“When you’re in the midst of the diagnosis and staging process, and the tumor information is coming back in bits and pieces, at many different times, it is an extremely stressful time in your life.

Uncertainty really stinks! But you will feel SO much better once you know what you’re dealing with, when your treatment plan has been worked out, and you start your treatment. Only then does much of that dreadful uncertainty lift, and you finally feel that you are doing something to get rid of the problem.” —Marisa Weiss MD

Well that’s good news. ’Extremely stressful’ is an understatement.

So far, all I know about the cancer is that that it IS cancer and that it is 2.5mm big.

My liver ultrasound and chest x-ray both came back looking clean (except for gallstones—oh JOY now there is something else to look forward too lol!). Finally a happy surgeon visit.

It’s been an entire month since I first saw my GP about the lump in my breast. A month. People keep asking me ’How did you find it?’ I can only stare at them blankly and say ’Well, you can’t miss it. It’s this big [show them with finger gestures] and it’s right there [point at breast]’.

A month. A month of waiting. Waiting in doctors offices, waiting at the imaging place, waiting at the hospital today, waiting for results. Waaaaiiiiting.

I finally have surgery on Tuesday afternoon. I have to wait until Monday to find out what time they want me in there on Tuesday. I stay until probably the weekend, well as soon as they take the drains out of my armpit and breast. And then I wait until the middle of the following week (at the earliest) to hear the results of the operation. How invasive it is, how aggressive and fast is it, is it ductal or lobular, has it reached the lymph nodes. And will I need a mastectomy? On Tuesday my surgeon is giving me breast conserving surgery (meaning lump plus margin plus axillary lymph node removal). If things don’t come back as nicely as we like, I go back in to have my breast removed.

Read More

I am an ex-welfare worker, and know all about the stages of grief etc but today was … strange.

I woke up (at 4am after 2 hours sleep) feeling much better than yesterday, emotionally at least. I was calm, I was peaceful. I picked my mother up at 8.20 to go to the imaging place to have a chest xray and liver ultrasound done (to check for secondaries). My appointment was for 8.45. When I arrived there was only one woman before me, and nobody else in the place. 9am came and neither of us had been seen. People started flooding in and going in for their xrays!! After ½ an hour I was highly irritated and was about to stand up and say ’excuse me?!’ when I finally got called in. Had my ultrasound, came out to have to now wait for my chest xray, having to go back to the back of the queue. I was pretty pissy by the time I got out of there.

Driving from there to the gym I got pissier at all the stupid drivers around me. At the gym I was pissed off because someone else was behind the curtain part of the change room – getting changed – which was cool because I just quickly got changed right there in the change room. But … she had left some of her shit on the only chair in the main part of the changeroom so I couldn’t sit down to put my shoes on. Getting pretty agro by now.

Had a long talk with the manager of the place as it was my day to be measured and weighed etc, and she wanted to know what the latest was with my situation. Her mother is going through the same thing. I told her I would have to stop gym fees coming out of my account because it was probably going to be at least 12 months before I could even think of coming back. I told her that really pissed me off because I was getting so fit and healthy and now I had to give it up.

Read More

Exhausted. In one word. Emotionally and mentally wiped out entirely, which then translates into physical fatigue. Although this is most likely going to be nothing compared to when I start radiation and chemo. I’ve barely been sleeping … the mind clicks away a mile a minute. When I do fall asleep I’m awake again soon after. It’s like my astral body does not want to leave. Like it wants to stay in the physical and etheric bodies as much as it can. Why I wonder. Is sleep too scary? All I want to DO is sleep. Sleep my life away right now, sleep forever. (And NO, before anyone takes that the wrong way, I don’t mean I want to die!!) Sleep is oblivion. Oblivion is bliss (and avoidance). And I’m just flat out, bloody exhausted.

I’m so exhausted I can barely move a muscle, even to type, but type I must to journal this out.

Everyone has exclaimed at how brave and strong I’ve been. I wonder do all people with cancer get this comment when people first find out? Yes, I have been calm, and peaceful, and happy even. Cracking jokes about it (which my sisters thought funny but my parents weren’t amused at yesterday’s Easter Sunday get-together lol!). This twilight time between diagnosis and prognosis. This interminable waiting. I just want it out. It’s there, the tumour, hurting, physically hurting and aching 24/7 (that scares me).

But it’s starting to get dark. I’ve crawled up to the edge of the abyss a few times, peered over, and scrambled back in a hurry when I’ve caught glimpses of the horror that lies in it.

“I have breast cancer” is now a fact that is lodged in my brain and I can’t forget it, not for a minute. Waking up sucks. That moment when you remember ’oh, that’s right, I have breast cancer. Fuck.’

Read More

Yesterday:

I’m EXHAUSTED right now. Liam had a big day at school. They did an Easter play and morning tea, then I came home for one hour to ring all and sundry up about financial things, medical things etc; went to the Neighbourhood Centre where I used to work to get some assistance with stuff; went to the op-shop for cool things to wear to hospital, the chemist to put in my receipts for all the medical stuff to get the refund back, back to Liam’s school for an easter hat parade and easter egg hunt. And then to the accountants to sign for my tax returns to go in.

