Just diagnosed

HI Lorraine

Thank you for saying I'm so young, post-cancer treatment I definitely don't feel young any more - with treatment causing early menopause and drugs causing a range of other hormonal changes.  Mine was the right breast  and (ultimately) one lymph node (although my surgeon did an auxillary clearance and removed 27 nodes).  

You've definitely had a tough few years.  My thoughts are with you as you progress through chemo.  You look to be on a slightly different drug regime to me.  I had 3 cycles of FEC and 3 cycles of Dosetaxol.  Dosetaxol was tougher than FEC but it did its job and therefore the raft of side effects I had to deal with then and the few that are still hanging about now were definitely the pain.

From my perspective, the mastectomy was the easiest part of the process.  I woke up from the surgery feeling like I could go for a 5km run.  Lots of people have told me it was just that I was on the good drugs, but I know that isn't the case and I'm convinced that it was my subconscious telling me that everything was OK.  Chemo was over and the breast was gone, therefore the cancer must be gone.  Fortunately that proved to be correct with the post-surgery pathology showing that chemo had dealt with 90+% of the tumour (my surgeon later admitted she would have been happy to see this result at 50-60%).  Radiotherapy was then used as an insurance policy to make sure the cancerous cells were gone.

I as/am HER2 negative so didn't need to have the Herceptin treatment, but have another 9 years of Tamoxifen medication.

Please stay hopeful and positive.  Despite how horrible chemo and the later surgery is, IBC is treatable and you're doing all the right things.

I'm based in Melbourne, but if you have any questions or concerns, please post them here and I'm sure I and many others can answer from our own experiences.

Stephanie