Off My Chest

Author’s Note

Off My Chest is a work of non-fiction. The events and details described here are all true, and have been faithfully rendered as I remembered them. The names and identities have been changed, to protect the anonymity of the individuals involved. Conversations come from my recollection, and are not written to represent word-for-word documentation. They are retold to invoke the meaning and feeling of what was said, in keeping with the true spirit of these events.

Copyright © 2020 by Melinda Malone. All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-73439-620-1 (softcover)

ISBN: 978-1-73439-621-8 (ebook)

Table of Contents

Foreword by Deborah King

Prologue

Fear

Cancer On The Line

The Dreaded C-Word

Sanctuary

Faith or Fear?

Control

Surgery

The Graveyard Tree

Letting Go Of The Past

The Urge to Flee

Hiding and Pretending

Surrender

Faith Walk

Living On The Edge

Roar

VICTORY

This Is Over

A Beacon in the Darkness

Miraval

Cancer, My Friend

Miraval, Round Two

Spirit Flight

I lovingly dedicate this book to my amazing husband, who has proven big enough and brave enough to support my experience and my truth. Life, with or without breast cancer, isn’t always comfortable or pretty, but it can be beautiful even in the darkest and most challenging moments because, ultimately, love encompasses all.

Foreword

by Deborah King

Is there a divine plan for your life? Do you know who you really are, and what your true purpose is?

Melinda Malone was 41 years old, a Chicago mother of three young daughters, when she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. Unwilling to give up, she embarked on a quest to reclaim her health, well-being and ultimately her connection to a Higher Source.

How Melinda—Mindy to her family and friends—overcame double-mastectomy surgery, agonizing radiation and chemo treatments, the revelation of shocking family secrets, while struggling to raise her three girls and save her marriage, is the unforgettable true story inside the pages of Off My Chest.

Through cancer, Mindy discovered her true purpose. But this book isn’t just for the survivors of cancer. It’s for anyone facing down insurmountable adversity. Readers overwhelmed by low self-esteem, anger, depression or addiction will find the courage to overcome every opponent in their lives. Knocked down by her greatest fears, Mindy battled back with the weapon of tenacious hope. Facing suffering, she embraced cancer—not as her lethal foe, but as her friend, her teacher. Facing death, Mindy learned how to live.

The flip side of suffering is everlasting life, healing and freedom.

How do I unshackle my mind from fear, and overcome the negative issues that have chained me down? How do I find my authentic Self, and the person I was meant to be? These are a few of the questions Mindy wrestles with, in this lyrical, profoundly-moving memoir.

Mindy’s struggle through treatment and recovery, her journey within and beyond, is filled with mystery, mysticism, heartbreaking humor and brutal honesty. It is proof for all of us that healing anything is possible, and a riveting testimony to the power of truth, love and faith.

Off My Chest chronicles the life-affirming journey of a healer.

Mindy’s personal journey to healing begins on the next page. I invite you to take a front-row seat, and experience firsthand a celebration of life like no other. Reading this book, and not being moved, motivated and forever changed by it, is simply not an option.

***

Because I can…

and this is what happened……..

Prologue

I think you have breast cancer.

Falling……..

Falling…….

Falling……

Squeeze.

The squeeze of the doctor’s hand in mine and her gentle words, You’re going to be okay, were enough to stop my plunge, my freefall into darkness. But her next words to the ultrasound tech—She needs a biopsy and a breast surgeon right away—sent me spinning into an alternate reality that would take me years to crawl back from.

My eyes remained glued to the image from the ultrasound. An ice-cold panic spread through me. The doctor’s voice seemed to echo from faraway.

Mindy? Are you okay?

Breathe. Just breathe, I told myself. This can’t be happening. I’m only 41 years old! I have a husband, and three young girls. Yes, I’ve had breast implants and complications, resulting in five surgeries. But they were for cosmetic reasons, and the doctor told me my saline implants would be safe.

Mindy?

My eyes flew to meet the doctor’s. My mind gasped out the single silent word. Cancer. In horror I stared at the ultrasound screen, struggling to turn away. This should have been a simple, second-look mammogram. Now my brain was reeling without control, wanting to flee, wanting to run.

Get a grip, Mindy. Breathe.

Over the next seven hours the doctors and techs at Lynn Sage Breast Screening Center biopsied my left breast and a suspicious-looking lymph node. What had begun as a simple call-back—for a most often non-concerning peek back at something they probably hadn’t seen on my recent mammogram—had become a maze, a twisting web of dark hallways and shadowy doors and diagnoses that left my brain dizzy.

I kept breathing, trying to control my fear. I felt the eyes of the doctors and the nurses searching my face with concern. Didn’t they know I was late for the Spring Fun Run at my daughter’s school? And what about my jeans? I had specifically selected them today because people who wear True Religion jeans don’t get breast cancer!

