In conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness month, redshirt senior women's water polo player, Christina Reyes, writes a raw, touching story about how breast cancer has effected her family. 

By UC Irvine women's water polo player Christina Reyes
 
It was the evening of Dec. 5, 2018, it was raining and the sky was a deep blue, grey color. The sun was sleeping early that night. I had some old jeans on, black slip-on tennis shoes, and my fuzzy Patagonia sweater. I was reluctant to use my Razor scooter in the rain. I've fallen before, so I had to walk and so did my lab partner to the University Town Center. We had decided, after hours of studying in Humanities Gateway, to get a bowl of Ramen. We knew it would fill up our bellies and fuel our tired heads, while warming our frozen fingertips. My hair was wet because the Synchilla Patagonia does not have a hood. Despite my wet head and cold, achy fingers, I was staying warm enough from the rain. But I wasn't prepared for the chill I'd get when my dad called me that night, nothing could have. 
 
I heard the news when I wasn't with my family but I was away at school. It was the week before finals in the fall quarter of my sophomore year at UC Irvine. I wasn't playing water polo at the time, my finger was black, blue, broken and useless. I hadn't decided I was going to take the year off of competition yet and was still trying to play that season. 
 
My Dad called me that night when we were waiting for our table. I stepped outside to talk to him, and left my friend alone in the noodle house with my scooter. We are on the phone for under a minute, when my Dad tells me that my mom has breast cancer.
 
I asked, tears streaming down my face and my hands shaking, "Should I come down to Temecula to be there." 
 
"Is it bad?"
 
"Is she going to have her breasts cut off or go through chemotherapy?" 
 
Studying became more difficult for the remainder of the quarter and thoughts about genetics and chemistry were not flooding my head anymore. My mom, my rock, the person who I call when I get a bad grade, when I have a hard practice, the person who fills up the fridge when I am coming home from college for the weekend, the person who takes care of everyone, a pediatric nurse, one of the strongest people I know, a literal superhero has cancer, again. 
 
She already battled Cervical Cancer back in 2014. Not only was my mom diagnosed with breast cancer, but my grandmother, her mom, was diagnosed a couple years prior after having an abnormal yearly checkup. With my mom, she found the lump in her breast while washing her armpit during a shower months before her yearly checkup. Luckily, it was caught in the beginning stages, but we had no idea that the recovery would take over the next two years of her life—six surgeries later. 
 
She chose to have a double mastectomy after hours of research, and being the nurse she is, she doesn't jump into medical decisions without multiple opinions and talking with her nursing carpool group. 
 
The original date was scheduled for late January. I missed practice for that. Not only was I supporting my mom in her surgery but I was there to say goodbye to my passing great aunt. They were in the same hospital that day, just different floors. While we were upstairs with my Aunt, my mom was having her preoperational procedure to locate the sentinel node—the complementary procedure before going into surgery and actually making the first cut. During the dye study, from upstairs in the hospital room of my sick aunt, my two sisters, my dad, and I heard word from my mom from a frantic phone call that she was not having the surgery that day. There were signs of cardiac distress, and she needed to be worked up and cleared by cardio before going under. 
 
About a month after the first unnecessary procedure, she was finally cleared by cardio with a normal stress test. They successfully removed her monster and were able to spare all her nodes except one sentinel node; the cancer had not spread that far and there was going to be little chance of certain postoperative complications like lymphedema. A biopsy was taken to measure the grade of the tumor's aggression—a low grade tumor it turned out—and  she was sent home, but with little painkillers and drains poking out of both sides of her chest, close to her armpits. 
 
Postoperative complications are common in double mastectomies and the technique used to rebuild a chest that was concave contributes a large portion of the recovery time in the weeks following the surgeries. The chance of infection or rejection of the surgery are major components to watch out for in mastectomy caces. In her case the tissue began to die around the incision area—necrotic tissue. This required another surgery. And after that another surgery to remove a broken expander and risky tissue graft. She switches surgeons after the third surgery. 
 
The new surgeon, Dr. Wallace—a breast cancer specialist at the Komen Family Outpatient Center at UCSD—decides to redo the whole reconstruction, and she has two more surgeries to fix the messy work of the previous surgeon. Everything that could go wrong with the previous surgeon, did go terribly wrong. And she still has one, last and final surgery to actually put the implants in, scheduled for December of this year.
 
Since I wasn't living at home anymore, all the news was received through the sound waves and I always felt guilty for not being there; helping my dad take care of my mom; making her meals, talking with her while she was bed ridden, and helping out around the house. Even if I was home during this time, I wouldn't have been much help, considering the injury with my dominant hand had taken me out of lifting objects above five pounds. It was only my finger, but there were a lot of complications that prolonged the healing process for me. This was something my mom and I both were dealing with; being unable to live and carry out our normal lives because these setbacks prevented us from doing our jobs and in my case the sport I loved.  
 
Just this year, during the pandemic, my Aunt and my mom's sister, was diagnosed with breast cancer, but it too was caught early enough, just like my mom and grandmother. Instead of undergoing the grueling and aggressive treatment for breast cancer—she chose to have the cancer removed with a lumpectomy and radiation. They all have to take medication for five years, every day to ensure that the cancer is indeed gone. My Aunt, since her procedures, has had no complications and is doing well and recovering fast. 
 
Breast cancer did not take my Mom's life, my Grandmother, or my Aunt's, but it took a toll on their bodies, minds, and my family. I don't like to consider their battles with cancer in terms of myself, but my mom's struggles were my struggles. She was always on my mind and at times those thoughts were taking me away from focusing on school. To make matters worse, I wasn't able to use my sport as an outlet and a distraction from the health issues of my mother. 
 
Breast Cancer will continue to haunt us when my sisters, my cousins and I are older because of the early onset breast cancer of my Mom and Aunt and the familial links that connect all their cases together. Fortunately, we are all entitled to early screening which will begin in our early to mid-thirties. 
 
With due time, the scars will fade, but the experience has scarred my family's hearts and my own. Those scars linger and are more difficult to heal than ones that rest on the skin's surface.