It's Treatable

My story so far has been a lot of doom and gloom. I have to be true to this process I went through. I certainly was NOT feeling positive at the beginning. I couldn’t even imagine being positive. As I think back now to document, I’m amazed at how far I’ve come mentally.

For the first couple of weeks, I deleted all messages of hope that were sent to me. I threw away all the paperwork I collected that I didn’t need to keep. I packed away all the information booklets I was given without reading them. I didn’t want any reminders. And I certainly didn’t want to document anything.

Shock is a terrible thing.

The day of my hospital appointment came. My appointment was at 1:30pm. From the time I dropped the kids at school to the time we left for the hospital I just sat on the couch and stared. I couldn’t talk. I remember thinking that I couldn’t imagine smiling ever again.

The Centre for Breast Health at the hospital is ironically right next door to the Maternity Outpatients Department where I spent many hours for many appointments when I had my three babies.

Finally, we (my husband and I) got into the room with a specialist surgeon and her registrar. I was asked a lot of questions about my health. I was examined. The complete pathology reports from my biopsies were in. Every biopsy they took was positive for cancer cells.  Here is my disease in a nutshell:

·             One main tumour (the one I could feel) about 2 cm big (scary to think I couldn’t feel it until    it was this big).

·             Several smaller “spots” of disease (that I hadn’t felt) scattered around this main tumour.

·             Breast “tissue” in the area that was changed as well.

·             Evidence of cancer in at least one of my underarm lymph nodes. They won’t know for sure    how many nodes are affected until surgery.

·             NOT containing the “breast cancer genes” BRCA1 and BRCA2. (I don’t know if this is the           right terminology).

·             Positive for hormones oestrogen, progesterone and HER2 (a growth hormone). They call it      “triple positive” which is rarer.

Oh and for those that are curious, it’s the right breast only. No disease at all in the left.

So my cancer was invasive and aggressive especially considering my age. (Any breast cancer diagnosis pre-menopause is considered young). And my cancer was just random, bad luck. There was nothing I did or didn’t do that caused it. Kind of like winning the lottery in reverse.

I did feel relief when I found out that it wasn’t genetic. I was terrified that I’d passed down to my daughter some sort of curse. She has as much chance of developing the disease as anyone else except because of my diagnosis, she will start getting mammograms at a much earlier age. I can live with that.

To get rid of all my disease, I would be looking at a complete mastectomy on the right side and total lymph node clearance. The surgeon asked me if I was concerned about preserving any of the breast. I said no, I just wanted the cancer gone. The surgeon asked me if I wanted her to talk about reconstruction options that day. I said no, I would think about that later. She said good, we were on the same page.

I was still terrified. I mean, we weren’t just talking about a little lump here. So I got up my courage to ask the question that I most wanted answered.

“So it is treatable?” I asked tentatively.

She looked me in the eye. “Yes. I can treat this. This is treatable” she answered.

I felt like I was taken under her wing at that moment.

She then talked about treatment. Because of my age, they would throw everything they had at me. They talked about this giving me a chance of being cancer free for 40 years or so. I’m looking at surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy as well as hormone therapy. Hello menopause.

I walked into that appointment expecting to come out with a surgery date within the week. I knew things would move fast. What I wasn’t expecting was the suggestion that I have chemotherapy before surgery. Same course of treatment, just a different order. The advantages of chemo before surgery being that firstly the cancer would (hopefully) shrink and might even shrink so much to avoid a mastectomy and just get a lumpectomy. Apparently that happens in most cases. And secondly because they can get so much information on exactly how my cancer reacts to the chemo which can aid my treatment.

A lot of information to take in.

I was scheduled for an appointment with an oncologist to talk about chemotherapy before making a decision. I was also scheduled for a bone scan and CT scan to see if the cancer had spread beyond the breast. I was expecting that but still, the reality kind of took my breath away. The fear of the unknown.

I also had a conversation with a breast care nurse who was very positive and told us that 95% of women that walk through the door are successfully treated.

So I walked out of that appointment not with a surgery date as I expected but with something else that I wasn’t expecting: hope.

I remember saying to Thomas “Am I right to feel just a little bit hopeful?” to which he replied “Yes! Didn’t you hear what she told you? You’ve got a cancer that responds to the treatments!”

So that was the day that I felt just a little bit of hope make its way into my body. Just a little. But enough to keep me going.