Can you remember what you were doing on this day last year?
I can with crystal clear memory
After six months and 16 rounds of torturous chemotherapy, 55 hours of cold capping, MRis, CT scans, investigations, and blood tests… I finally got to surgery.
Brutal surgery that would remove the lobular breast cancer and all of the lymph nodes from my arm and armpit. It was a strange sense of anticipation, relief and dread as I entered the hospital ward to be admitted for the operation, but after six months of treatment, I just wanted to get on with it.
Luckily for me the surgery that took place on this day last year led a few weeks later to confirmation that I was cancer free and currently today I am still cancer free, but it feels like I am obliged to write for now!
The active treatment of chemotherapy, surgery and then radiotherapy was in some ways the easiest part of this journey. The much harder part has been taken the hormone suppressors which I have to take for 10 years and the protein inhibitors that I have to take for three years both of which have dire side effects.
The side effects of these drugs are much more difficult to deal with because they change everything about your everyday life. Pains in the wrists and knees, brittle and thinning hair, but the recent change of drugs mean that living gastric side effects and the suppressed and low mood has now vanished and life is now so much better despite the joint pain and hair challenges.
Its little things like not being able to carry any weight in a bag that goes across my body not being able to carry a rucksack with any weight because both pull against the scar and with the weak and painful wrists, I can’t pick them up. When traveling I can’t wheel a wheelie case again because of wrists, all of this makes life difficult when on a train journey or travelling on holiday.
One year on I am still currently cancer free, but I do live under a cloud of the possibility of recurrence and that can cloud each day.
But working with what’s strong rather than what might go wrong…. I live for the day; I do the things I want to do and try not to worry too much about the future that I can’t really influence and where I can I am doing EVERYTHING I can to remain cancer free.
The last year has taught me so much about love, friendship and determination and its pure determination with a large portion to resilience that has got me through so far and that will get me through the coming years of taking these debilitating preventative drugs.
Today I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who’s encouraged me on my way, who has been there to hear me moan about the impact of the drugs and the side-effects, who has lifted my spirits when it’s being quite difficult and who has just been there to listen.
Thank you to one and all and a huge thanks to my gorgeous Gertie Goodburn who did without a doubt save my life.
The tree in the park is a metaphor for my cancer journey the day after my diagnosis it was cut down by a freak tornado, and its vast branch structure was destroyed…. But it still keeps on growing just in a different way.
