NOT HAVE CANCER

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here.
I haven’t known what to say.

Everything is always so negative, and when faced with sounding more down and morbid, I just keep to myself and say nothing. (What’s that about if you can’t say anything nice? Well, for me, it’s “you’ve already bitched and moaned about that, you can’t keep bitching and moaning about the same dang thing!”)

I finished the radiation “therapy” and I’ve been taking care of my skin and dealing with the minor pains that come with it. The fatigue from the radiation is still with me too, and I begin to wonder when I’ll ever (if ever) feel “normal” again.

I’m in the “now what” phase.

Here’s now what—I have plans to return to school in a month.
I plan on staying on leave from my work, so I can come back and work in August while on break. Then I will likely quit and return for the full blown Master’s program (a year behind, but better late than never, I guess.)

I don’t know when I should cross this goal off.
Cancer will be (sadly) part of my life forever now.
Even more than it was before.

I have to start taking Tamoxifen for five years now, a drug that will suppress the estrogen in my body and put me in chemically induced menopause. Not happy about that, but I don’t know what else to do—risk a recurrence?

Life is tough sometimes. You play the cards you’re dealt.
And that’s that.

well, I opted to not have the mastectomy. It would have been too traumatic to be breastless (as much as I don’t really care about breasts, it was traumatic beyond belief to lose my hair, and I wasn’t expecting it to be a big deal, and hair grows back, so I thought—I’d better err on the side of caution, here)

I am undergoing six weeks of radiation therapy to the left breast.

It’s terrible—mentally.

I’m scared to death about the radiation. There’s a small chance I could end up with a cancer worse than breast cancer (sarcoma) and there are side effects on the way that will be terrible.

Still, this is the price one pays to stay intact, I suppose. My mother did not have the option to keep her breast. Her cancer was more advanced and more aggressive so she had to have a radical mastectomy (including muscle tissue) and radiation treatments too.

She never recovered from the self-image of losing a breast, and underwent reconstruction surgery to have her own piece of mind.

In my head, I kept hearing her talking me out of mastectomy. “it’s so radical, so severe” I kept hearing her say.

Yeah, removing both breasts and going around with no reconstruction would have been tough—but better than the thought of Silicone inside me, or the disfiguring reconstruction they’d have to do.

So, this is the middle road, I guess.

I have 5 more weeks after today.

how much you read, how much you think you know what it will be like, it’s always so much worse.

in case anyone was wondering…
Chemo absolutely effing SUCKS.

Every appointment gives me a new set of questions to come away with, a new decision to be made. Each time I make a decision, I head back to another appointment and I’m presented with a new set of crap to deal with.

I met with the radiation oncologist yesterday.
Because I opted for a lumpectomy, I have to have radiation.
I didn’t opt for the mastectomy, because there was no guarantee that my lymph nodes would be negative, and if I woke up from surgery with that bad news, I’d have to have radiation anyway.

Smart, I thought.

But, I was supposed to have met with a geneticist to see if I have the BRCA1/BRCA2 gene. When she called and left me a message, I had just heard from the surgeon that she had to postpone my surgery because there was “something” on the other breast MRI and also on my liver, needless to say, my intrest in genetic testing went out the window and my life flashed before my eyes.

Well, the tiny lump in the other breast is NOT cancer (per the biopsy they did) and what’s on my liver is the topic of debate. The surgeon said it was not cancer, because it would have taken up the glucose and radioactive isotope in the PET/CT scan they did…the Medical oncologist said it’s just 5mm, which is too small to really take up glucose if it were cancer…so she can’t conclusively say it’s not cancer.

Chemo: I will start it just after the elections. I had to battle this should I/Shouldn’t I for quite a while.

There are many, many negatives to the chemo.
But, the long term rate of metastasis or reoccurance is much much lower the more I do.

So, as I make one decision, up comes another. Mastectomy.
If I test positive for the BRCA gene, it means I’m likely to have another breast cancer…so I have to come to terms with this mastectomy thing, when, how, what…etc.

Reconstruction thoughts,ugh. Silicone? no thanks…that crap needs to be replaced every 10 to 15 years and when they degrade, there’s evidence of auto-immune diseases from them (lupus, and arthritis to be exact) Saline implants…not sure about them…I hear they burst.

Implants in general—something plastic and foreign in the body…ew.

The thought of the autologous implant is horrific. They cut bits from here and there, your abdomen and tunnel it under your skin to the breast area so it has connection to the abdominal blood supply. Taking muscle and fat, and I don’t even want to tell you how they reconstruct a nipple and where they want to take THAT skin from, let me just say, it makes you cross your legs and brings a tear to your eyes.

So, the alternative is to walk around as flat chested as a 14 year old boy. This isn’t so bad, I guess. My husband is really against the thought of either the implants or the reconstruction for how horrible it seems and how long it would take to recover from it. He’s assured me he doesn’t care about the overall “look” if I decide to stay without implants.

