My story

I was diagnosed on 22/12/11 and had a nipple sparing and partial skin sparing mastectomy with immediate silicone implant reconstruction on 03/02/12, and began TCH Chemo on 02/04/12 (second cycle due 23/04/12), my cancer is ER+, PR-, HER2+, LVI+, and 1 sentinel node was + (with a small deposit/ few cells, 5mm I believe).

I turned 41, 3 days ago, so began my journey at 40, but breast cancer doesn't dicriminate by age, I seen members here who are only in there 20's.

All that you mentied sounded normal to me. The waiting is the worst _ I had to wait for 25 days after I got my initial diagnosis of breast cancer to see a breast surgeon (Christmas is NOT a good time to get diagnosed becasue all of the Dr's are on their Christmas/ new year break), all I knew was i had a nearly 3cm tunour that was stage 2, and it was oestrogen receptor positive. Then I saw my surgeron found out more, decided on my mastectom and the - yep you guessed it - waited again this time for 18 days to have to my surgery. Then Yep - I waited again for my results, this time for 32 days to get my pathology results, and find out that Chemo was on the cards, and then I waited agin, this time for 27 days to begin Chemotheapy.

So waiting- yep know ALL ABOUT IT. It is hard, but it can be done (a lot of my waiting was becasue of ebing diagnosed over tChristmas and then when the Dr's and theatres started up again they had to clear the back log of urgent cases, of which I was only 1, and the extended wait for my pathology results was becasue ym surgeon wanted to (and did) present my case to the oncology "meeting" thing they have here once a month, where all the surgeons, medical oncologists and radiation oncologist get together and discuss cases and what treatments are best etc. As I have a rather unusaly pre-cancer medical history my case was a little more involved than most, and they wanted to talk about it before making any decisions.

I still don't know if I am having radiotheapy, but it seems unlikely as they think the risks outweigh the benefits for me.

My best suggestions on the waiting is to try to do anythign you can to take you mind of it and to not dwell on it, I found nights the hardest, as my mind didn't have anything else to focus on, but I found that reading or watching Tv untilI was tied before going to bed helped. And allow your self to yell, scream, cry, laugh etc what ever you need to do to get through the waiting.

Hope this helps (even a little).