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Surgery update
Surgery happened yesterday (Wednesday). I’m doing remarkably well today. The surgery was more involved than I anticipated. I had been thinking of it as similar to a sentinel node dissection, but it was closer to a lumpectomy. What do I mean by that? The incision was bigger (she went in the original incision but had…
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I have a date
After another very anxiety filled week, things came together on Thursday afternoon and Friday. I finally feel like there is more of a plan. First off, I will have surgery on Wednesday. I don’t yet know what time. It is listed as right axillary node dissection. The diagnosis is recurrent breast cancer. It will be…
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Anxiety kicking in and a weekend folk festival
My anxiety levels are starting to increase, and will likely ratchet up during the week. One thing that is causing me the increase in anxiety is the lack of information coming from my surgeon’s office. I don’t feel like they have a whole lot of empathy for what I might be going through. There are…
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A deep breath
Yesterday was a day of breakdowns. It started with a phone call from my family doctor’s nurse. She was giving me an update on something totally unrelated to cancer, but all I wanted was the results of my bone scan. She confirmed that the results were in but could not give them to me until…
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Sunday, I took a mental health day
I woke up on early Saturday morning from a stress dream. I dreamed about learning more about the surgery and it not being what I expected. What I remember most from the dream was that I was expecting a 2-hour surgery and they said it was going to be a 9-hour surgery. Upon waking, I…
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Local recurrence for now …
I met with the local surgeon for my first consult. I wasn’t sure what kind of biopsy we would be doing. She informed me that we are treating this like a local recurrence of breast cancer. That is most likely what we are dealing with, so the initial treatment plan is based on that. In…
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Surprisingly calm
I am surprised at how calm I am – how I’m not totally stressed out or in panic mode. It is so different from the last time. I found out on Thursday that the swollen lymph node in my right axilla is cancer. We don’t know yet what type of cancer, we just know that…
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There are scares .. and then there are SCARES
After you finish your primary cancer treatment, you often go through scares. You discover something or another, and it brings on the fear that the cancer has come back. I went through many of them over the first couple of years. I remember specifically writing about two of them: It’s just a stitch and Things…
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Navigating the healthcare system
In the beginning I had no understanding of how the medical system worked with respect to cancer treatment. My understanding came only from what I saw on television. Patients experiencing critical or chronic illness have a need to learn how to navigate the healthcare system from a patient perspective.
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Learning about the disease
This post is a continuation on my discussion about Patient Health Literacy. The narrative that resulted from this study has been published on Amazon. See my Memoir page. The original source that I used for my study can be found at https://bcbecky.com. From among the 237 blog posts, I coded 92/237 (38.8%) with the category, Learning about the disease.…
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Developing Coping Mechanisms
This post is a continuation on my discussion about Patient Health Literacy. The narrative that resulted from this study has been published on Amazon. See my Memoir page. The original source that I used for my study can be found at https://bcbecky.com. From among the 237 blog posts, I coded 163 (68.8%) with the category,…
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Patient Health Literacy Themes and BC Becky Book
I had originally planned on waiting until December 17 to release my book – that would be the 8th anniversary of the surgery to remove the last of the known cancer from my body. However, when I had the paperback ready, Amazon did not let me publish it on a future date. That meant that…
