Introductions
Hi girls.
Sorry I have not been very active lately.
My name is Cathy and I live about 2 hours west of Mackay. My treatment was in Townsville (chemo and radiation and mastectomy) which was about 4.5 hours travel each way.
Thankfully all treatment is finished and I only have to visit the hospital once a month to have my port flushed. My next endeavor this year is to have a breast reconstruction. I am only just starting to look at dr's etc and spending lots of hours looking over breast reconstruction photo's over the internet.
I had what i was told was a 2.5ish cm tumour in my left breast (later told it was over 7cm and that my left breast was full of smaller tumours). I had 8 out of 18 nodes involved as well. I started Chemo first to try shrink my tumour and then when that wasn't working, we had the mastectomy and then more chemo. In April May 10 I had 5 weeks of Radiation and within all that, i also had Herceptin for one year.
I found it so hard living rurally. I have three small children who were 4, 20 months and 8 months when I was diagnosed. They are now almost 7, 4 and 3. The youngest was in Kindy (qld equivelant to Preschool in some other states) at the time and then had to start primary school (Prep - which is equivelant to Kindy in other states). I hates spending 5 weeks away from her in 2010 whilst she was in Prep whilst i underwent Radiation.
I would love to know everyone else's story. Where are you in your cancer journey? How have you found it living rural?
