OMG Fran I have been thinking about you so much over the past few weeks/months, wondering how you are, thinking maybe you went to Paris after all ... and then, coming back to the Online Network for the first time in ages I see this. I am so so sorry, it is devastating news, this is so awful. I will be in touch shortly. Like everyone here, I am hoping for a good outcome for you and good news as soon as possible.
Meanwhile I am pleased to see so many of you still on the Network. I went completely silent for ages because I was in a state of confusion, reading every entry, thinking about everyone else and what they were going through. Technically I was fine and everything was ticking over well. Taking my Femara religiously, behaving sensibly, keeping off the booze and all the rest of it but following the twists and turns of fate of others and identifying with them, I just couldn't help it. Various advisors suggested better to make new pathways for my consciousness, cancelling the constant "and by the way I have cancer" messaging to self, so I could throw myself into my other interests and develop the various projects I had been wanting to do before this shitshow made its debut. This did make sense. Plus, I didn't want to be a "downer" as my daughter says, so many others on the Network were facing far worse things with fortitude and good heart.
But am not coping well lately - am now in year 6 of ER+ and my latest oncologist/consultant tells me the statistical likelihood of METS is higher with every passing year now given the advanced cancer I had and the many affected lymph nodes. There is nothing they can do to test or assess it and none of the fancy new treatments will help because this kind of cancer is refractory to those treatments. I have also been doing a ton of scholarly research all of which is totally fascinating but merely confirms that there is no magic bullet anywhere on the horizon.
I know there is a strong community of women who are now living with METS, but I feel completely lost in the middle, the certainty of recurrence/METS without having any idea how long it will take now is making almost every part of my life unmanageable. All the same, mustn't grumble! Not there yet. Sorry everyone, Fran's news has really thrown me.