Dear God, I silently prayed, why now? Couldn’t this wait until the girls were older? Until they’re grown? How had this happened to me?

The other woman in the biopsy waiting room looked as terrified as I felt. We said nothing to each other. I looked out the window of the waiting room from a high story of the women’s hospital in Chicago. The city hustled and bustled below—people the size of ants scurrying around, Matchbox cars and taxis crowding the street, a hazy daydream of constant movement—all oblivious to the fact that my life had come to a screaming halt.

The day had no end. I wandered from one biopsy to the next, the rooms getting grayer and grayer. I don’t want to be here. Please, let me go home! As I disappeared deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the clinic, I transitioned from fabulous city mom of three girls under the age of ten to my worst nightmare.

Breast cancer patient.

Get a grip, Mindy. Breathe.

Outside the final exam room I stood, frozen in disbelief. Suddenly I felt the urge to yell Stop! to everything, to the world spinning out of control. At that moment, all hope of a normal future life—as a mom, a wife, a woman with epic plans—evaporated. I desperately needed somebody to intervene. How had my life come to this?

I’m dying. I’m dying from cancer.

I pushed the door open, and stepped in.

Falling……

***

book One

Fear

Chapter One

Cancer

On The Line

MAY 2013, CHICAGO.

F

lipping through the morning mail,

the letter from the breast screening center caught my eye. Scanning the contents, it looked innocent. We want to take a closer look at something, most often non-concerning, the letter read, so please schedule a follow-up mammogram.

I groaned. Yet the voice in my mind was reassuring. Don’t worry, Mindy. It usually turns out to be nothing.

Holding the letter tight in my fist and re-scanning it, a few words lingered on my tongue. Follow-up mammogram. Non-concerning.

I brushed them off. All right. I’ll go. No biggie, right?

It all started with the disastrous breast implant I had been dealing with for the past several years. In fact, I was scheduled for surgery in just a few weeks to switch my Mommy Makeover saline breast implants to the silicone variety. I had experienced countless problems and endured five surgeries on my left breast to repair the damage done by my plastic surgeon; he had failed to recognize the significance of the crusty discharge coming from my nipples. To the properly-trained eye, this would have signaled a residual bacteria colony from almost a year ago, left over from breastfeeding my third baby. The implants should have waited until the infection cleared.

Should have.

Now my right saline implant had recently ruptured, after the multiple complications and continuous infection of my left implant. By the next day, it had noticeably deflated. Clearly, my left breast was not happy and had been trying to tell me something for a long time. Now my right breast was joining the chorus! Five surgeries later, and staring down a sixth, I’d spontaneously decided to call for a mammogram.

Knowing I didn’t want to have my breasts crushed in a mammogram machine anytime soon after this next surgery, I spontaneously called the toughest mammography clinic in the city to get into, Northwestern Prentice Women’s Hospital, notorious for their 8-month wait. Lo and behold, they had just gotten a cancellation! Oh, but wait a minute, was it an appointment that could accommodate implants?

Oh, wow, the female voice on the other end of the line gushed, it’s your lucky day! I do have an opening for implant imaging tomorrow at two. Can you make it?

Can I? Yes!

I took the spot, worrying how I’d explain to the imaging techs what they would find—a very messed-up and damaged breast from the multiple surgeries and infection. But it will all be benign, my mind reassured itself. I’ll have the procedure, go home, and get on with my life. After all, getting in for a last-minute mammogram was a miracle. And I hadn’t felt anything wrong or suspicious—although the night before my follow-up appointment, in bed, I instinctively ran my hand across my left implant. For a split second, I felt something spongy with my fingers on the upper left one o’clock position by my armpit, and a moment of fear flashed through my mind. But my anxiety quickly vanished, and I fell into a deep and unworried sleep, hopeful that a good night’s rest would bring clarity and an uneventful exam.

The next morning, as I sat in the chilly sage-green waiting room for my second-look mammogram, filling out paperwork, I wanted to drop through the cracks in the floor. Time slowed. A gnawing, deepening anxiety rippled through me. I was sure it was all a mistake. Just precautionary. That I’d walk out of there in an hour, as most of the other women did, fine. Just fine.

Mindy Malone? the nurse poked her head into the waiting room.

Yes. That’s me, I gulped.

I was escorted down a hall, to a sage-green locker room, where other women were putting on hospital gowns. Removing my shirt, I donned a similar gown. My own disposable uniform, I realized with a shiver, as though I was now leaving my old identity behind, and becoming like these other women: cold, uncomfortable, and embarrassed.

An hour later, returned to the chilly waiting room, I was confused. The second-look mammogram had seemed routine. I shared small-talk with the woman who crushed my breasts into the machine. I returned to the green waiting room with the magazines and the friendly receptionist, certain everything went fine. Moments later, my name was called, and I was escorted back to a separate waiting room, deeper in the clinic.

