breast-cancer-story-so-far

BREAST CANCER - My Story

I guess you could say it all started happening when I decided to get fit.... I went to my doctor and asked for a blood test to see if my hormone levels were changing in readiness for the menopause. The results came back showing that it had started, I was pre-menopausal, and the mysteries of menopause were upon me. I asked her how come I hadn’t been called up for a mammogram; didn’t they do that once you were over 50? It all depended if your details were on the hospital database, mine weren’t. So I requested to have one done. It took a good month before the appointment came through, I went, had it done, no problems there although I had heard it could be uncomfortable, but mine weren’t over large so having them compressed between two plates wasn’t as bad as expected. A week later and I was called back for a routine repeat mammogram, I still didn’t suspect anything unusual as it was normal practice to have it repeated. I was then called back for an ultrasound scan, again normal practice. I was seen by a different doctor to the one that had checked the X-ray. He didn’t see anything untoward but didn’t want to give the all clear, he wanted it left for his colleague to decide and he was away for a few days. I came in to see him when he returned and he said that he would prefer to have a biopsy done, there was something there but he didn’t know for sure so an appointment was made for a few days later. Back to where the mammogram was performed, same sort of thing, squashed between two panels and then the needle inserted, say no more….. I was asked to call back in a week for the results…..

We were sat in this little room, my boyfriend and I, when the doctor walked in. He said he was very sorry but that it was breast cancer as he had suspected….. it didn’t sink in straight away; I listened as if he was telling me something that was happening to someone else. Eventually the practical side of me kicked in and I asked all the right questions, what was happening next, how big the cancer was, will I need chemotherapy, the latter was the main thing I worried about. I didn’t want to lose my hair, my one vanity, long, blonde & curly, how could I go bald, how could I put up with that? It was silly really, to worry about something like that when my life could be at stake. Well I was one of the lucky ones, so he told me, if ‘luck’ was the right word to use. He said to me ‘If I were to have cancer then this is the best one to have!’ It was estrogen based which meant it thrived on estrogen. This type usually hit women who have not had any children, or have had them late in life (I had my daughter when I was 37), or who have been on an estrogen based pill for years (I had been on the pill for 25 years).

So what was to happen next I asked him, finally coming down to earth with a bang? Because I had so little cancer I was prepared for the operation first and had to undergo a wire being inserted at the point of where the cancer was. This was done in the same way as the biopsy, I didn’t feel any pain at all, and they’re great girls in mammography. There was no lump you see, so they had to make sure the correct part of my breast was removed. Well he said that I ‘only’ had 11mm of cancer so I would only need a lumpectomy followed by 3 weeks radiotherapy in Southampton, I breathed a sigh of relief, no chemo.

Things moved very fast after that. I met all the wonderful people on the team at the hospital and I was brought in very quickly, in less than two weeks and I had my lumpectomy. …. I had to get my head around everything that was going on. They had sorted my body out so it was about time I faced reality instead of blocking it off. I had to see the positive side of all that was happening and try and concentrate on that. So I looked at the positive side of having cancer, of the fact that I was off work, like a holiday, that had to be good didn’t it? This time off would allow me to get on and do things that I liked, unfortunately one of my favourite pastimes was sunbathing which was out of the question once I had had the radiotherapy. My second love was computers so I had to have a think and see what I could do in that area.

The operation was a breeze, they removed the cancer and one lymph node which was sent away for testing and proved to be negative. There was a fair bit of scarring but that was to be expected. After the operation I had to wear a very tight support bra, to help stop the bruising and to aid in the healing process. It was a nightmare getting it on and off but worth the effort. It took quite a while before I finally got my date for the radiotherapy. Like the doctors said, the radiotherapy was not as urgent as the operation, it was ‘bibs and braces’, they had removed the cancer, this was just the tidying up process. He explained it to me like this – imagine a field full of dandelions, a farmer pulls them all up but does not use weed killer. He is not thorough enough and leaves one dandelion behind, before long he has another field full of dandelions. The radiotherapy is like the weed killer.

My next appointment involved being measured up in readiness for the radiotherapy. I was laid out on a table and lots of numbers were shouted backwards and forwards between the staff before the positions for my new ‘tattoos’ were eventually agreed upon – three tiny dots in black, just like freckles. I nervously travelled across to Southampton, not knowing what to expect and was met by a taxi driver and taken to the hotel. It was very plush in the Jury’s Inn, the room was lovely, and the communal area pleasant, we cancer sufferers occupied the 11th floor with some going onto the 10th floor when they were full and that was where I ended up. The food was great, the staff friendly and the amenities excellent; they even had a kitchen with all the usual stuff so I could do my washing or cook my food if I didn’t want to eat in the restaurant, they also had room service too! It was all these little things that had worried me when I first heard about going to Southampton. I had basically pushed the cancer to the back of my mind and was concentrating on everything that happened each day. I decided in my wisdom that I would need to occupy my time usefully and not mope around so, in view of the fact that I had worried needlessly because of my lack of knowledge of the procedures, I decided to make a DVD slide show of everything that went on whilst I was in Southampton, something that could be marketed and given to each patient to put their minds at rest.

My first day of radiotherapy was nothing like I expected though…… We were all picked up at various intervals through the day from the reception area at the hotel and taken to the hospital. The routine was to give your name in at reception and then head off to the treatment room. It was very well sign posted and usually there was somebody else going to the same place as me. This led to another reception area and that was where we had to wait until we were called in for radiotherapy. My turn came very quickly. I was led into a room with a bed in the center and a huge machine overhead. I was asked to strip off to the waist and lie on the bed. The staff, usually two members, then had to make sure that I was in exactly the correct position. They moved my body around until they were happy, they shone a green light in various places on my body which had to line up to my three ‘dot’ tattoos that had been put there weeks before when I had been measured up. Then they left the room and I was on my own. The machine started up and began to slowly move around one side of my body, and then a high pitched noise began. I counted the seconds in my head as I had been informed that the sessions were about eleven minutes each. When 15 seconds had past the noise stopped! The machine then moved right across to the other side of my body and then slowly moved back up as the noise began again, this time I counted only 13 seconds. The machine stopped then returned back to its original position. The staff came back in and congratulated me on my first session… that was it, 28 seconds in all. They then explained that it usually takes eleven minutes from the time you are called in, stripped off, positioned correctly, had the treatment and got dressed again. I hadn’t felt a thing; they said you never did anyhow.

That was the routine for the three weeks in Southampton, my treatments were all before 8.30am and generally I was back at the hotel before 10am, 5 days on, weekends off. I started going a little red at the end of the third week which was the side effect of the radiation burning my skin. Those girls that were almost at the end of their 6 week treatment were very burnt and sore. We were given aqueous solution and told to keep the area well moisturized with it.

So what next? Well I continued taking my photographs, I worked on various ideas for my new web page www.missit-missout.com and soon the initial ideas of the Cancer DVD were formed and the photographs taken (this is now available FREE on my web page). I sketched out my plan of the web page so by the end of the three weeks I was well on my way. I had kept myself busy, met lots of new friends and really had enjoyed myself, all that worry over nothing!

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