Scar vs. Ebenezer (Place of Rememberance)
The piece “Scar vs Ebenezer” captures my struggle to come to terms with the mastectomy that loomed in my future. Breast cancer affects every woman that it invades differently. There are so many different stages and grades and types of breast cancer; all of which make each journey unique. Each woman carries different attitudes and beliefs and feelings about their bodies and their womanhood. I think that plays a role in how we each wrestle with a breast cancer diagnosis, and especially how we feel about facing an unavoidable mastectomy.
For me, I pretty much tried everything I could think of to get out of it. I liked my body the way it was –the way God had created it to be. The way He had created ME to be. Everything looked so fine from the outside. And I thought that when I the original lump was excised and the Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma was all still encased in the flat rubbery tumor that was cut out of me that I’d escaped any further need for surgery. How wrong I was.
When both of my breast cancer doctors made it clear that I had to have a breast MRI to really see what was happening in my left breast underneath the smoothly formed exterior, I balked. I did not want to have the gadolinium put into me. I am ultra-sensitive to everything, so I tried to find a way around having one. I had heard of a new 3-D ultrasound called QT Imaging that was being used by a clinic in Nevada and supposedly, another in Michigan, I tried to go that route. But, it was the weirdest thing. All I could reach were voicemails, and some without even the company name mentioned, and no one called me back. It was clear that the Lord had closed that door and that I needed to walk through Delnor Hospital’s doors and be slid into their MRI machine, face down and backwards.
God took good care of me. I did not have any negative reaction to the contrast. (Although, I did do things to help my body detox from it afterwards.) And, He gave me the sweetest technician, who gave me a big hug after I was finished. I thought it was for enduring the MRI, but later the thought crossed my mind that she had seen my MRI pictures and maybe her hug was for more than my being a stellar patient!
The next day I was scheduled for another diagnostic mammogram and another ultrasound. Both yielded nothing of significance at all, but the Radiologist was the same doctor who had seen my breast MRI. After he talked to me about the ultrasound not being able to pick up any of the 3mm-6mm foci found on the MRI, he did something quite rare. He let me go to his office with the technician to see what he was seeing on my MRI. When he did, I immediately understood why the sweet tech from the day before had hugged me. My MRI on my left side looked like it was a Christmas tree all lit up with bright yellow lights, but only on the entire left side of my left breast. Another nurse that I talked to a few days later explained that the way that the contrast was quickly drawn into all those spots was very similar to the way that my tumor received the contrast in the lab, and that was all indicative that I was likely dealing with more cancer and not just benign areas.
When I met with both of my breast cancer doctors they both told me that what the MRI showed meant that I needed a total mastectomy on that side. My breast surgeon helped me understand why even if those spots were DCIS (an extremely early stage that some physicians don’t even consider cancer) that she still strongly recommended that I have a mastectomy. She said that when they see such a “busy breast” – that’s the term she used, it indicates a diseased breast, especially when the other side was so completely clear.
You would think that would be enough and that I’d have my surgery scheduled before leaving the medical building, but I really was not mentally or emotionally ready to accept that I had to have a mastectomy. So, I researched and I saw a naturopathic physician and then I scheduled what I expected to be a $650.00 hour call with a functional MD who supposedly specializes in breast cancer. I spent a whole day filling out health history and every kind of health form there is for this doctor, uploading my pathology and radiology reports etc., all to see if she had successfully walked others through a wholistic journey that could somehow dissolve these tiny, possibly DCIS foci.
And….well, I kind of wonder if God might be chuckling even as I write what happened. When my anxiously awaited telehealth Zoom call finally arrived and I got logged on with her, she was sitting on an exercise ball in her office, bouncing as she began her time with me, and then she got a cell phone call that she had to take. It was all extremely distracting, and just felt so unprofessional. When I finally kind of had her attention between bounces, I asked her if she had been able to go through my records –because all I wanted to know was whether or not she would also recommend a mastectomy based on my MRI or if through diet and detoxing etc. etc. she could help me turn this around—she said, “Oh no, I haven’t looked at anything. This is just a consult to see if you are a good fit to work with me.” I couldn’t believe it, but got off the call as quickly as I could. I knew for sure that whether or not she thought she’d want to work with me, I knew that I did not want to work with her. Slam! That door was most certainly closed and it was the last escape hatch to try. But the thing is, God was so good to let me knock on the door, try the handle, put my shoulder to it with all those hours of health history questions etc. He let me process and try detours in my own way, knowing all along what I would need to do, but not forcing me into it. He knew me and what I needed to come to the point that I was ready to bow my head and go through the conventional medicine door, which for me included this radical surgery and as I’d find out a month or so later, radiation too.
The slammed door didn’t make what was ahead of me any easier to face, but it did make me 100% sure that having a total mastectomy—not even skin sparing or nipple sparing because of where some of the larger foci were—was the reality I had to bring honestly to the Lord through many tears and much apprehension. He gently helped me to take the steps I needed to. Writing Scar vs Ebenezer was part of the process that He gave me to sort through how I might be able to live with a scar across my chest on one side and what I was afraid would be a marred appearance that would grieve me over and over when I saw it. By God’s grace, that has not been the case. I am still me and I have accepted my flat closure and very flat chest on my left, thankful that I didn’t have to have a double mastectomy and thankful that the cancer was revealed and dealt with early. Thankful that His sacrificial love for me, and His being marred beyond that of any man, all helped me be able to sacrifice one part of me so the rest of me could live. I hope when you read my book and get to this piece it will help you cherish Jesus’ sacrifice on your behalf and perhaps help you to live more sacrificially, too.
