Introduce yourself

Many thanks Chris. The 5 year survival milestone seems to be something rightly worth a substantial celebration, and I hope it continues to go well for you.

I take your point about reality setting in with the drain etc. The surgeon was keen to reassure me I wouldn't likely have one under my armpit, just my chest for a week or so, during which I figured I'd be pretty dopey anyway.

I'm also scheduled for a sentinel node biopsy on the morning of the surgery, but the surgeon has also been very reassuring about that in terms of the chance of finding any rogue cells. I'm starting to suspect that oncologists are habitually reassuring in order to keep patients from getting too anxious.

I'm lucky to have caught the tumour so early while it's a DCIS, so at this stage it's not planned to give me chemo and/or radiotherapy. Having watched my mother when I was 10, and a number of close friends more recently, go through all that I'm feeling a lot better about a probable future in which it doesn't figure. My mother got a huge lymphodoema out of her mastectomy in 1962 and was very self conscious of it for the next 26 years.

One relatively minor thing that concerns me is golf. I was a good golfer once, then gave it away for 25 years or so, and keep vowing to get back to it once work commitments ease. I know a lot of women say thet their game actually improves after a mastectomy, but I can imagine that would not be so for men. Prior to the diagnosis I was planning a month off over Xmas and a lot of golf, but I'm presuming it will now be some time before I'm fit enough to swing a club. Does this sound right to you?

Another thing I might bring up in a wider BCNA forum is the advisability of a full body scan. A friend suggested I have this done, but no medical practitioner has brought it up, and it sounds expensive. I'm recognising this may push me a lot closer to retirement, so finances are likely to be more of an issue and I'm starting to consider which expenses are really necessary.

After the operation, did you find your strength reduced, apart from the usual post-operative weakness? For example, do you feel you need to be more careful when lifting anything as a result of the surgery?

best wishes

Alan