01: Morris

Morris, Angiosarcoma

Can you describe your Cancer experience?

I was very “busty” and in the shower my chest felt dense and lumpy. I thought nothing of it.

“This feels really weird, feel it”. My mom didn’t feel anything and ignored the situation.

One day, looking in the mirror, I could see a lump. I noticed a full lump a month or two later.

It was a medical mystery, in all of history there are only about 100 cases of Angiosarcoma in the breast in primary form. It was isolated in my breast and not present anywhere else.

What was the hardest part of your experience?

Body image.

Once I was starting to heal, once the drains were gone, I was looking in the mirror — facing what I had been through.

It wasn’t agreeing to surgery or having the actual surgery, but the most mentally challenging part was looking in the mirror.

Scared if what it would look like, scared of it being “disgusting” and “bloody”, I was never self conscious about my chest until I agreed to having a mastectomy.

I cried hysterically while signing that consent forms.

Now it’s more normal for me.

The scariest part are the scans. The anticipation. You know it’s coming, you know it’s uncomfortable and the results are anti-climatic, because there is so much waiting involved.

How do you mentally prepare yourself for a mastectomy?

Drugs. Anti-anxiety drugs. A lot of Klonopin, sleeping drugs, anti-depressants.

Describe the day you go your mastectomy.

I remember it had to be postponed a week because I had gotten dermatitis from all the procedures I had. That week was really difficult because I had been mentally preparing and I had to readjust my perspective.

Part of my identity as a women was being taken away.

I remember being really nervous and not knowing what to expect. Knowing I had to stay in the hospital after was really nerve-wracking for me. I really didn’t know what to expect.

How has the experience changed your life and who you are as a person?

The biggest thing I realized was which friends are truly there for me. I really learned who mattered the most in my life.

I learned to value relationships and to accept them at face value. People are going to be who they are and that’s okay.

If people want to be there for you, then you matter to them and they matter to you.

Cancer at twenty-five.

It was … terrifying. I would cry for hours at a time, hours.

You don’t hear about twenty-somethings having cancer.

None of it seemed to make sense to me. Sometimes it was just, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I was in a dream, I couldn’t believe it was happening.

Relationships with family & friends.

Soon after surgery, friends and family told me that I should be working part-time, putting myself out there to “date more” and wanted me to be doing what they were doing, but I mentally couldn’t achieve or obtain it and that wasn’t understood.

I feel like I’m a little more removed from both, because it’s just so much harder to relate in terms of what I’ve been through and life stage.

Socializing has been very difficult for me. When you’re first getting to know people, they want to know about your occupation and since I was diagnosed, I haven’t worked, and that makes it difficult to talk around.

What is your relationship to cancer now?

I think my relationship with Cancer is still really complicated.

It’s made me much more health conscious, and more focused on supplementing my diet to make sure I get all the vitamins I need whereas before I don’t know that I cared as much.

In a lot of ways, I’m really grateful that I’m on the other side because I’ve learned a lot about myself and I would be trying to obtain different goals with my life than I am now. I don’t think I would be in as healthy of a head place as I am now-it’s forced me to examine a lot of my life and I don’t know if I’d been forced to do that otherwise.