A Queen

After He Said Cancer | A Memoir

“Welcome to the family that no one wants to be a part of,” she said and gave me a long hug.

When I felt her warm embrace, the floodgates opened. Tears fell freely onto my cheeks. This was the first time that I had met anyone, who had a connection to male breast cancer and understood the path that we were on. As I held her tightly, a feeling of relief flowed through me.

Her smile was beautiful and strong. She was one of two patient advocates, who were on a West Coast road trip to meet men with breast cancer and their widows. They started in California and had now made their way up to Washington State. Today, they were meeting with three men with breast cancer in the Seattle area. My husband was one.

We sat down in the fresh air outside a coffee shop to get to know each other. My husband was undergoing chemotherapy, and we didn’t want to take a chance that he might catch COVID-19 or a flu from meeting indoors. The group that had never met each other, but quickly got to know each other’s cancer story. One man had a known genetic mutation predisposing him to male breast cancer. Another man had been exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, which may have led to his cancer. My husband’s breast cancer was a mystery – no genetic mutation that we know of and no known cancer-causing exposure.

I sat next to the woman with the warm embrace and beautiful smile. I wanted to know her story and how male breast cancer had touched her life. More than anything, I wanted to learn about her emotional journey. How had she overcome the grief? What was her secret for radiating such happiness? I was emerging from my depression but was afraid of how cancer would loom over our future.

Would she tell me about her connection with male breast cancer? I asked. Certainly, she said.

Her husband, Marlyn, died of male breast cancer. They discovered the cancer after routine blood work showed that his liver function tests were a little too high. The doctor suggested more tests to investigate. This was around Christmastime.

She remembered having Christmas dinner with him and their family – a very happy occasion – and taking a picture of him full of joy. At that time, they only knew he had a lump and that a port-a-cath had been recommended, which is used for administering chemotherapy into one’s deep veins in the chest. At this time, no one had said the word ‘cancer’ and they weren’t thinking that anything other than a ‘treatment’ for the lump was necessary.

Within a few days, they were told had had Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. The cancer was not only in his liver but also in his lungs, bones, and brain. The pain that he had golfing in his right shoulder blade? That was also due to cancer. An operation to remove the cancer was out of the question. Keeping the cancer in check with chemotherapy wouldn’t be easy, but they would give it a shot.

The goal is to give you 5 quality years, the doctor had said. They hung on to those words and hoped for the best. He thought he knew what to expect with the treatment, because he had cared for his daughter after her diagnosis of breast cancer. She had the lump removed, followed by chemotherapy and radiation. Through it all, he had been by her side helping as much as he could.

When they were told there could be no cure, she just kept hoping for those 5 years. All she wanted to do was to make him happy. She had some training as a certified nursing assistant and so knew a little about what would be involved in his care. But she didn’t know how bad it was going to get.

Marlyn had been a principal and a lifelong educator. Shortly after his diagnosis, he started the process of getting a custom license plate made that said, “Men Too”. Ever positive, he wanted to spread the word that men could also get breast cancer.

The next few months quickly spiraled into doctor’s visits and long stays in the hospital. He tried two rounds of chemotherapy, but when he presented for his third round, his blood counts were too low to proceed.

“Everything they said was so disheartening, I stopped listening,” she said. They might have tried a third drug, but she couldn’t remember. They used radiation to target seven of his eight brain tumors. The eighth tumor was in a sensitive part of his brain, and they were hoping the chemotherapy would take care of it. In the end, he refused to have another brain scan. And that was that, she said.

“I always said that Marlyn treated me like a queen. He had me on a pedestal for 23 years,” she said lovingly. “I just remember wanting to make him as happy as he had made me in our 23 years together.”

Near the end, they asked his doctor if he could travel two hours by car to a former workmate’s party. He was told ‘no’. This woman had worked for him when he was a school principal, and the party was to celebrate her 5-year anniversary of being free of breast cancer. As he wasn’t allowed to travel, they made a video to congratulate her and resigned themselves to staying home. But that morning, Marlyn told his wife how badly he felt that he would miss her party.

“So, we loaded him up – oxygen tanks and all – and went to her party,” she said triumphantly. “Do you know that he thoroughly enjoyed himself? He got to see all the people that he had worked with and say goodbye. I was happy that I could give him that.”

He died three weeks later.

Instead of ‘five quality years’, he only had five months. But in terms of quality of life, he scarcely had one month.

Pat Washburn, Marlyn Washburn and Me

In his memory, she had Marlyn’s car custom painted with his image and messages about male breast cancer. The car was christened, “The Marlyn Mobile”. She began driving it around the country on a mission to meet men with male breast cancer, their families and their widows. The custom license plate said, “MEN 2”. She would meet them in their homes and offer friendship and stories of other men and, of course, stories about Marlyn.

The day that I first met her, we saw the white car plastered with half-pink and half-blue ribbons in the parking lot. When I got a little closer, I saw the message, “Breast Cancer Does Not Discriminate – Men Too”. On the hood was an image of a balding man with a giant smile. It was the kind of smile that could only come deep from a soul filled with joy – just like his wife’s smile.

Pat, Me, and the Marlyn Mobile

The picture of Marlyn on the hood of the car was taken at Christmas time, five months before he died. When they only knew that he had a ‘lump’. He looked healthy and happy. No one would have ever known that he had cancer.

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