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It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here. I’ve been back at work now for 6 weeks and let me tell you, this survivorship thing is fucking hard (yes, the language is necessary). I am so tired. I’m dragging myself to the end of the week. If I don’t do anything but try to recover on the weekend, then I feel like I’m not even living and if I do do something, then I’m shattered. Four and a half weeks to go – not sure if I’m going to make it. I’ve never longed for holidays so much in my life.
Apart from that, how am I faring? Not sure. People ask and I say that I’m doing well but really, that’s a bit of a gloss-over. I’m standing and I’m going through the motions but I really don’t know where I am.
Busy, busy, busy at work with the end of the year. I was just thinking to myself a couple of weeks ago that I’m not getting enough time to exercise as I’m too tired when I get home. Well, the next day the books started pouring back in – I spent it lifting armloads of books, cranking the compactus handles, and climbing up and down the step-stool. I could barely move by the end of the day – I think I’m getting my weight-bearing exercise if nothing else! It’s tapered off a bit but will start again today with the Year 10s and 11s having final exams. (Poor James was supposed to be studying on the weekend and ended up losing a lot of it to gastro or food poisoning.)
Well, it’s coming up to 1 year since my diagnosis and that means I’m due for my 12 month scan. I’m going in this morning to St Andrews to have a 3D mammogram (it’s got a fancy name but that’s essentially what it is). And tomorrow afternoon, I see the surgeon, Jim Kollias, for the results. I’m not sure how I’m feeling about it. I should be anxious, I guess (they call it scanxiety) and probably I am, although I don’t really feel it. It’s not that I’m really positive but nor am I negative – more fatalistic. Whether that will continue, who knows? I was discussing recurrence with my oncologist, Tony Michele, a few weeks ago as I was feeling very on edge about the pleomorphic aspect of the cancer at the time and that that meant it may have only been there for 12 months. This is the gist of his response:
Firstly, they can only estimate how long the cancer has been there – there is no test that works backwards. My prognosis is good and the numbers are on my side against a recurrence. With Letrozole (the drug I’m on for possibly 10 years), it is even better. Obviously, these are statistics and while statistics tell a story, they don’t help the individual. He said that he knew for me, there is only “cancer” or “NED” (no evidence of disease). But at this stage, I have to believe in NED until it is shown to be otherwise. Because living, thinking every twinge or pain is a recurrence, is no way to live. And between him and my surgeon, they will be monitoring me closely. He also said that he knew that trying to live without anxiety of recurrence wasn’t an easy thing to do but that it was really important for my mental health to try. His final words on the topic were that the best thing I could do to help prevent a recurrence was exercise and fitness but at this stage I had done everything I could do and that now it was time to try to get back to living.
Am I back to living? I don’t know. What will the scans show? I don’t know that either. Will my Zen state disappear and I become a blithering mess by tomorrow afternoon? Quite possibly.
On another tack, I was at my exercise class on Friday night and the guest speaker was a breast reconstruction nurse. She was very honest and it was good to be able to bombard her with questions and also to hear the questions that others asked. I have never been sure whether I will go down that path as the thought of more surgery is rather overwhelming. I left thinking that I hate being flat and I hate the idea of a reconstruction. Stamp foot here and someone please wave a magic wand!