Bilateral mastectomy

I am really pleased to hear you have such a supportive husband, (me too) and I think that is somehow the most important this, but I understand from personal experience how much one wishes for the supportive family of origin we all deserve and all need in this situation My other siblings in Spain, California and Nowra have surprised me with their sensitive kind comments, so I am pretty lucky.. But I have a sister in NZ who is and always has been an absolute cow. She phoned me at 5.45 am on the day after my surgeons visit (got the time zone wrong) and woke me from the first deep sleep I had had since diagnosis, asked intimate prying questions about exactly what they would be doing to my body, until I told her I really did not find her calls helpful. She then rang me early in the morning at the hospital and thought I would appreciate another chance to talk to her. I hate wasting energy getting upset about her, and wish it didn't bother me.  I have only my husband and adult son and daughter in Western Australia, (plus adopted family) and  I am relying a lot more than I like on my daughter who has been absolutely wonderful, and has been to the depths of hell with me so I was not there alone.

Whatever your distant family is like, it sounds like you havebuilt a good replacement  family of friends who come through for you. It must be really hard with your son: you don't want to frighten him, but you want him to know what is happening. My son is 35 but has suffered badly from anxiety and depression in the past so I was concerned too about how to talk to him about it. I gave him a "good news/best possible" version for a start and then answered all his many questions. I have also got jobs for him to do for me in my recovery/possible, ie taking me to a weekly meditation group and taking me walking. He works nearby, lives abot 15km away, so can drop in after work to take me walking once the heat drops a little. He seeemed really pleased to feel he could do things to help, and maybe your son would like to feel there were things he could do for you.

Knowing you have a big deep DCIS is scary, but deep in terms of doing a good lumpectomy seems to be different to deep in terms of doing a good mastectomy. I understand they need to leave some breast tissue under the incision for a lumpectomy, but take it all out for a mastectomy. So once they can forget about trying to leave you a good-looking breast they can do a much more thorough job of removing all the cancer effectively but still doing a tidy job.

All the best for tomorrow.

Jessica