Health & Fitness

How To Start Your Freshman Year of College... with Cancer?

How To Start Your Freshman Year of College... with Cancer?

I lost it at my high school graduation. I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life as I did after the ceremony was over and my best friend ran over to give me a hug. I had gone through an insanely difficult four years, capped off by a senior year which was so academically rigorous that most of us had had some type of breakdown about it before the semester was over. Now here we were in shiny caps and gowns with full rides to college and I was feeling so relieved, and euphoric, and free, and happy that my dreams were coming true.



A month later I was sitting on a sheet of tear away paper, undressed from top to waist being told that there was definitely a lump in my breast at the ripe age of eighteen. I don't really remember much of the conversation after that because all I could picture was my long hair being buzzed off, and barfing my guts out, and all the doctors and tests and lists and medications I would be put on. I was supposed to be happy right now, celebrating my upcoming freshman year and all the new changes and things that would happen for me, not in a doctors office with my head swirling with thoughts of my mortality.



Nothing, and I mean, nothing in life can prepare you for the first time you learn you're not really as invincible as you thought you were. You think youth protects you from everything and that nothing can touch you, but that's not always the case. I never thought I would be in that position, but there I was. Later on when the tears had flowed, and I'd been thoroughly numbed by the news, I was told by my parents who had been listening at the doctors office that the odds of the lump being cancerous were slim, but there was a small chance that it could be cancer. I wish that had brought me relief, but there was no way to know until imaging and testing were done.


How To Start Your Freshman Year of College... with Cancer?

About a week later, I went for my scans. Once again, stripped down, just like you see with pregnant women, the nurse put some cold gel on my breast and began sending her sensor around. Although the nurse was a really nice woman and she made me feel as comfortable as one can be half naked in a room with a perfect stranger smearing gel all over your boob, she wasn't saying much once the scan started. She was just writing down things in my chart, and then moving the sensor around. Write. Move. Write. Move. It was unnerving. She would glance over from time to time with that fake hospital smile doctors and nurses like to give away in these tense moments for patients, but that was it. She offered me some towels to clean up, and then she let me know the doctor would be in to see me.



The news was good news for the moment. The marble sized mass in my breast was most likely a fibroadenoma which was a benign non-cancerous tumor made up of both glandular breast tissue and stromal (connective) tissue. I was told that it might be a good idea to remove it, but that I had the option to leave it alone with the caveat that it could keep growing, there could be multiples, and all this other stuff. I didn't even hesitate. I wanted this thing out of me, and signed up same day to have the surgery to remove it.



A month after that, once again, there I was, this time fully naked under a hospital gown on my way to the first surgery of my life. I remember standing in front of the mirror and looking down at my breast thinking that it would never look the same again. I teared up just thinking about it, but I knew I just didn't want to live any longer with the stress of this thing in my body, so I kind of said goodbye to it, as strange as that sounds, and then it was IV wires in my arms, and blood pressure cuffs, and paper shower caps, and hospital socks, and then being wheeled into the surgical room with a whole team of faces I had never seen before all ready and prepared to cut me open.


How To Start Your Freshman Year of College... with Cancer?

The surgeon asked me to confirm which breast it was, and I did and then just like in the movies, the anesthesiologist injected me with the sleepy drugs and then told me to count backwards from 100. I remember being determined for some reason to make it to 75. The surgeon untied my hospital gown and began putting antiseptic on me...100, 99, 98, 97...they were explaining what was going to happen next even though they'd already gone over it with me in the waiting area twice...96, 95, 94, 93...9...9..I was out.



There are two hours of my life I have no memory of. I've never experienced anything like it before or ever since other than passing out from heat exhaustion. It was just blackness and then I woke up groggy AF with some nurse pressing on my sternum to get me to wake-up so I could drink some juice. I was heavily bandaged already, and then an hour after that wheeled out to my parents who then took me home to recover.



A couple days later, still in bandages, I started my freshman year of college. I was sore and in pain, and the scar and stitches looked like some Frankenstein stuff, but that's how my year began. For the rest of my life I now have this two inch scar that I see every single day that reminds me of how precious life is. One of my freshman classes actually did have a girl in it who had Leukemia, head shining bald under the classroom lights, and I just thought almost every day I saw her, that that, could have been my story too and how grateful...absolutely grateful I am, that all I needed was surgery and then my life could resume. Knowing that you have fibroadenomas is knowing that you are at almost two times the risk of other women for future breast cancer, a thought that has frequently plagued my mind, but all I can do is live the life I have now, and think about today and today's challenges.

How To Start Your Freshman Year of College... with Cancer?
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