Diagnosis

The Call: Thursday April 9, 2015

 About 9:30 AM I receive a call from Dr. Smith (my main doc). Instantly I know this is probably not good because they said we wouldn't know the results for a few days and if they already know less than 24 hours, well that doesn't seem good. Sure enough he was calling to tell me that they did find cancer. I spend a few minutes talking with him. I didn’t cry and I don’t think I was in shock, I was just a typical Kelli saying, “okay, well what’s next? What do we do now?” I think he thought I was in shock as he kept pausing and it seemed he was waiting for me to start crying. I’m too task oriented. Let’s move on, move forward and start the process rolling.

        Next step was sharing the news. I call Tony who’s at work and he doesn't answer. Mmm….I guess I will call the next person I always call when I have big news, my mom. Which she of course answers. We talk for about 15 minutes and she was just like me, didn't even cry, just very task oriented and how /what do we need to do. That’s why I love her. As I am finishing the convo with my mom, Tony calls back. 

            I love my husband. He has been such a rock and so amazing through all of this. He deals with things a little differently than me. He is not a task oriented person and his emotions play a much bigger part in his life and I love him for that. We make a great team because we compliment each other so well. After sharing the news with him, he doesn’t cry, freak out or do anything, he just calmly says, “I am going to do my next eval and then I will head home and spend the rest of the day with you.” Again, I am a task oriented person and my tasks for that day are to work, so I can’t help but think that it’s silly to take the day off, we should just both work and hang out tonight. Again, not much for sentimental feelings  in my life.  Tony was right, we should and we did take the day off to be together.

  

     Tony apparently had an easier time crying. As he describes it, he got off the phone and tried to finish up with his current patient (who was almost done), but he just started crying and had to immediately leave. The drive home ( a 30 minute commute) was apparently the longest drive of his life and it was not a dry eyed one. 

     I called my mom back to finish our convo and tell her Tony was coming home. Which made her tear up and cry, so then I finally cried, more because it was so sweet that he was coming home to comfort me. So I have nothing against crying. I actually cry really easily over commercials and movies and those little cute facebook clips that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But when it came to my diagnosis, I was all business.  

           Long story short, Tony and I took the day off work (thanks bosses) and hiked Mushroom rock, ate at the Smithey, worked out…well I couldn't work out so I just hung out the gym, and got our life in order as far as doc appointments. 

Although we live in a small town there is a great hospital in our area. But my doc set me up to see this team of professionals at University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora. Dr. Virginia Borges is there and she heads up the department and her specialty is breast cancer in young women. We were stoked to have such an amazing team and resource so close! We were scheduled to see the entire team on Tuesday morning.

     We did decide to share the news with our immediate family. I contemplated waiting until after Tuesday when we had more information because I didn’t want them to freak out and stress all weekend, but we also knew they would like to know. 

        

     My doc did call me back at one point and I tried to ask him how “serious” this was, like should I be scared for my life or what? Which of course I was terrified to ask that question but I hoped he would alleviate my concerns for the weekend. He said to me, “well, your cancer is invasive, which is worse than non-invasive. And your cancer is non-deferential, which is worse than differential. So it’s the “real deal’”.  

            That still didn't tell me much but the phrase “the real deal” definitely freaked me out some. I also wondered if he was saying that to me because I was so calm and nonchalant about everything and he was trying to imply that this is going to be a long road ahead of us. I spent the weekend pondering that phrase.

The weekend:

Things were fine. No things were great! Friday I went in and did the crossfit workout Isabell (30 snatches at 135/95). Probably not my fastest time since I was still trying to go a little easy because of my biopsy procedure. But it felt good to move. We went to dinner with friends that night and I laughed and had a great time. Yes, I had cancer on my mind most of the time. But I laughed freely and was not putting on any sort of face with these great people.

A True Colorado Saturday:

     Saturday morning we went and did our 7 AM competitors workout. It was awesome! There was like 15 of the most awesome people there. It was a partner workout and I was able to do everything and felt great. I took it a little easy on the muscle up part since my doc specifically told me to be careful with muscle ups. It felt so good to push hard in the workout though. After that I went and hiked Arbanny Kittle with Amanda and Carly. Again, this felt so awesome. It was beautiful outside and it was Lubby’s birthday! We needed to celebrate outside. After an hour of relaxing at home I got all our bike stuff ready, picked Tony up from work (he was covering a Saturday shift for someone) and we rode Prince Creek. 

