Waiting on the pathology report

Two days until I receive my result.  The wait is hard, oh so hard.  I just want to know so that I can move on.  I feel as if I am in limbo but I keep myself busy around the house, working out and walking the dogs.    I've researched DCIS so I have some questions to ask when I am given my pathology result on Friday,  I have also been thinking about my Mother.

 

In the back of my mind I know it is breast cancer.  My mother had breast cancer when she was my age and I suppose I have been expecting that one day it would happen to me.  It has always been in the back of my mind.

 

I had been told that it was highly unlikely that I too would get breast cancer as my Mother, like me had been diagnosed in her 60's.  I am the same age as my Mother was and I may have breast cancer - now that's hard to get your head around!  My mother had a mastectomy and her scar was horrendous (it was in the 1980's and things have definitely changed since then).  She was never offered a breast reconstruction on the NHS and she lived with a breast prosthesis

 

I smile when I think of her and her breast prosthesis - it was never properly fitted.  One breast was always slightly higher than the other and the shape of it - I'm not sure what she did with it.  She did tell me that she  sat on it once or twice and had accidentally washed it in the washing machine.  It was a slippery little devil too.  It would appear atop her bra at times and seemed to be fighting to escape its confines.  It once slipped all the way out to fall on the floor.  She was never fazed on these occasions as she could always see the funny side of life.

 

She seemed to sail through her diagnosis and mastectomy but I now wonder now how she truly coped as she was divorced and living on her own.   I was living thousands of miles away in Australia but whenever I spoke to her she was always happy and positive and rarely mentioned the loss of her breast.

 

My Mother is still alive.  At 86 she is now sadly living in a home for dementia patients.  I wish I could talk to her to ask her what type of cancer she had, how she coped and how she felt at the time.  She has no recollection of the loss of her breast as her memory is fading and she now lives in her childhood.   She is fading gently away, living happily in her childhood with no memory of her children.   My brother tells me that she is happy in her own world and for that I am grateful.

 

My Mother has survived with breast cancer for 24 years and although she suffers from dementia, rheumatoid arthritis and heart problems (the last two she swore was brought about by her radiation therapy) she is a survivor.

 

Whenever it all becomes too much, I think of my Mother.  Her joy of life, her laughter, her craziness and her survival and the extra years she was given before her dementia ... she is and was  one amazing woman.

 

If she can survive the loss of her breast so I can survive my forthcoming diagnosis.