What’s going on? I thought. This waiting room was more like a cubicle, with fewer chairs. Nervous, I sat as close to the exit as I could. There was another very chatty young woman in the cubicle waiting with me. She talked about how she had gone through this process many times before. But they never find anything, she announced with a smile. She wouldn’t stop talking and they kept calling my name, taking me into the mammogram room multiple times, each time taking more and more views from many different angles.

This is taking a long time, I thought, my patience running thin. Again and again I was called back for another mammogram. I have plans and places I need to be! I don’t have time for this! Finally the young chatty woman moved on and I didn’t, and it was silent and I was alone. I started to feel nervous and wanted to tell the doctor behind the scenes about my implant disaster and the scarring she was probably seeing.

As the hours rolled past, I felt a deepening sadness. Pacing the waiting room, I wished my husband Dylan hadn’t forgotten his cell phone at home. I was completely cut off from Dylan and the girls, who would be waiting for me at their school. The last-minute babysitter for my youngest daughter, Ashlynn, couldn’t stay any later at my house. Thankfully, Marie—my very best friend and neighbor in Chicago—answered her phone. She immediately reassured me, I’ll grab Ashlynn and bring her to the Fun Run. Relax! Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll meet you at school.

Hanging up, I did a double-take. Relax? How? What started with naive and mindless chitchat in the second-look process had turned into silence. I was anxious about what was taking so long, and why the doctor kept ordering me back into the special mammogram room for more views. Clearly I don’t belong here. What they’re seeing is just old scarring! I can certainly explain all of that.

With too much time to think, my mind raced. Though I knew all about breast implants and the dangers, I had been relatively clueless about breast cancer. With no known family history, I didn’t worry about it much and never thought it would happen to me. Unfortunately, all the women I knew with breast cancer—like my mom’s lifelong best friend and the beloved minister who had married my husband and me and baptized all three of our daughters—had died. Realizing this now, my heart felt crushed by the weight.

As I sat in the waiting room cubicle, anxious because of the long and tortuous route it had taken to reach this closed area, my eyes gazing again and again to the exit, it began to feel as if I were lost in the middle of a maze—a twisting and ever-changing labyrinth that was emotionally drawing me deeper and deeper toward death. Once inside this maze there was no turning back. The only way out was to go forward. To get through this. But what happens when I pass behind the last door? Will I run into a dead end? The thought terrified me.

After what seemed like an eternity, I heard my name called again. Rising reluctantly, I was escorted into the ultrasound room.

The technician said very little as she went about the procedure, and I couldn’t tell what I was looking at on the screen. It just appeared to be a lot of black and white squiggles. Finally the doctor came in. She scanned the ultrasound. My stomach tightened. Nodding in seeming approval, she remained silent. Everything must be okay, I thought, breathing a sigh of relief.

I was getting up and walking out when she said, matter-of-factly, I think you have breast cancer. The words stunned me. Breast cancer? Me? Then she turned to her assistant and added, She needs a biopsy and a breast surgeon, right away.

Suddenly I felt my heart cave in. I felt doomed. I scanned the assistant, then the ultrasound imaging, in a complete state of shock.

I couldn’t wrap my brain around what the doctor had just said. My knees buckled, and I almost fell, but the doctor grabbed my hand and squeezed and gently said, You’re going to be okay. That steadied me. Still, I couldn’t believe it. Cancer. She said she might be able to get me in for a biopsy today and asked if that would work for me. I said yes because I wanted to know now. I didn’t want to suffer waiting days for a next appointment.

Suddenly I was in the next waiting room for the biopsy. There sat another woman who looked as scared as I felt, but we said nothing to each other. What was she supposed to be doing today? On the table I noticed a landline phone. But with Dylan leaving his cell at home that morning, both the phone on the table and the one in my hand were useless. Darn you, Dylan! Why today? I griped, looking out the window from high above the street, watching the people scurry like ants far below, and feeling alone.

As I pondered this, I was called into the biopsy room, which felt like it was in the center of another maze, a squared gridlock of monitors, machines and metal.

As I lay on my side for the ultrasound-guided core biopsy, I could see the tumor on the imaging screen. It was foreign-looking, spiky and cold, like an alien space-age sea urchin. It didn’t feel connected to me at all. That’s not me. That can’t be me. They used what looked like a needle gun to painfully extract something from my breast. IT HURT.

The technician said very little and again I couldn’t tell what I was looking at on the monitor. All the while, the all-female team of nurses and doctors in the heart of the operation center watched me with knowing eyes and spoke in quiet conversations that made me very uncomfortable—It can’t be me they’re whispering about—yet despite their seriousness they all felt very loving, compassionate, and on my side. I had a deep sense they cared and were really trying to help me.

Though everybody was professional and doing their best to set me at ease, I was panicked. I craved home more than I’d ever craved anything. I tried to control my throbbing heart, but couldn’t seem to breathe in or out.

Next I was escorted down the hall to my own room, where the nurse started