A new member and really wishing I wasn't
Received diagnosis on Feb 24th of Ductal Invasive Carcinoma Grade 2 in left breast after Mammogram with Breastscreen. Fortunately Dr de Viana was the one who gave me my results and I later found out ...
Forum Discussion
The whole business is just horrible, isn't it? I was in hospital last August for tests to establish exactly which auto immune disease (or diseases) I had, and what the full extent of involvement there was internally. Well, on the chest CT scan, the lumps in my left breast turned up. Shock, horror, fear, despair....how many other feelings? ...many. After biopsies and other tests, it was decided that I would do chemo first, to shrink the buggers first and to contain them. As was explained to me, the breast cancer within the breast (or breasts, some "irregularities) were spotted in the other one too, would not kill me. Cells breaking off and going walkabout and setting up shop elsewhere might. So, 12 weeks of AC therapy, followed by 12 weeks of Paclitaxel and Herceptin, followed by bilateral mastectomies with full node clearance. I cannot have radiation due to my scleroderma, so they're going hard with the surgery as a result. I had a terrible run with the first phase of the chemo, but I told thought to myself that if all these good cells were taking such a hiding, well then the bad cells were getting beaten up too. With the current situation with Isis, I thought of it as follows. The cancer cells are like Isis fighters hiding in civilian areas. I plane comes over and drops bombs (the chemo). Isis fighters are killed, unfortunately, there is also collateral damage to the civllians (the hair follicles, lining of the mouth and gut, the fingernails, the blood cells etc). However, between each bombing raid (chemo session), there is three weeks to recover. So long as the baddies got wiped out, I couldn't care less what the collateral damage was...I did bounce back each time, ready for the next round.I've never been a quitter and I don't intend to start now, but that doesn't mean that there haven't been times when I've thought that this was all going to bee too hard, and what was the point anyway, it would probably get me in the end anyway? But the I give myself a mental enema, pick myself up, dust myself off, fill up my humour tank, and push on.