BC Becky

Never Thought I’d Want to be a Breast Cancer Survivor

Tag: connections

  • More time together

    More time together

    I recall someone mentioning that one of the things they enjoyed during treatment was all the extra time they spent with their spouse. This is something that had not really occurred to me.

    My hubby and I spent every waking moment (pretty much) together for 16-months while on our bike trip. Then we spent 1 year living on opposite sides of the country when he moved to SF and I stayed in Ottawa to work on my PhD. So, we’ve see-sawed on this. We’ve spent a lot of time together and we’ve spend not enough time together. One of the reasons I chose to moved to SF when I did (rather than stick around longer in Ottawa) was that I didn’t like living apart. I remember telling myself that we would not intentionally do that again.

    When I was diagnosed, it caused a re-set on many things. It also caused us to spend more time together – and not just more time in the infusion chair – we really spent more time with each other. Looking back over my blog posts (part of my research), I notice that I mention conversations we had while walking together in the early morning (chemo mucks with sleep patterns). It also brought me back to when we were first dating. We would often go on long walks and chat about this or that.

    Reading about the walks made me realize that I’m missing them. With re-emergence life is starting to get busy again. We are starting to fall into old patterns. Not that we were not happy before, just that there was a new level of intimacy and connection that happened when we spent that intense time together. I didn’t realize I was missing it until I read about it on my blog. And so, with that, we shall try harder to make sure we have time in our week to walk – time to chat about anything and nothing all at once. We know that self-care is important, but couple-care is import too.

    Feature image (c) Rebecca J. Hogue

  • Wondering why?

    In a post today Nancy asks “Do you ever wonder why you got cancer?”

    I did ask my oncologist that question, in part because not only do I have cancer but I have bilateral cancer which is rather rare. So much so, that much of the literature and support materials on surgeries talk about having a single mastectomy, which makes it more challenging for me to predict how things will go for me.

    I actually posted about exactly this question back before I started treatment in “Why me? versus It is what is.”

    Now I think that something in me just clicked. From time to time I question, is it my poor diet from my 20s? or drinking out of Nalgene bottles before they were PBA free? or do I eat too much food cooked on the BBQ?, or something I was exposed to while travelling in Syria or Jordan?

    But for me, the reality it that I will never know ‘why me’, and even if I did, it is in the past – it is nothing that I can change now. So I come up with my own answers. For me, the answer that I like it that something just click – some rogue something caused a bunch of cells in my body to go crazy. I kind of wish someone would take interest in the bilateral nature of my disease and try to answer “why” especially because of its uniqueness – but alas, it doesn’t actually appear to be that interesting from a research perspective. I don’t have anyone knocking at my door asking me to be part of a trial or experience to help figure out why. I’ve actually been excluded from clinical trials because I have bilateral disease.

    So, it is what is it … why won’t change anything. There is no point in regretting the past (I have had a pretty awesome past full of amazing experiences, so nothing to regret really). I’ll just choose to move on with making decision about how I want to live the rest of my life 🙂

  • The more you know the less you want to know

    This NPR clip (short 4 minute clip) talks about how colleagues of women diagnosed with breast cancer react regarding their personal health – http://www.npr.org/2014/08/13/340005026/how-a-co-worker-s-breast-cancer-diagnosis-affects-colleagues

    In the brief podcast (I encourage you to listen to it), it talks about how knowing a colleague has been recently diagnosed with breast cancer, reduces the likelihood of women to get screened within the year or two after learning about their colleague.

    I’m curious whether or not this applies to blogs as well. So women who read my blog, I’ve setup an anonymous poll (totally not scientific or anything). If you do not already have breast cancer and are female, has reading my blog encouraged or discouraged you from doing breast self-exams and doing your annual physical? Click here to respond – all responses are anonymous. I’m curious to see what effect, if any, my diagnosis has had on friends and followers.

     

     

  • The calm and then the storm

    Yesterday was one of those calm then stormy days. It began with a breakfast meeting with a new friend, whom I met through the social network myBCTeam.com.  It turns out that we have a lot in common, and I think we would find ourselves as friend regardless of the cancer connection. She has a wealth of knowledge around breast cancer and resources available, which I’m sure will prove to be very helpful. I never thought that having breast cancer would be the thing that made it easier for us to meet people in California.

    I had not heard anything from Stanford until the afternoon. Then I got a call from interventional radiology. These are the folks that place the port. I now have that booked for Thursday. They use twilight sedation, similar to what they do with cataract surgery. They use a small incision (exactly what small means is definitely relative) to place a port directly into the vein. The port lives under the skin, so once the incision is healed I can swim and shower/bath without worry.

    Shortly thereafter I had a call from my oncologist (MO). He suggested that I could start chemo as early as Thursday – right after the port is placed. His call had woken me up from a pretty sound nap, so I was not even sure how to answer. I had to first answer the question of ‘which chemo’. I decided on AC-T. I had a gut feel about that one from the beginning. The MO said it was the one that about 80% of women who need chemo for hormone positive breast cancer get (this means they understand the side effects and how to treat them). Also, shortly after making that decision, my second oncologist confirmed that is the one she would recommend. So, I’ve heard from multiple sources that it is the right choice – and it feels like the right choice. So, both quantitative me and qualitative me agree on this one.

    I decided that I will not start chemo on Thursday even if it is an option (it still needs to clear insurance). It is all too fast, and I need to be mentally and physically prepared. Mostly, I need to ensure I’m well hydrated for a couple of days before and the placing of the port with twilight sedation means fasting prior to – so pretty the opposite of what my body needs.

    So, if I start on Monday it will go something like this (assuming there are no issues that cause breaks):

    June 30 – AC
    July 14 – AC (on this regime, hair typically falls out after second treatment, grows back during T)
    July 28 – AC
    Aug 11 – AC
    Aug 25 – T weekly for 12 weeks (until November 10)

    Some people are completely tired/fatigued during chemo. Others continue to work throughout. Apparently getting regular exercise helps to reduce the side effects, so I shall be trying to get out for walks and regular bike rides although perhaps not climbing too many mountains. Fortunately the paths near here are pretty flat. If my balance goes, we’ll look into renting or buying a used trike … we’ll make this happen!

    After that, there is a break for recovery before surgery. We are thinking a week or two on the big island in Hawaii! Last time we went to the Big Island (in 2006) we wanted to rent a VW camper van, but couldn’t because our Canadian car insurance would only cover continental US and we couldn’t find anyplace to buy insurance. Now that we have US car insurance, we’ll look into that option again.

     

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