My Story - it sucks to be me
Continuing on from The Beginning and Early Days....
The surgery was a non-event really. I was in more discomfort after the biopsy. My lumpectomy scar was nothing. I rethought my tattoo plans.
The following week we went back to the surgeon to get the results of the surgery. It is important to get a "clear margin" around the lump. That is, roughly a centimetre or so of non cancerous tissue so you know you have got everything. Radiation picks up the rest, but still studies have shown that clear margins help to reduce recurrence.
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I would say that it was at this meeting that I really found out that I had breast cancer. It was at this point that my brain started to buzz as he said: "The cancer has spread to your lymph nodes". This was bad. At first I didn't understand how bad. David explained how this meant chemo, and more surgery, this time removing all the lymph nodes in my armpit. A "clearance".
The game had changed.
It is not the "localised disease" that kills you with breast cancer, it is the spread. The breast lumps are, in a way, nothing to be feared. It is the bits of those lumps that break off and spread through the lymphatic or the venous systems, and that land on bones or lungs or livers or brains. It is those metastatic lumps that kill you.
So what started as a one hour meeting turned into a day of tests. I chewed up thousands of tax payer dollars, and lay in million dollar machines (run by twelve year olds), while they looked at my bones, my liver, my lungs and my brain.
It was a lesson we learnt that day - to take everything with you, and a book, every time. This was not the only meeting that ended up being a day of appointments. It was great to be seen so quickly, but you had to be prepared.
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This was the day that I cried. In an odd little corridor off to the side of the radiology rooms, I stood and I cried. It wasn't for long, and there was a random stranger chatting on his mobile at the other end of the room, but this is when reality hit.
It really sucks to be me.