Oh yes, and blood tests in there somewhere. Where I was told I was going to become best friends with the girl who sticks me with the needle. As I would have to go in there the day before every single chemo treatment.

I’m amazed at how incredible even the medical people are with this. With cancer patients, the blood test place take you in before anyone in the morning, whenever you turn up. I’ve been told from now on all of my x-rays and ultrasounds will be bulk-billed (meaning the government pays for the lot) and my surgeon is kindly doing that also!! As is my normal doctor. Thank GOD. Nice to have some good news.

And within the next two weeks I should have a nice amount back from my tax returns plus my superannuation which I am drawing out (which is only 8000 but going to be taxed at 21.5% the bastards!) so I will have money to pay for Liam’s school fees for the year, pay off everyone I owe, buy myself a decent bloody DOUBLE bed (because I’m pretty sure bed is going to be an important place haha!)

Today:

Still feeling good. Though my breast never stops aching. It’s a kind of hot, low ache that migrates.

Read More

I’ve sat here for ages trying to think of a suitable subject line for this one to no avail … do I be funny or do I be serious? You can’t quite get many more serious subjects than every woman’s nightmare … finding a nasty lump in her breast.

My boobs, to be frank, have always been my best asset (well that is until pregnancy and breastfeeding wreaked the usual changes on them–nothing that a nice little ‘lift’ wouldn’t fix). So how ironic that now one of them is potentially ‘under attack’.

Last week I had to go to my doctor because I had found a lump in my breast. I noticed it maybe about two weeks prior. My breast had actually been quite sore and achey at times over the last few months but I hadn’t taken much notice of it. This lump … is BIG. Like peach-pit size. I was concerned, but wasn’t letting myself worry too much. After all, 90% of lumps in breasts are not cancerous. I have no family history of it at all, and the fact that it is sore and aching probably means it is something else, like a cyst. So I was pretty sure it was probably going to be a cyst.

So I calmly, though concernedly, took myself off to the doctor, who had a good grope of both sides and proceeded to put the fear of God into me. He said he thought it was too hard to be a cyst. That he would be less concerned if I had lumpy breasts, but in fact my breasts were quite smooth (insert moment of embarrassed discomfort here). Didn’t you always want to know that about me? Lots of info in THIS blog! And that he was not going to pat me on the head and tell me everything was going to be okay.

In addition to this, he tells me he wants to remove a suspect mole on my left breast. Oh JOY. We all know what kind of scars mole removal makes. Great big long and scary ones. Now I’m terrified that not only do I potentially have breast cancer, but that both boobs are going to end up scarred and mangled.

The doctors office henceforth proceeded to organise a mammogram and ultrasound for me, which I couldn’t get until tomorrow. I’ve never had a mammogram before. I’ve heard other women affectionally term them “slammograms”. I’ve been assured by small breasted women that it hurts more on small breasts because there’s less to squash. I’ve been told by big breasted women that it hurts more when you have big breasts (as I do) because … well whatever reason. Suffice to say, I’m not looking forward to it, in so many ways.

The doctor has requested that the report be emailed directly to him, but as for how or when I receive any news I don’t know. I suspect that it will just show that the lump is there (which you can’t bloody MISS — ask my sister I let her cop a good feel lol!) and that a needle biopsy will then have to be arranged to find out what sort of lump it is. Yum. Such fun and games.

So … yeah. I officially freaked out over the weekend. Of course, it’s natural to wonder if I’m going to loose my breast, end up a deformed freak, and never know the pleasure of a loving intimate relationship with anyone again (no doubt it would be enough to disgust even the most loving of men). And natural to wonder worse … if I will DIE from the bloody thing. Whether the travelling I am meant to do later this year to meet with a special someone will in fact happen or whether this will jeopardize everything. Potentially so much to loose. And just when I thought everything was on the up. When the down-slope had come to it’s end. Yes, I freaked out, and I really made someone shitty with my freaking out too 🙂 I ended up spending the weekend at my parents’ where it is a haven, a true retreat, plenty of trees and wildlife, acres and peace. And a HUGE deep bathtub (hence the shitty poem blogged previously). And as a result feel somewhat calmer.

I still know intellectually that most lumps aren’t malignant and all of that I’ve said above. I’m calm now, quietly waiting I guess. No doubt when the time comes tomorrow when I have to strip off my top and bra and have my breasts groped, squashed and minutely examined I will be feeling sick to my stomach. No doubt I will freak out again when I see the actual ultrasound screen. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Most likely a trip to a city down south to the major cancer hospital nearest us for a day of more tests, which seems to be the norm for anyone who has suspect mammograms.

*sigh*

Ladies, check your breasts, as we all know we are supposed to. This MUST have been a smaller lump at some stage that I should have caught earlier. I let myself get too blase about it. (That’s meant to be blar-zay with a thingy on top of an e don’t you know). Most likely this will end up to be a happy story with a relieved “Thank GOD” at the end, but you just never know … check those breasts! Or better yet, have your partner do it for you.

Currently reading : To the Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf Release date: 27 December, 1989