My goal with this whole NaBloPoMo thing was to write some random funny anecdote for each day. For that reason, this post doesn’t really fit in with the rest of them at all.

My mom has breast cancer.

That’s what yesterday’s post was all about, and thanks to the people who emailed me to check on me and make sure I was ok. I wasn’t trying to be cryptic, but the news sort of stunned me and I couldn’t figure out how to put everything I was feeling into words.

Here’s what I know:
Sometime last month, my mom found a weird bump on her nipple. She went to her general practitioner about it, who gave her a round of antibiotics, and told her that if it didn’t go away completely by the time she finished them, she should come back in for a mammogram. It didn’t, and so she did. Her doctor looked at the mammogram results and said she was pretty sure it was nothing – a cyst, maybe, nothing to be concerned about. But just to be safe, she referred my mom to a breast surgeon.

The surgeon took one look at my mom’s mammogram and said she was 95% sure that she has Paget’s disease, a very rare form of breast cancer. They took a biopsy, and we’ll find out the results either tomorrow or Monday.

I knew about all of this as it was happening, but I have to admit that the news really shocked me. My mom has had some weird skin things in the past, so I figured this was along those lines. Some minor skin problem that she’d need an ointment for, but otherwise nothing. When she called me yesterday to say that it’s cancer, I almost dropped the phone. I was absolutely gobsmacked.

Her prognosis is excellent. We have every reason to believe that it was caught early, so she should be fine. However, because this type of cancer is in the ducts of the breast, it means she’s looking at a full mastectomy, and possibly a preventative mastectomy of the other breast as well. Again, this is all stuff that we’ll know more about after the biopsy results come back.

My mom is staying pretty positive about it so far. She said that when she was my age, the thought of losing her breasts would’ve been the end of the world, but now it doesn’t seem like such a horrible thing. She’s mostly dreading the surgery, because the anaesthesia always makes her ill, and then there’s the pain afterward, etc. My sister is planning to fly down to help out when she has the surgery – I really want to go, but I think that with Cate there, I wouldn’t be a very good nurse, and I certainly don’t want to add to my mom’s stress level.

Mostly, I’m worried about my dad. He is such a worrywart, and he’s so dependent on my mom. He’s trying really hard to be stoic for her sake, and I’m afraid that with something this big, he’s going to silently fret himself a stomach ulcer or worse.

So that’s what’s going on. If any of you guys are into praying or sending positive thoughts or whatever, they’d really be appreciated right now. I’ll update with more information as I know it.

P.S. I’m definitely not pregnant. But y’all are funny for thinking that’s what I was freaking out about.