Next Step

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Thursday afternoon, I was sitting in the GP’s waiting room before my appointment and I got  a phone call from the oncologist’s receptionist to say that my referral had been received and could I come in tomorrow afternoon for an appointment.  I said “yes”, got the details, hung up and felt incredibly shaky and ill.  If I hadn’t heard from them, I’d be anxious, but I couldn’t believe the anxiety that knowing I was going the next day made me feel – and it just kept getting worse over the next 24 hours.  I think that you take one leap, struggle to get over that hurdle and it becomes the new normal, and even when you know there’s going to be more to come, that next step still feels shocking and insurmountable.  So, feeling fragile and teary, with a thumping headache and in over 41oC heat, I went to my appointment yesterday.  The whole family came down as we couldn’t leave the kids at home on such a bad fire risk day.  Of course, after rushing there, we had to wait but to be fair, when I finally got in to see the doctor he spent ages with me and never made me feel as if he was pushing me out.

He went through all of the results and scans with me (and Dave who was being my support and other pair of ears), and talked me through the good and the bad of the cancer, and took down a lot of my history and the family history.  So, as it stands, he said that the cancer is gone.  However, as it had spread to the nodes there is a possibility that microscopic cancer cells have gone travelling.  I start 6 months of chemo on 5 February (Dave’s birthday – I feel guilty).  Prior to that I have to have some more blood tests and a cardio test.  I’ve been given the option of cold caps which I have accepted – if I can’t stand them or they don’t work, I can change my mind after the first couple of treatments but it would be nice not to lose my hair. (Although, it’s the eyebrows and eyelashes that bother me more – I’ll have to get better at applying the warpaint.)  Chemo, apparently, will give me approximately 5% better chance of long-term survival – Dave kicked in here with statistical questions about absolute or relative which I would not have thought to ask.  The oncologist, Tony Michele, said that he could plug my details into a predictive analysis test for long-term prognosis but it seems those tools are set up mainly for ductal carcinoma which is by far the more common, and that would skew the results significantly (the wrong way).

I won’t know if I will need radiation until I see the radiation oncologist and I have no idea when that is likely to be.  Regardless, if I have it, it won’t be until after the chemo – so not until at least August, I guess.  Then it will be hormone therapy.

My task now is to get and stay as fit and healthy as I can as that will help me to deal best with the effects of the chemo.

After seeing the specialist and then discussing the logistics with the breast care nurse, I felt like I was in overload.  I’ve been booked in to get my heart checked before the chemo begins as it can affect the heart muscle if it’s already weak.  I also need to decide whether to have a port implanted to deliver the treatment so they don’t have to attack the veins each time.

All this time (about 2 hours) the kids were sitting patiently in the waiting room.  The nurses must have felt sorry for them as they gave them ice-creams before we went back out into the blazing heat.  Further reward came in the shape of a visit to Officeworks to stock up on stationery for school – I just don’t get the excitement of stationery.

More than glad to go to bed last night and draw a line under yesterday.