Saturday night got a little rough. Some of the reality of the situation set in and I had a few concerning thoughts. I was still staying positive and not freaking out, but because there was so much unknown that weekend I couldn’t help but think of the worst. But once I thought of the worst, I made a gameplan in my head of how I would tackle it (again, task oriented). I decided that I already was that .01% (remember 99.99% chance I had a benign tumor), so if they told me I only had 1% chance to live, well I would fight like hell. That way the next person who got diagnosed like me would be told they have a 2% chance! Once I made that up in my mind I felt better and got back to spending my time thinking about how I wouldn’t be worst case, we had a guardian angel looking out for us and there is a reason I got the biopsy done so we caught it early enough. And I also focused on how lucky I was. I am not dead in a car crash, I am not in a horrific accident that leaves me paralyzed, I have a type of cancer that is extremely understand and researched, I have an amazing support team, including badass super knowledgeable doctors. And hell, I just spent 3 years of my life training my body physically and mentally for knowing how to suffer and just duck my head and get the work done. This is going to be just one big crossfit workout. Perhaps like 14.5. I mean, I crawled a lot during that workout so if I have to crawl my way to being cancer free, no problem, as long as I get it done.  

       Back to the weekend of the unknowns. So Sunday we went to closing day at Highlands. Holy shit. If you love snow, snowboarding, skiing, costumes, partying, people watching, sun, and/or good times you should come to this next year! It was the ultimate party and so fun!! There were “pop up parties” all over the mountain. Just random people that were partying on the side of the mountain. Pretty awesome and entertaining!!

Monday night we drove to Denver and Tuesday was the big day full of answers. 

Tuesday- Dr. Borges’ team

   

     First off, I was so stoked to be meeting with a “team”. All day long at work I preach the team concept and the benefits of it. Everyone is great at certain areas and alone we can only accomplish so much. But by working together we can be one amazing and great real estate team. And this is exactly what Dr. Borges’ team was. So that day we met with:

• Dr. Borges: the head honcho, badass, wicked smart doc who specializes in seeing people just like me (which sounds like there aren't that many). She covered things like:
•  What we were thinking as far as treatment plans and where I could do what (Valley View Hospital in Glenwood vs Denver). She actually worked very closely with the Valley View Hospital docs and recommended a specific oncologist to see  there so they would be able to work together on my case.  
• Dr. Borges also helped alleviate our fears about my cancer. I told her I didn’t care if I lost my boobs, my hair or how sick I would be, I just wanted to live. She just kept saying she isn't worried about that, she is just worried about how happy I will be in the future and making sure we do the right steps to make that the most possible.
• Erin, the nurse coordinator. This chick is super rad. She is like the ultimate “secretary”. She’s a nurse so she is much more than that. I could ask her questions and she was always on point with answers. But her job was to be a coordinator, so she coordinated who  would be the next to come and go, she was running around stetting me up for tests, and doing a bazillion other things I am sure I never saw. She’s a stud.
• Dr. Kounalakis- surgeon. She’s the lady that will do my lumpectomy or mastectomy. She said that based on where the lump is there is a good chance we’ll be able to just do a lumpectomy but I may choose to do a mastectomy instead. Those decisions will get made later.
• Plastic Surgeon- if I do the mastectomy or double she’ll be involved getting me back to those luscious boobies. J . She gave us a great powerpoint presentation and I will say quite a few of the ladies looked better in their after photos. Okay to clarify, the reconstructed boobs aren't going to look like fake boobs, they won’t look that nice. But they look pretty freaking good! She did tell me it could be a little damage to my peck muscle, which of course I instantly thought about crossfit and what that would do to movements that require the pectoral muscle. 
• Radiologist team. We didn't talk too long with them because if we do radiology it will probably be in Glenwood.
• Genetic counselor. That was the last meeting so our brains weren't functioning that much by this point, and when she got super detailed it got a little much. Either way, I know she will call me in the future to discuss it after my genetic testing results come back.
• Some random students that asked to use my info for a study. Which I am all for! Since there aren't that many people diagnosed so young they don’t have much information/studies on this. So I am more than happy to have my information shared to give knowledge into all of this.
• The day also consisted of blood draws, mammograms and  I also had a “clip” placed inside my tumor. They performed a similar procedure to my biopsy, but rather than take samples they placed an extremely small metal clip, which mine of course was in the shape of a ribbon. This is done because when I go through chemo they could shrink my tumor so much they can’t find it anymore. And they want to make sure to remove the diseased area at surgery. Follow the ribbon docs!

So that was our day. We got scheduled to come back the following Monday for port install and an MRI. We spent the rest of the week kicking ass at crossfit and moving forward with life.