Here’s the moment of truth: What’s the right choice for me? I never thought I was vain, or interested…I never really much thought about my breasts, but now, the thought of swimming and surfing without a set of boobs in my way, as I’m used to…really sort of sucks.

I wish I knew why I was having such a hard time with this.

It feels as if I’m buying survival by cutting off pieces of myself and sacrificing them…here, boobs, hair, ovaries…what else can I throw out? Like ballast for survival.

Fuck Cancer.

_{ps, posting pictures of my face has been hard, posting pictures of my nakedness is even harder…I don’t know why I’m doing it. What the hell should I be shy for, anymore? I’m sorry if this offends anyone.}

I met with the oncologist two days ago.
I’m meeting with a bunch of docs/techs/nurses/therapists/facilitators and resource people.

Fully sick of this already.

I thought I wouldn’t need the chemo, but it’s never as cut and dry as that. They always tell you it’s better to have, your survival odds are better, the odds of it not coming back are better.

There’s something horrible about medication in general for me. I’m not taking anything for the MS—interferon, it’s bad for the liver…so now I have to have four cycles of AC, three weeks apart.

Besides all the other effects, I’m mostly worried about the cognitive effects.

So, I think about losing my mind, quite literally, to chemo. Losing my short term memory, not being able to go back to school, not being able to go back to the ICU…it’s not like if I were still an architect and I could make myself a little note to say “remember to call the contractor” or “look up the codes for this” No, I won’t be able to do this in the ICU where my memory and my ability to act fast and know what to give in an emergency will be effected.

So, taking the chemo might be better for me in the long run (really, in the short run the numbers are about the same…statistically) but it might be the end of my career.

always so much fun to deal with.

Whew.
Of course, the surgical fellow made a mistake and told me they were clear, but they’d still need to re-excise some tissue, because there was DCIS in the margins…I broke into a sweat, everywhere, even behind the knees.

Turns out she had misread the pathology report, and I won’t need new surgery.

BUT, the tumor (being that cancer is irregular, and reaches out like fingers) had a finger that extended out to 2.5 cm and I think, from what I know, that this might place me in the candidacy for chemotherapy…but I’m not sure yet as I have a long while to meet with the oncologist yet.

I have a month to heal, then another mammogram (grrr) and re-evaluation with the surgeon, and yadda yadda yadda.

This is my life, now, I suppose.
Not the best news ever, but not as bad as it could have been.
I’ll take it.

Oh, the vertigo-esque feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Today, I meet the surgeon for the follow up (I always thought it funny in medical shorthand, it’s “F/U”)

Today I hear the news. Are the margins clear? What stage was it? what’s the plan.

Hubby is coming home from work early, and I feel as though I’m floating or falling. I’m afraid to hear bad news. I’m afraid to hear any news, really.

I wish this weren’t happening. This is moronic to say—does anyone ever go “yay, I have cancer!” no…I think not.

It still hurts, two weeks after surgery, I can’t lift my left arm over my head unless I do it very, very slowly, (and make a lot of “ouch” faces) It’s not even the breast incision, but the one on the armpit that is so painful. I’ve read some women report pain 18 months post-op. Fuck, if this is the case, am I ever going to be able to swim again?! This really pisses me off!

Anyway, I’m nervous. That’s the gist.
I’m not one of those “maybe the news will be good” type of people, because I’m one of those “I work in the health care industry, and know the odds” kind of people.

I’ll know more later tonight.
If it’s good news, I’ll probably be right back to say so. If not (like, if I hear the margins aren’t clear and they have to go back in to get the rest) I may be on a high ledge, somewhere.

Or drowning my sorrows.

I dunno.

The lump was removed, there was no cancer in the lymph node…yet cancer cells are insidious.

There’s that thing about knowing too much…

Cancer cells could be anywhere.

When do I mark this off? Most people would say, mark it off now.
But, my oncologist would say “after radiation treatments”

Still don’t know if I will need chemo or not.
Up in the air about the whole thing.

I’m just in the moment, knitting a lot, and not thinking about work.

(feeling good, recovering from the surgery, left armpit and boob still hurt somewhat)

I got a call from the surgeon, telling me they saw something on my liver, and I need to have CT/PET scans…oh, and not to worry about it, it could be nothing…LOTS of people have stuff on their livers.

And, then she called back to say that there’s “something” in the other breast too, so she wants an ultrasound of that…so the surgery date has been postponed until I can have all these other tests.

Don’t worry about this.
isn’t that what everyone said about the original lump in the other breast? And I didn’t worry, and I was floored by the biopsy results.

Not worry.
Metastasis is definitely something to worry about.
All of a sudden, my life is flashing before my eyes.
Not worry.
Sure.

Easy for her to say.