Chapter 10: The Lucky Number Thirteen

Finally the date was set. The operation was scheduled for three weeks later on Friday the thirteenth of July. Now you might think that the date itself might have freaked me out, but it didn't. I was upset because I had to wait for three weeks (I just wanted it over with) but having surgery on a Friday the thirteenth was fine with me. Since I met Mark, the thirteenth became a lucky date. Mark was born on a Friday the thirteenth and so was Leah. Ronnie was born on a Wednesday the thirteenth, and on June 25, 2001 Mark and I celebrated out thirteenth Wedding Anniversary. Weird huh?.
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Now I waited, I am not very good at waiting. Patience is a virtue that I lack. My sisters and my father were calling me every other day they wanted to know
why I had to wait so long for my surgery, so did I.
My sister Valerie and I started talking about my mother and her course of treatment. I mention that I thought that when mom (Nora) finally had her biopsy, she got the results the same day, and had her surgery the next day. Valerie said that she would check with our dad.
A few days later Valerie E-mailed me the information that I wanted. It seems that in October of 1989 my mother had a mammogram that was "questionable" and was told to have another mammogram in a few months, sound familiar? I think that at this point my mother, like a lot of people, let fear override logic so she waited three years before she had the second mammogram. I knew that there was a time lag between the two mammograms; I just didn't realize just how much time had passed. I think knowing that my mother had waited so long, prompted me to get my second mammogram when I did.
Nora’s second mammogram was in June of 1992 and that test led to her biopsy. I was wrong. The surgery was not the next day, but five days later. So for my mother it was less than a week between the biopsy and her mastectomy. Heck it took me almost two weeks just to get the results of my biopsy. Things move much more slowly in up here then in Southern Jersey. I always thought it was the other way around.
My mother never had chemotherapy. They put her on Tamoxifen right away. Fifteen months later Nora had her first bone scan, and the test showed some problems. In January of 1994 my mother was told that the cancer had metastasized. The doctors tried radiation, but it didn't help much. Nora had become paralyzed by the winter of 1994 and by the end of the year all treatment stopped. Nora lived (if you want to call it living) until April of 1995. It was important that I know all of this, because I would have to make many decisions about my treatment in the next few months and I felt that my family medical history is important in making these decisions.
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Six years…there was six years between the day that my mother was told that she had a suspicious mammogram and the day that she died, six years. When I started reading the statistics about breast cancer I found that survival rates were listed in five-year increments. For example; I found a chart from the year 2000, that showed survival rates for stage one (which is what my mother and I had) for was 95% end of five years (remember in chapter 7 I mentioned that I found different survival rate charts in different books). What I didn't know and still don't know is does the clock start from the first bad mammogram? In that case my mother lived for five years. Or dose it start from the date of the diagnosis? Or does it start from the date of surgery? Then she didn't make the five years. I just don't know. The chart also stated that at ten years the survival rate is 65% Ouch! The rate improved when different treatments got added on, such as radiation, chemo and Tamoxifen.
Six years. I am my mother's daughter. I am more like my mother than either of my sisters. Six years. If I follow my mother's pattern then I have six years from the first bad mammogram. That gives me till some time in the year 2006. At that time my children will be fifteen and twelve. That will put them in early adolescence, I can not die in 2006 my children need me too much.
Mark is a great father, but he can not be a great mother…he can not be any kind of mother. They need me to take them shopping for their first bra, and show them how to shave their legs. And what about when their period starts? My girls have a wonderful extended family, a great grandmother and four caring aunts. There are just some moments that are meant to be between a mother and a daughter, and I was determined to be there for them.
The information Valerie sent surprised me, because I didn't know that my mother got her first questionable mammogram in 1989. I mean that was the year that I got married. Why didn't she go back sooner, why? And, how come her surgery was so done so quickly after her biopsy? I have a lot of questions and there is only one person who can answer them, my father. He took such good care of my mother, he knows every detail of her disease, but he is so distraught by my diagnosis that I just can't ask him these questions, I just can't.