 4 mm lump seemingly in the subcutaneous region above my pelvis. Not a lymph node, but a node. A scary, oh-no-is-this-it-?-node.

Is this it? The text-photo I sent to my oncologist.

I called my doctor and rushed to Los Angeles today. I sat in traffic for nearly six hours roundtrip (4 pm appointments are the worst). My visit was less than 30 minutes. This is what you do when you have cancer and a lump appears. You drop everything and run. I don’t know what I expected to hear (perhaps a “It’s nothing, you’re fine” would have been nice). But instead, I got, “It’s a 4 mm node in the lower abdomen, we’ll order an ultrasound-guided biopsy. Mark it as urgent.”

I made a joke to my oncologist that I was 0–1 in the biopsy department so I wasn’t too excited about another one. I don’t think she heard me because she didn’t laugh. Then, I started to cry. The tears just poured out of me as I sat pantless in the oncology office. She handed me tissues. “Don’t panic yet” she said, “we don’t know what it is. It could be nothing.” I looked up at her, “Or it could be cancer”.

“Yes, it could be cancer.”

“Does cancer feel like that?” I asked. “Does it form that quickly, I swear it wasn't there yesterday.”

“Sometimes,” she said. “Yeah.”

So now, we wait. Now, I am either the girl beating cancer or the cancer has come back to take its vengeance on me. We won’t know for two to three weeks. Apparently, some review board has to decide how quickly I can get this biopsy, and then after that, it takes seven to ten days to hear the result.

The last time I had a biopsy my doctor said it didn’t look like cancer. “Uterine cancer and cervical cancer don’t look like that or behave like that, but I’m not sure what it is.” It turned out to be rare and deadly.

This time I’m hoping for different results. I’m hoping the “we don’t know” turns into “it’s nothing you’re fine.”

But this is what makes living so hard. You never know when everything is going to change. When your happy mood at noon turns to depression and anxiety by midnight. Yesterday I was dreaming of moving on with my life, but one lump sent me spiraling back to reality.

I sometimes wonder what my death would look like. Will it be at home? A hospital bed? Will I go quickly or suffer for a year of chemo and barbaric treatment that does nothing to cure me. I heard a stat once that 70% to 80% of stage IV patients with incurable cancers don’t understand their chemo is not curative, but palliative. Maybe ignorance is bliss in that case. Maybe knowing too much about my cancer never allows me to fully relax. Then I think about my friend. Was he relaxed at the end? Was he scared? What about his cat (he was a cat-dad)? I think about him daily still, sometimes I talk to him. I cry with him. I say that I’m sorry I couldn’t help him. Sometimes I ask if he can now help me. There are no atheists in fox holes and I find myself pleading with some higher being to save me.

Last Christmas my hair fell out from chemo. This Christmas I’m praying I never have to go back to chemo. Hopefully, 2021 goes a little more smoothly than 2020 and my biopsy score will go from 0–1 to 1–1. Tie game. It’s only half-time after all.

****

In fall 2019 I was diagnosed with a rare cancer — high-grade small cell neuroendocrine — stage 3C, with a survival rate of around 10%. I underwent surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and brachytherapy and finished treatment in April 2020. Thanks for reading my stories.