Elephants and Tea - December 2019 - 26

Dear Cancer...

Dear Cancer,
So much to say about 'being touched by
cancer.' My letter covers my own cancer
journey and that of my son. We were both
young adults with cancer. I survived. He
didn't. Here is our story.
As a survivor: I was a young adult with
cancer....in 1978...at age 25...now, some
41 years ago. In fact, I have had cancer
six times: 3x breast cancer and 3x thyroid
cancer.
I was work i ng at my d rea m job as a
newspaper food ed itor a nd restau ra nt
crit ic in t he Chicago suburbs, mov ing
from my hometown of Kansas City, Mo.,
to take this job. My doctor felt a lump in
my neck during an exam. It was still there
2 weeks later, and then, he knew it wasn't
an inf lammation, but something else. He
wanted to know - did I ever have radiation
treatments, which increased my chances of
having cancer by almost 100%.

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DECEMBER 2019

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I did have radiation treatments for acne
during high school and after college. But
they were 'light treatments.' Eventually,
t he dermatologist admitted to me t hat
these visits where I laid on a table with a
lead vest on my chest were indeed radiation. The vest supposedly protected my
chest but not my neck...thus, the thyroid
cancer. And in the late 1960s, this treatment was accepted.
So, from 1978 - 2009, I had three surgeries for thyroid cancer: removal of my thyroid gland, removal of a lump, and finally,
a neck dissection, which is removing all the
lymph nodes on the right side of my neck
where my cancer appeared. Over the years,
I had two rounds of radioactive iodine, the
'chemo' of sorts for this type of cancer.
DCIS breast cancer followed a similar
path with two separate lumpectomies, one
round of radiation, and finally, a mastectomy and reconstruction of my left breast, the
saga of my breast health from 1999-2011.

I have been lucky. My cancer has always
been somewhat localized and treatable.
Always. No one ever told me I was going to
die, for which I feel quite lucky. The fear of
dying always surfaced in my mind, because
as a cancer patient and survivor, I always felt
the next time would be it. The thyroid scan
or mammogram would uncover something
else, a new cancer, lump or cancer issue.
So far, it hasn't. Yet, I still suspect, eventually, this reprieve may dissolve into a new
diagnosis of cancer, of cancer that could
claim my life.
As a parent: Now, my story segues to my
son, Max Mallory. He did not experience
the same outcome in his cancer journey.
Ma x traveled a seven-month path from
cancer diagnosis to his death of advanced
testicular cancer. He died at age 22, almost
one month from his 23rd birthday in 2016.
Max was born with one testicle, like his
father, Chuck Mallory. Thus, he had a genetic predisposition for cancer (me) and for
cryptorchidism (his dad), the medical term
for undescended testis. His dad never had
cancer, and discovered at age 21, the undescended testicle had atrophied.
Max had surgery at around 13 months to
look for this testicle, which we learned did
not exist, according to the pediatric surgeon
who performed the surgery.
Thus, life continued with no pediatrician
ever asking about this missing testicle or
checking for it. Max lived in three different
cities during his young life, moves based on
me relocating for career moves. Although
his father and I divorced in the late 1990s,
he was always with us in the same city. We
raised our boys (Max has an older brother
John, now age 33) together. Max saw doctors on a regular basis, and to be honest, we
didn't worry about Max having one testicle.
We thought he never did.

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Elephants and Tea - December 2019

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