Meeting the Surgeon

Booo :(

When the News is Too Big to Share

One of the first pieces of advice my doctor gave me was this: “Don’t talk to anyone about this - not yet.” And honestly, that was hard. I had a strong urge to post something on social media - to ask for advice, to reach for prayers, to just not feel so alone with it. I was spiraling. Lost in panic. But I listened. I held back.

Instead, I told only my immediate family and a few close friends who I knew would truly be there for me. Even then, I had to keep it from my daughter - she was in the middle of her final exams for her senior year of college, and I didn’t want anything to shake her focus or add worry to her already full plate.  I told my son, because I knew we would be seeing him soon, and I just couldn’t keep trying to pretend everything was okay, when nothing was okay anymore.

So I kept moving through the motions of daily life - dishes, laundry, errands - while carrying the weight of this news like a stone in my chest. Everything looked normal on the outside, but inside, I was unraveling.

April 25: The Surgeon Visit

I thought this appointment would be straightforward - just getting established as a patient, maybe meeting the team. I even told my husband he didn't need to go with me, it would just be a lot of routine stuff, and I knew he was busy with work. But instead, it was like being hit by a freight train of information. It wasn’t just a consultation. It was decisions - big ones.

Lumpectomy.

Mastectomy.
Radiation.
Reconstruction.

My mind couldn’t keep up. I drove home alone in a fog, those words echoing in my head, looping endlessly. It was all too much. I certainly regretted telling my husband not to come, it would have been wonderful to have someone else listening to all this information.

The only small relief was that because what they found were microscopic dots - not a mass or lump - I wouldn’t need chemotherapy. That felt like a tiny win in a terrifying new world. The diagnosis was Stage 0, DCIS. Technically the earliest possible stage. But the word cancer still hung in the air, heavy and relentless.

And because of that word, every treatment option was on the table. Even though it hadn’t spread. Even though it was so early. It felt overwhelming and confusing. I couldn’t understand why, in the year 2025, there wasn’t some magic beam or pill that could just fix this. Why did the path forward still have to involve cutting and radiation?

For the first time, I truly felt what others must have gone through. I remembered when people had told me they had breast cancer, and I’d silently thought, “Well, at least they caught it early.” I wasn’t unkind - I just didn’t understand. Now I did. And it broke my heart. I wish I could apologize or hug all the people in my past who have gone through cancer, I just didn’t know, I didn't understand. 

Telling My People

After the appointment, I had to sit down with my husband, my parents, and my mother-in-law. I tried to stay steady. I tried to explain everything I’d just learned. But I also had to be clear about something else:

I can’t be the strong one for everyone else.

This was happening to me. And I couldn’t be the one to comfort other people about it. I didn’t want to have to soothe anyone’s fears or assure them that “everything’s going to be okay” when I didn’t even know if that was true. I just needed space to feel, to figure things out, to grieve the loss of normalcy. To face mortality.

This part of the journey was like standing at the edge of a cliff - uncertain, dizzy, and entirely changed. But it was just the beginning.