“You have a better chance of winning the lottery than you do of having this cancer,” my doctor said as he read over my x-ray results. “And besides, this type of bone cancer is only diagnosed in seniors.” Those words were meant to reassure me. And he was right. Only six people across Canada were diagnosed with the same bone cancer as me that year, and every single one of them was an old fart. I have since become an avid lottery player.
In the medical community, my doctor’s attitude wasn’t the exception, it was the rule. Because of my age (I was 26), no one was in a rush to figure out what was causing my excruciating arm pain. Even me. I didn’t seek medical attention because I thought I had cancer; I sought it because I thought I had hurt myself rock climbing. That’s why I’m writing this post.
I survived bone cancer. This is my diagnosis story / cautionary tale.
In 2004 I signed up for a rock climbing class at the Y, but after a handful of classes, I started to feel a dull ache in the upper part of my right arm. The best way I can describe it is it felt as if I had slept funny. I wrote it off because, duh, humans aren’t built to climb walls. And also, have you seen my spaghetti arms?? They’re more like spaghettini if I’m being honest. I was not built to climb walls.
But weeks after I had quit the class, my arm still hurt.
The first doctor I saw agreed with my self-diagnosis. “Rotator cuff injury,” she said as she penned a prescription for an anti-inflammatory. (In her defense, she also said, “If this doesn’t resolve it, come back.”) A few days later, Health Canada added a warning for that exact medication that people with a heart condition mustn’t take it. I have a wee heart murmur so I flushed the pills, and when the pain didn’t go away, I reasoned that it was because I had stopped treatment mid-course.
But the pain didn’t just not go away. It got worse. Did I go back to the doctor, you ask? Of course not! Otherwise, this wouldn’t be a cautionary tale, right?
Instead, I started popping Advil and Tylenol like candy, and when those didn’t ease the pain, I’d call in sick to work. And then hubby and I took an eight-day road trip from Vegas to San Francisco. When I got back, my supervisor asked if my arm was still bothering me, and I answered, “Actually, no.” She made eyes at me as if she’d just cracked the case. Thinking she was on to something, I blamed my desk job for prolonging my rotator cuff recovery and found ways to avoid using my arm; I moved my mouse to the other side and tried to type one-handed. At home, I would walk my dog on my left, ask hubby to cut my steaks at dinner, and I stopped sleeping and… uh… doing other bedroom things on my sore side.
But the pain just got worse. Did I go back to the doctor yet? No, silly goose. Of course not!
I tried massage therapy, muscle relaxers, heat packs, frozen peas, Rub A535, Bengay, all the sports people and the old people ointments and creams and potions, but nothing helped. Then a friend recommended an acupuncturist. At the time, I thought alternative medicine was cockamamie horseshit, but she swore by him and sang his praises, and I was so desperate to make the pain stop I would’ve tried voodoo if the right friend had suggested it.
The acupuncturist was a burly Irish redhead with strong beefy arms who also gave me a deep tissue massage. “I don’t feel any problem areas,” he said, which is why I never forgot him. You see, I had told the same story to every masseuse, doctor, and friend—that I had hurt myself rock climbing—and they had all eaten up my self-diagnosis. But this acupuncturist with that simple sentence made me ask myself, “What if I’m wrong?”
I can’t tell you exactly how much time had elapsed between my rock climbing injury and when I finally returned to my doctor, but it was somewhere around six months. That was how long I had lived with pain from untreated cancer before coming to my senses.
By then, it no longer mattered to me what had caused the pain; climbing walls, sleeping weirdly, wild sex, or slicing filet minion. I could no longer move my arm without wincing because the pain had grown from a dull ache into a throbbing agony; it felt like a horse’s heart was throbbing hard inside my bone. It would wake me in the night and keep me up ‘till dawn, and there were moments it would literally take my breath away, leaving me winded and seeing stars. I couldn’t take it anymore.
My doctor held up my x-ray. “Whatever this is,” she said as she pointed to what I later learned was a giant malignant tumour, “it’s breaking your bone from the inside out.” She told me she had already sent a requisition for an MRI, but she was leaving the province and I’d need to find a new doctor to see it through. She handed me a painkiller prescription and a brown envelope with my medical records but held on tight until I met her gaze. “Raquel, there’s a tiny chance this is cancer. Do you understand? Do not put this off.”
After I left her office, a giant chunk of what happened, and in which order, is a big blur, but I clearly remember getting an MRI appointment for one year away. ONE FUCKING YEAR. My blood boils every time I think about that. I was 26 years old, and the chances of it being cancer were 0.02% (I’m not making up that percentage, btw. It was written at the bottom of my x-ray results). They would’ve had me live another year with untreated cancer because I didn’t tick off all the right boxes for them.
