Feeling Lost

Hi,

I'm not sure how this network works yet so I'm hoping I can connect with some support, but really I want to let out what is inside. I therefore doubt this will make much sense.

I went in for a follow up mammogram on Tuesday and inside I knew the results weren't going to be good. Not because I felt anything but because of the comments the radiographer had made. All beside the point now. They found a lump and calcifications. The lump is 2.2cm but even on the day they couldn't feel it. So I've had my biopsy and I will go back for my meeting with the doctors on Monday morning. I don't know grades or markers yet. I know there will be surgery but the rest is to be determined.

I am feeling everything everyone talks about on the videos here, and on a couple of the posts I've read.

Mainly for me at this time it is guilt. And that somehow I brought this on myself. That whole manifestation thing. If you think it you will get it. I had 3 weeks off work and decided to get all my health checks done. Started sorting out my will too - did I jinx myself? My daughter asked why I was having a mammogram. I told her I needed to because of my age and family history. She told me those things are dumb they find things that would never have bothered you if you didn't look. She doesn't know about the results yet. 

All I have seen since my mammogram are breast cancer posters, TV shows about alternative treatments, and the news covering the lady who enacted the end of life law in Victoria (all power to her). I even saw a lady who was on the breast screen bus with me, and I so desperately wanted to know if she had a call back too. 

I get up every morning and watch the sun rise, have done for years. I'm always telling people life is short, don't focus on material things. Love your family, embrace what's around you. Celebrate people whilst they are alive. For the last 12 months I've been a funeral arranger.  I have seen the anguish families go through when plans and wills aren't in place. The regrets they have of unsaid things when people die suddenly. I kept saying to my partner that life is short, pay your respects to your loved ones whilst they are alive. I have had an interest in palliative care since my dad died of bowel cancer 5 years ago. Actively researching how people can be better supported at end of life, thinking of my step mum who is 81. I am now torn as to whether I'm psychic, I self manifested, or I am bloody lucky to have come to this realisation and regardless of anything the cancer would have been there. 

Guilt issue number 2. I've had swollen tissue under my arm for years that they did an ultrasound on and said it was nothing but they never checked my breast. I put off my mammogram for a year. Someone said to me why haven't you had it done sooner? Doesn't help now does it. And now I am here. Worried about what I could have done better, worried about every itch and pain I have. Is the cancer everywhere? Looking at my bowel cancer test sitting on the table, which I rang up and requested because I didn't get the first one.  May as well get every test I can done.

I have a friend who has breast cancer and she has been fighting it for over two years. She is overseas but she has been really helpful. My brother has just come through lymphoma. He said just keep doing life and stay positive. 

Other than that I'm laughing, crying, up, down, accepting, in disbelief, angry, sad, I want my results, I want this out of me and over with, don't want to hear the word cancer again, and feeling very alone.