I'm on auto-pilot, Cancer's gonna drive

How did I feel at that point? I really don’t know exactly. I was on auto-pilot. She kept talking about how I shouldn’t go on the internet as it would just work me up and to wait until I spoke with the onco-surgeon before I started doing my own investigating. I had an appointment for the Monday blah blah blah. I hang up the phone, stand up, look around and take a deep breath. I have to mention here that so many people have had very strong opinions on the fact that it was the receptionist who informed me of my diagnosis and that it was over the phone! Remember, I asked her to have that conversation with me and I am grateful to her for doing so. As anyone with a similar experience can attest to, there's no good way or right way to deliver that news and there's no ideal surroundings to be in when you hear it. It just is and I can't imagine having to have waited another 3 days to hear the same words, that would have been much more agonizing. I don't peel a band aid back slowly, I rip it off; same concept here.

On auto-pilot, I pulled my boss out of the meeting he was in, walked with him to his office, went in and closed the door. Out of my mouth came the following: I tested positive. For what, he asked. For cancer. I have breast cancer. He hugged me and was obviously upset, told me to go home and deal with it and he’d wait to hear from me when I was ready. I packed up my stuff and left the office. I wasn’t at this point even allowing myself to think. I was acting matter of fact about it in my head. I stared at my phone for a while. Do I call Shawn and tell him? It was the middle of the afternoon and he was at work. How about my parent’s? My brother? My friends? Where did I go from here? I called Carm first. I told her. She was shocked as I knew every person that loves me would be. We didn’t speak long but now I had the second conversation about this over, it was time to call Shawn. I did and I told him. There was no way around that. I couldn’t call him and tell him to come home as he knew I was waiting for the results and I wouldn’t be able to just not tell him. All he said was “I’m on my way.” We hung up and I kept driving. I pulled in to our driveway just after him. He must’ve flown because I was already on the highway when I called him. There was no way he should’ve got home ahead of me, but there he was. We walked in to the house together and just collapsed into each others arms sobbing. He was so upset and just writing about this is making me upset again, for the first time in the retelling of this journey, certainly not the last time. We cried and cried together and I remember holding him and telling him that this probably wasn’t even the worst thing we were gonna go through together and that everything would be okay. He must’ve felt so helpless and so angry that he couldn’t take this away for me. I was outside when I called my mum. She was obviously very distraught and said she had been so sure it wasn’t cancer! The thing about my mum is that she would appear to the outside world to be pretty soft. My dad, myself, and my brother all have very strong personalities in comparison, but the truth is that my mum is the rock; she’s the glue that holds us together and she’s the strong one, really. She informed me that my dad was going out after work with friends and she didn’t know whether to call him and tell him or not. I asked her not to as I could already see how that would go down. The people close to me are expecting this news, so for my mum to have to call my dad and say come home, but not tell him what was happening just simply wasn’t gonna happen. So, what? She calls him and tells him his only daughter has cancer? And he has to sit on the Go train from downtown to Ajax with that in his head? Say someone brushes against him while he’s going through this and he slams some poor soul against a wall? None of us need that and I just thought that these last few blessed hours of ignorance would be a gift. I’d still have cancer when he got home and I’d still have it tomorrow, why the rush to bring his world crashing down around him? My mum was okay with not having him with her right then, again, tough as nails that woman! She did tell my brother that night, but he waited to call me as I think he just didn’t know what to say to me and what I would be going through right then. I was thankful that my mum told him and not me. I love my brother so so much and we're very close and I know that my brother has always looked up to me and I've looked out for him. I just didn’t know how I’d handle having to tell him that. It wouldn’t have been an easy conversation to get through. I didn’t want to talk to my dad about it at all! I was holding it together relatively well and that would surely come to an abrupt end the moment I had to talk to him. I’m very close to both my parent’s, but my relationship with my dad is different than with my mum. My mum has always been more of a super-cool friend than a 'mum'. I can tell her anything and everything and I do and she gives me good feedback and advice. There are no taboo topics between us, I've tried shocking her my whole life and it's just never happened, which has made it very easy to go to her with any and all issues as she has never judged me for any of it. I can't believe I'm writing this, but whatever, I'll give you an example: At fifteen I asked her what she’d do if I got pregnant. I remember we were driving when I dropped that question in her lap. She didn't even flinch. Keep in mind that I hadn’t even had sex yet and I was asking her this. She simply said that it would be a shock and I said, "Dad would kill me, I’d just have an abortion!" She told me no, not necessarily. Think about it; that would be his first grandchild you were ridding yourself of. At that age, I certainly never thought of it that way, I never thought any further than “My dad would kill me!” about most issues. It was then that I knew if I ever got pregnant by accident, I’d keep the kid. Ironic now that I don’t know if I’ll ever have them, but at 15, oblivious to the fact that I’d one day be dealing with cancer, I knew I’d be a mom. I still know that I’ll be a mom, it’s just whether or not I can give birth that has yet to be answered.
It wasn’t until the next day that I talked to my dad. My mum had told him the night before when he got home, so he had about 12 hours for it to sink in before we spoke. I’m going to keep that conversation private as it just is. It didn’t go quite as bad as I thought it would, he was trying very very hard to be strong which made it very very hard and that’s all I’m gonna say about it. That’s my dad and what he said to me at that point was just for me.