They didn’t care that on the small chance it was cancer, I would die. That if I died, my mother and father would outlive me, my 29-year-old husband would be a widower and a single father, and our sons who were 10 and 7 would grow up without their mother. They didn’t care that I was only 26 and I wanted to live. They didn’t even care that, at minimum, I could’ve turned into a drug addict by the time my appointment rolled around on account of the narcotics I was taking to cope with the pain—pain that they expected me to endure for a whole fucking year while waiting for an MRI.
“Let me help you,” said a good friend who then made me an appointment with her family physician, describing her as a scrappy, strong like bull, built like Russian streetcar type. In a thick Eastern European accent, Dr. Scrappy looked at my x-ray and said, “You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than having this cancer.” But she also said that that was no excuse to wait a year for the only exam that could rule it out. She rolled up her sleeves as if readying to punch someone in the face. “You wait here. I call radiologist.” And off she went. A few minutes later I heard her screaming (yes, screaming), “SIX MONTHS?? She could be DEAD in six months!!”
That was the moment I broke. Dr. Scrappy came back to find me sobbing. She tried to pacify me with news that she’d gotten my MRI moved to six months instead of a year. She also got me an appointment for a full body bone scan and a CAT scan, reasoning that based on the results, they’d be compelled to give me an MRI sooner. My ugly crying also scored me more painkillers. But the screaming battle she lost haunted me for years to come; it was the first of many times that I thought to myself, “I’m dying.”
High as a kite and armed with gut-wrenching fear, I altered my MRI requisition using a little cut and pasting and my workplace photocopier, and I faxed the fakes to every fucking hospital in Ontario. I found a new kick-ass family doctor and handed him a list of hospitals I’d sent my requisition to, and said, “I’d rather win the lottery than have old people cancer, obviously, but if you could please follow up on these, that’d be great.”
I didn’t stop at committing the punishable offense of forging medical documents. I also researched the cost of an MRI south of the border, asked my bestie if she’d come with me, and booked the appointment. As it turns out, I didn’t need to go across the border. I only needed to speak to the right person. This person shall remain unnamed, but they worked in government and made a phone call which resulted in every hospital where I had sent my forged MRI requisition calling me the very next day with an appointment as soon as the next week.
After the results of my first MRI came in, I landed the head guy of orthopedic surgery and oncology at a leading hospital in Toronto as my cancer dude. Over the next four weeks, I had two more MRIs, a CAT scan, a full body bone scan, a biopsy, a cancer diagnosis, major surgery, and a fistful of lottery tickets. The tumor was so big that during surgery, they didn’t know if they’d be able to save my arm. Upon analyzing the tumour, they categorized my cancer as stage 3; one stage away from being incurable. I could’ve died. And I was only 26….
When first diagnosed, I’d think to myself, “Why me?” But it didn’t take long for me to realize that the world would continue to rotate even if I wasn’t in it, and I instead started thinking, “Why not me? I’m not fucking special.” Facing your mortality is cruel. No one wants to feel insignificant, but that’s exactly how I felt as I watched people go on with their lives. (Whoa! I’m getting a little off course here!)
Here’s what I really want to say: (clears lump in throat) I could’ve died, I was only 26… yadda yadda yadda… which brings me back to why I’m writing this post.
I thought I had a rotator cuff injury, and without running any tests, so did my doctor. My friends agreed, as did the masseuses, and the burly Irish guy. And the radiologists wouldn’t give me the only test that could’ve ruled it out or diagnosed me in a timely fashion because, as everyone kept reminding me, I had a better chance of winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning.
Well, guess what? People DO get struck by lightning. People DO win the lottery. So if you’re willing to buy a lottery ticket, or if you take cover from thunderstorms, then you shouldn’t ignore, shrug off, or make excuses for symptoms. You also shouldn’t try voodoo. And don’t let your doctor prescribe you shit without running appropriate tests in a timely fashion because that’s dumb. You know what else is dumb? The no news is good news policy.
If you follow up by checking your lottery ticket to see if it’s a winner, why wouldn’t you follow up on your medical test results? You deserve answers no matter how bitchy the receptionist is (I’m talking to you, Crystal). And if you don’t have the spoons or willpower to fight, find a big-mouth best friend or government employee to do it for you.
Because people get hit by lightning. Because people win the lottery. And also, you’re not fucking special.
Please sponsor me for the Terry Fox Run: https://run.terryfox.ca/page/raquelrich
Read more about my experience: Ouchie! My (cancer) arm!
