When I first got the news about the Tiny Dragon, I was disturbed rather than shocked. After all, the team told me it was a small lump, early stage. So my brain finished the sentence…and nothing to worry about.
I have the most common form of breast cancer. It’s hormone receptive, which makes it one of the most treatable. And as it’s the most common, my logic told me its the one medics have the most expertise in, as its their bread and butter cancer.
They will chop it out, they will irradiate it, they will give me a tablet to take. It will be a bit like taking a blood pressure tablet. Done. Life will go back to normal.
It was still a bit daunting that only 90% of people survive 5 years from diagnosis.
57 people (and it’s not just ladies) are diagnosed with breast cancer EVERY DAY in Australia. #checkyourboobs
Of those, 80% will have the same type of cancer as me.
But 1 in 10 of those are not going to make it to their birthday 5 years hence.
To save you whipping your calculator out, that’s 4.56 fewer birthday cakes 5 years from now.
Whilst I’m not a massive fan of birthdays, I do love cake.
My cake days could be limited.
We all know none of us are getting out of here alive. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, “nothing in this world is certain, except death and taxes.”
Still, being stamped with an expiry date is disturbing!
My ostrich brain was reluctant to pull itself out of the sand and peek at the fact that even with a very basic cancer, life was/is not going back to normal.
So the chopping is complete, and whilst they thought the tiny dragon was only going to be 1cm, it turned out to be 2cm. Still small in the scheme of cancerous tumours.
They chopped out enough spare flesh to get clear margins. This is important, as there is a “no touching” policy with cancer. Anything it touches seems to get infected, so “clear margins” is good news. And the lymph nodes they removed were also clear.
I’m not sure if the young doctor in the nuclear medicine department noticed my discomfort when he came to inject radioactive fluid into my boob and that’s why (so young, so sandy haired, he reminded me of Josh, my stepson – highly uncomfortable! when he was looking at my boob and injecting it with radioactive serum! – just wrong) that they start with 2 lymph nodes, test them, then progressively test more if they find cancerous cells in them.
6 of my lymph nodes were removed, and oddly, I feel a bit cheated that they removed so many. (It’s not that many – there are plenty more stuffed under my armpit to carry on doing their job). Bizarrely, pre-surgery, my greatest concern had been lymphodaema – a potential side effect of lymph removal.
Lymph nodes drain fluid and whisk it off round your body to organs for disposal, or wherever else your body deems necessary. The fewer lymph nodes available for drainage, the greater the risk that the fluid will build up and cause swelling in your arm. I had loads of oedema during both pregnancies. I have no desire to return to my days emulating a watermelon.
So I was miffed to hear they had taken 6. I wonder if it was like removing pips from a pomegranate? If you’ve ever seen my efforts, it looks a lot like a slasher movie – I end up daubed in red juice with arils flying everywhere…
Good news. I haven’t developed oedema, but I do have something called “cording”. The clue is in the name. It looks (and feels) like someone has inserted a thin piece of rope under my skin in my armpit and attached it to my elbow. (It can extend right down your arm to your hand, according to the literature, so I am thankful for the small mercy). The mobility has returned, as has most of the feeling – they cut through nerves to get at the nodes – but the cord pulls when I straighten my arm. It also rubs a little in my armpit, because where it was once concave, there is now a cord protruding through the centre. It may subside with time and stretching, so fingers crossed.
Next steps is radiotherapy. I will get a call on Friday from the radiation oncologist, which I’m guessing will be to book me in to get measured for the machine set up and tattooed so they know where to direct the rays.
Woohoo. Look at me. Getting all bad ass and tattooed in my *middle years.
And feeling pretty grateful that throughout this, I am living up to my name, and remaining a very average Jo!