BC Becky

Never thought I'd want to be a breast cancer survivor

Category: Five years and counting

  • Life during “safer at home”

    Life during “safer at home”

    I haven’t blog in a while – in part this is because I wasn’t sure what to say and in part it is because I’ve blogged at Goingeast.

    I am starting to confuse days – except that I know that I cannot hike on the weekends. My days are crazy busy but I’m doing slightly different stuff. In the last couple of weeks I’ve become significantly more productive, almost to the point of pre-cancer – at least that is what it feels like.

    Yesterday (or maybe the day before, I’m totally losing track of days), I filled in the paperwork to officially withdraw from my PhD. I had made the decision before Covid changed my world, but telling people other than my supervisors coincided with it. When I initially made the decision, I gave myself til the end of the month to formally make the decision. With the end of the month approaching I did it.

    I need to remember my own advice about decision making. You made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time. There is no value in looking back and doubting yourself. Once I hit send, the decision was formally made. Now I can move on with my life.

    And so my Covid days have gotten crazy busy. I’m doing a lot of work for Treehouse Village now. Now that I am no longer feeling guilty about not working on my PhD, I’ve been able to sign up to some things that I enjoy doing – and with Covid moving everything online, it aligns nicely with my skills. I’m what I can to support community building and marketing at this time (we are looking for future neighbours).

    And I’m teaching. Three classes right now and three in the summer. We added a second section to the course “the design and instruction of online courses” because the demand was high. As a result, we have have two full sections now and enough students needing to take the course that it will run again in the fall. I’m going to busy.

    I also try to get out for a hike once a week, but it seems to be happening closer to every other week. I go on a weekday, and I use only the trails recommended by the local Open Space preserves and County Parks. Fortunately, so far they have been doing a great job of indicating which trails are Covid friendly.

    With my husband home 7-days a week, my weekdays and weekend blur. We have separate offices so he pops out at various times during the day to grab something from the kitchen. He knows not to bug me when I’m typing, so we are fully able to work together. We spent every day together for 16-months on our bike trip – so we fall right into the flow. At this time of social distancing, I am exceedingly lucky to be living with my soul mate and a partner that I enjoy being with 24/7 (OK almost 24/7). If I want to be alone, I go on a walk. If I want to say hi to another person not on Zoom, I pitter in the garden until I see my neighbour who is also spending a lot of time pittering in the garden.

    So far we are healthy and our plan is to do everything we can to stay that way.

    What does your day look like now?

    Feature image by me – Calero County Park on one of my hikes.

  • Are individual breast cancer narratives just pink ribbons?

    Are individual breast cancer narratives just pink ribbons?

    Personal breast cancer stories are one means of producing and maintaining ignorance about breast cancer.

    (Segal, 2008, p.4)

    I read an interesting article by Judy Z. Segal (2008) that argues that “ignorance about cancer is maintained, in part by the rehearsal of stories that have standard plots and features, and that suppress or displace other stories.” (p.3)

    I find this an interesting argument. In the article she argues that the standard plotlines of stories silence the counter narratives. Anyone that has experience breast cancer, might tell you of the challenge of people telling you that you need to stay positive, eat a healthy diet, get exercise, or pray. As if not doing these things is what led to the cancer, or that not doing these things will cause the cancer to come back. That is the predominant narrative and one that some cancer patients need to fight in order to stay sane.

    Much of what we are told about breast cancer is meant not simply to inform us, but also to evaluate and to govern us

    Segal, 2008, p. 6)

    I found that this quote spoke to me. It can be seen in some discussion forums – where only certain narratives are welcome. In some places, if you do not find god in your experience of breast cancer, then you are doing it wrong. In others it is about diet and exercise, or staying positive. These are all messages that often get propagated in certain online spaces but also through books about individual cancer experience. When you read pathographies (books about illness experience), they are all about the lessons of cancer. The plotlines are all about personal growth in one way or another. Does that not tell cancer patients and the wider world that cancer is a personal growth experience? That there is a right way to do cancer?

    Personal narrative is itself a pink genre; it is so welcome in part because it is unthreatening – unlike, for example, the genre of the protest rally or the diatribe. Furthermore, it is an egocentric genre: it honours the individual and neglects the collective. (p. 17)

    (Segal 2008, p.17)

    I cannot help but wonder if the blog is a genre that breaks this argument. In book length memoires, you need a beginning, middle, and end. The story needs to have a plot that comes to some kind of completion, otherwise the reader is left hanging – and yet, I wonder if that feeling of being left hanging is actually more authentic. But do blogs help? Do they allow more for the protest rally or diatribe that Segal is arguing that personal narratives don’t provide? Does the genre of personal narrative through blog change the analysis of personal narrative as pink?

    Illness narratives not only document and catalogue experience, they also reflect and reinscribe a hierarchy of values for such experience: humour is good; despair is bad; surviving is noble; dying, by implication, is not. (p. 13)

    Did my blog propagate this narrative? Was my story yet another story that served to reinscribe the values that there is a right way to do cancer?

    As readers of my blog, what do you think? Did my blog tell the standard plot/narrative, just in more detail than other tell it? Does the detail help break the standard narratives? Did you leave reading my blog thinking that there was a “right” way to do cancer?

