“To begin, they put a port in. I had 16 treatments total, and I had to give blood every week as well. Then, I’d sit there for 4 hours. I watched a lot of Breaking Bad, and I could never eat for hours after...just bread or bananas.”
Thuy never imagined that this would be how she’d spend her mid-twenties. She didn’t imagine sitting alone in a hospital room while being told the lump found in her breast was, in fact, cancer. She didn’t imagine the hardest decision she’d make was whether she should do chemo or opt out.
“There is no right or wrong answer to accepting or declining chemo treatment,” she says, in a surprisingly lighthearted and apparently unbothered tone as she recalls about the few short months that changed her world. “I contacted everyone I knew with a medical background. No one wanted to give me an answer. Everyone was too scared.”
She pauses, and looks to me to fill the silence. Just as I hoped, I don’t say a word, so she carries on with her thought.
“Chemo feels like a really bad flu. You know the flu feeling when you just can’t move? That’s it. And you’re on the flu every week because they keep giving it to you.”
Thuy’s dog, Mickey Mouse, has been napping at my feet during our conversation, except when Thuy left to feed the meter. Mickey paced anxiously in the room until she returned. Thuy smiles at that when I tell her.
“Oh yeah. Mickey has been there for me more than anyone. He sat with me during every chemo session.”
Thuy went to high school in the San Joaquin Valley town of Visalia, California, until she moved on to earn her undergrad in Biological Sciences at UC Davis.
“After graduation, I got a job as Assistant Scientist at Marrone Bio Innovations, but I learned as much as I could and I wanted to go back to school.” She got accepted to a Master's program at San Francisco State, and saved enough money to take the summer off to relax and prepare for her move.
“Everything changed at once for me.” By now, Thuy has placed both hands flat on the table as if she’s bracing herself for the words that are about to follow. “I quit my job one day in June, ended a bad six-year relationship in July, and found a lump in August. August 26th, to be exact.”
In between work and school, Thuy was temporarily uninsured at the time of diagnosis.
Coming from a low-income family and having spent all of her savings on treatment, she began exploring local resources she could lean on after her mastectomy. Her social worker mentioned Project Open Hand, and shortly after beginning chemo, Thuy was getting meals with love delivered to her home.
Thuy's Korean bulgogi pork tacos, made almost entirely of items from Project Open Hand's Grocery Center
“I used to eat fast food and drink energy drinks.” Her voice seems to get louder as she continues. “It’s because of Project Open Hand’s creative, prepared meals that I started cooking, and now it’s one of my favorite things to do. After chemo, I was pretty beat up; I got tired walking across the street to school.” She continues, “Now that I’m more energized, I get Project Open Hand groceries, and I can do things longer without getting tired and-”
Thuy stops mid-sentence, and says “What was I saying? I’m sorry, I have chemo brain” and her infectious laugh makes me laugh back, though I never imagined I’d be able to in a conversation like this. I get a sense that’s just Thuy. From the moment of discovery to her last chemo treatment...I don’t imagine there was ever a moment of self-pity.
She adds, "because my chance of breast cancer recurrence is so high, it’s important that I maintain my current weight on the medication I am taking. Project Open Hand meals and groceries have helped with that immensely. I am much healthier now because of it.”
During recovery, Thuy regularly drove from San Francisco to Sacramento, from school to appointments. She drove over the Bay Bridge every week. Having found so much symbolism from those trips, she later got the bridge tattooed on her arm.
“San Francisco was the place I could begin again and leave the rest behind -- my breakup, my diagnosis -- It began to be a sign of ‘it gets better’ and ‘there's always a way back to that better place’ for me. When I cross the bridge, I don’t really think about cancer. This is a reminder that I always have a way back to that feeling.”