That was just kind of a surprise when the doctor said, 'We did a biopsy on your appendix, and you have cancer.'
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When the doctor told me I had cancer, I was scared.
I have been unexpectedly confronted with my own mortality as I was told that I had cancer.
In 2002, my daughter was diagnosed with a rare form of colon cancer. And it was such a shock, a surprise to us.
I was quite thin, and I didn't have to worry until I had my appendix out and a mysterious metabolic change occurred.
The moment the doctor said he wanted to do a biopsy, in my heart I thought I'd probably got it. But I also know a lot of people who have also had prostate cancer, so I had a reasonably good idea what to expect.
When our bodies are violated by this horrible disease of cancer, we're in total shock because it's so unexpected.
The diagnosis was immediate: Masses matting the lungs and deforming the spine. Cancer. In my neurosurgical training, I had reviewed hundreds of scans for fellow doctors to see if surgery offered any hope. I'd scribble in the chart 'Widely metastatic disease - no role for surgery,' and move on. But this scan was different: It was my own.
The day in 2004 when the radiologist told me I had invasive cancer, I walked down the hospital corridor looking for a phone to call my husband, and I could almost see the fear coming toward me like a big, black shadow.
My doctor found a spot on my lung. He told me it looked like adenocarcinoma, a cancer he attributes to smoking. He didn't need to biopsy it.
The doctor told me, 'You have breast cancer.' I heard the cancer part first - it was only later that I heard the breast part. I couldn't believe it.