Page 147 of Never Stop
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Brooke
No one wakes up one day and says that they want to have cancer or have parts of their skeletal structure removed.
But it happened.
I’d read that desmoid tumors are so rare that in the United States that approximately only nine hundred people are diagnosed with them. I’d been diagnosed with two in two years. Did that make me a unicorn since I’d been in that group twice?
I’d beat cancer twice.
I was a fighter.
I was a survivor.
I was stronger.
When you’re faced with something that has the potential to kill you, and you survive it, you’re a warrior that got stronger during battle. Or maybe all along you were strong enough, and you proved how resilient you really were.
That was how I felt, and I didn’t think I would change what happened to me.
Not only had I shown to myself and those around me that I was tough, it also changed all my relationships with my loved ones. Bailee and I were closer than ever, and I now saw her as the adult she was. She was even considering moving to New York. She and Gary were… complicated. Moving to New York would make her closer to more than just me.
Nicole and I were still as close as we used to be, but now we both had different lives since we were each married and neither one of us needed the other to fill a void of some sort and party each weekend. We still texted each other every day and had weekly dinners at the Crawford’s.
My relationship with my mother might not be similar to other mother/daughter relationships are, but she was calling me once or twice a week to check on me. I don’t know what had changed for her. Maybe she wanted to make up for the way she raised Bailee and me by being a grandmother who spoils her grandchildren. The verdict was still out, but things were definitely better.
Cheyenne and I had a bond almost like I had with Bailee when I raised her. I knew I would never replace Dana, and I would never want to. I just knew that even though I still didn’t have a child of my own blood, Cheyenne was definitely my daughter.
And Easton. He made me realize there were still good guys in the world. He may have thought he was a bad boy when he would get a girl on her knees and never call her, but I believed he was simply biding his time until he bumped into me on the cruise. Now, we were madly in love, and there was no way I could have ever survived without him. He loved me so much that not once did he complain he was tired of taking care of me. He just did it because that was the person he was. I didn’t make him a better man or father. It was in him all along.
Even though I survived, I was still in a lot of pain. It might have been stupid to stop the oxy only two months after major surgery, but I just didn’t like the feeling of being dependent on a drug. The pain was different, though. Now it was a constant ache on the top of my shoulder blade. I was still sore, and it hurt to sneeze or cough, but it was…tolerable. Turned out, I had a winged scapula and I might be in pain forever. I was told I’d always have the winged scapula because of the missing ribs. Also, places on my shoulder blade, on my side, under my right boob and on my forearm were numb. I could handle numb. It was the constant pain I couldn’t handle.
I started to see Dr. Albert who Nicole worked for. Of course, he’d never heard of a desmoid tumor either. When he read my medical records and everything I’d been through, he sympathized. He said that I probably had such bad withdrawals because I’d been on Norco for so long. It was like that damn piece of cake after dieting for a year. You couldn’t stop at a sliver. You had to eat half the cake, and then you’d feel sick afterward.
So instead of giving me Norco or anything of that nature, Dr. Albert gave me a high dosage of Ibuprofen. My shoulder blade area was still swollen from surgery, and the anti-inflammatory would help. He also recommended acupuncture in conjunction with physical therapy to help with my winged scapula. Neither were working yet, but I wasn’t giving up.
I also had my six month CT scan. The results were the same as the first time; nothing but scar tissue. It made me want to laugh because I’d heard that before. The truth of the matter was it terrified me. For the rest of my life, I would need to get scans to check for more tumors. And what if I had to go through it all again?
They say after you survive breast cancer and you’re clear for five years then it’s more than likely never coming back. But given that doctors don’t know why people get desmoid tumors or that the treatment is different for everyone, how can you really be at peace when you’re told there’s only scar tissue on your latest scan?
I didn’t think I’d ever will be at peace. I’d always have that fear racing through my body that I might have to do it all over again.
Since my days consisted of Court TV and binge watching Netflix, I started to research desmoid tumors more. I joined a group on Facebook where everyone is fighting the same battle. There are some who had a tumor, got it removed, and it never returned. There are some, like me, who have had the tumors regrow. And what surprised me was we weren’t all women. There were men too. Kids even. Hell, I read about a retired baseball pitcher who had to have his arm removed because of a desmoid.
That could have been me!
Everyone’s story was different. None of us were fighting the same way, but we were all hoping for a cure. But the story that struck me the most was a lady who lost her battle. The tumor grew on an organ and was inoperable. So the internet might say desmoids aren’t cancer, but Dr. Simon classified them as cancer and so do I.
Someone in the group asked, “Why do you fight for a cure?” Some said for their wives, for their husbands, for their children. Some said for themselves because they’re tired of the unknown and the fighting. I said, “So I can start a family.”
If I had to keep getting scans every six months and being on medications that could harm my fetus, how could I ever have children?
And what also got me was every awareness has a colored ribbon. Desmoid tumor awareness has a teal ribbon. When I chose my wedding colors, I had no idea. But the reality was that everything came full circle in some way.
“Hey, Brooke. How have you been?” Dominca asked as I sat in the corner at the bar. “Hangin’ in there,” I replied with a sigh. I was starting to get out more. I wasn’t working, but some nights when Easton had to cover the bar, I went in so I could feel almostnormalagain.
“Think you’ll be coming back soon?”