    Reference: Segal, J. Z. (2008). Breast Cancer Narratives as Public Rhetoric: Genre Itself and the Maintenance of Ignorance. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 3(1). doi:10.1558/lhs.v3i1.3

    Feature image by Gwen Weustink on Unsplash

  • When a TV star has stage IV

    When a TV star has stage IV

    I don’t know why – well I guess I kind of do – but Shannon Doherty‘s recent announcement that her Breast Cancer has metastasized and she is now stage IV (for breast cancer that means terminal) has hit me emotionally.

    I didn’t know her personally, but I was an avid fan of 90210 when I was younger. I think in part it is because she is my age. She was diagnosed with breast cancer as a young survivor (that is under 45) rather than the more typical celebrity with breast cancer that was a more typical post-menopausal age at diagnosis. Young breast cancer are more likely to be aggressive and metastasize, but I know that reality.

    The think is, over the last couple of years I have lost some good friends to stage IV breast cancer. I know that it kills and that it kills young women in the prime of their lives. Mothers of young children.

    And so, when I see it in the news, it hits home. It reminds me of the friends I have lost.

    There is also this idea of parasocial relationships – that is something that is rather academic, but it is the idea that we feel like we ‘know’ someone because we watch them (on TV, read their blog, etc). We feel we know them, although they may not know us at all. I am in no way a ‘star’ watcher. I would not have seen or been aware of Shannon’s career had this not happened. I do remember when the announcement came out about her early stage diagnosis – I was acutely aware of breast cancer at that point because I was recovering from my treatments and I was dealing with the crazy anxiety that came with my diagnosis.

    And so, I know why but also felt the need to write something about it. I know that whenever I hear of anyone being diagnosed stage 4, but especially those who are young – that it will hit me emotionally.

    Feature image by Andy Wang on Unsplash.

  • Getting flustered

    Getting flustered

    Since my oncologist wants me on endocrine therapy for 10 years, I started taking low dose (5mg) tamoxifen. I have been on it for just over a month. At first I was getting slight headaches, but I was taking it at night so it wasn’t really affecting me.

    What have noticed is that I seem to get easily flustered when I have too make too many decisions in a short period of time. I went to the movie the other day with some friends, and the act of buying the tickets through me for a loop. Since they didn’t have 5 seats in a row, we had to sit in a group of 2 and a group of 3. But I couldn’t make that decision. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t read the screen that told me which seats were available. It was just too much to process.

    I notice that I have an underlying level of anxiety that I don’t recall having before.

    It was on my walk around the block today – which I’m doing now – yay, I realized that the flustering feelings align with me taking tamoxifen. It occurs to me now that it is meds that are causing this feeling, rather than my brain not behaving. There is some relief in that, as it means that when I stop the meds my brain will work better – but it also isn’t good because I need to be on the meds, and the alternative, and aromatase inhibitor, is so much more potent and likely to have worse side effects.

    For now I can live with it. Now that I know the source of it, when the flustering starts to happen, I can try and use some cognitive behavioural therapy to change my thinking and calm things down. In theory, that will help. I won’t know until I try it.

    The first step is always to identify the problem, so I can say that I have at least achieved that.

    Feature image by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash.

  • Five years and counting

    Five years and counting

    Yesterday I had an important cancer anniversary. Five years ago, on December 17, 2014, I was officially in remission. It is the date that the last of my known cancer was removed from my body. It was a huge surgery.

    This year I had back surgery on Monday December 9th. It turned out to be two micro-discectomies / micro-laminectomies. The surgeon made about a 3 in incision in my lower back, and on the L4/S1 he moved the muscle toward the center of the spine to access the impinged nerve and shaved off some disc to clear the hernia. Then he moved the L4/L5 muscle to the left away from the spine, to access the hernia there and he shaved the disc there to free the nerves.

    Mostly my challenge now is just letting it heal. I need to alternate between sitting or standing (no more than 30 minutes), and laying down to give my back muscles a chance to rest. I’ll have staples in my back for another week, maybe two, and once the staples are out I need to slowly increase my activity but not overdo it. I don’t start physical therapy until six weeks post surgery. I don’t know yet where I’ll do that. I’ll need to do some research into great places for spinal physical therapy.

    With my back surgery, I haven’t spent nearly as much time reflecting on the anniversary of my cancer surgery. It hasn’t been a focus of my thoughts. In previous years I have found the anniversary to be a very sombre day – not a celebratory day, but rather a day where I felt sad for all that had transpired in the year previous as a result of my cancer diagnosis. I wonder if the reason I’m not feeling that way this is that is it that majical five year mark. That is a number that is used in a lot of research. For some types of cancer, you are considered “cured” if you haven’t recurred in five years. So five years is significant, and yet it really isn’t. It is just another day.

    With the type of cancer I had, the recurrence rate doesn’t really change after five years. Each year, I have the same risk of recurrence. To help reduce it, I’m now taking low dose tamoxifen (5mg). So far I have managed it OK, as long at it is working for me I’ll keep going on it for another five years. I’m also still doing lupron shots as my body is not yet in menopause. If all goes well, I will be stable on this regime for five years. Apparently, the protective effects of hormone therapy last well past the time you stop taking the meds. That being said, because of my age, I may on tamoxifen forever – who knows. As long as I’m not seeing side effects, I’m OK with it.

    And so today begins five years and counting ….

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