My cancerversary

Author: Zoe F

This time, exactly one year ago today, I was sat in a little room hearing the words "sadly, it's cancer". I knew it was, from the moment I had the ultrasound, heard the words "this is cause for concern" and saw the tumour on the screen. The breast care nurse sat in the corner was a bit of a giveaway too. I felt my mum's hand go into mine, but I couldn't look at her and I felt the tears well up. Then my consultant said "but, I think it's very treatable" and the tears stopped and I pulled myself together. I even took mum to Tesco afterwards! I was very naïve at the beginning and it took a while for the enormity and seriousness of it all to kick in, especially after I learned about my type of cancer. The consultant kept that bit quiet. After all, I felt fine. I didn't feel ill at all.

I went into organisational mode from then on. No one tells you that there is so much you have to do and buy to prepare yourself for surgery and treatment. Cancer is bloody expensive. I had my birthday 3 days later and carried on as normal, went to work and carried on as normal until I went off for my op. So then followed 10 months of surgery, fertility treatment, chemo and radiotherapy. It was very hard and emotional. I couldn't watch a cancer advert without crying. Cancer was everywhere. I'd have breakdowns to my mum sobbing "I don't want to die". Some days I couldn't even get out of bed, not even to wash or brush my teeth. The night following my first chemo I was in tears begging my mum to call the doctor out. It was horrific. I told her I couldn't do it again. But of course I did and with the right drugs to counteract the side effects it was still hard, but doable.

Once all the treatments are over people expect you to be happy, but you feel sad. When the last of the chemo drugs dripped through I wasn't smiling, I wanted to cry. When I had my last radiotherapy session I cried my eyes out on the radiologist. You're on your own then, back out into the world, and it's scary.

So, a year on. Has it changed me? Yes and no. I never had much confidence before, but the cancer knocked a lot more out of me. I'm a stone and a half heavier than before thanks to the steroids and I'm struggling to get rid of it. I have hair again and while having short hair isn't as bad as I thought it would be I still want it longer. It's also going curly. The little things still annoy me. I may never have children. I treat myself more.

The biggest change is that I've found myself doing things I would never have done before because I've realised that life is too short. It's a cliche but it's true. The cancer could come back, it may still be lurking somewhere, but if the worst happens I don't want to look back and think "I wish I'd done..."


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Are you a young woman in the UK who has/had breast cancer? If so, please read this post about Breast Cancer Awareness Month this October (2015).

October: Breast Cancer Awareness Month - Call for submissions

Hello!

Next month, October, is breast cancer awareness month. Last year during October I was going through chemo myself, and if I'm honest I found breast cancer awareness month to be at best annoying and at worst upsetting. I saw lots of pink ribbons, lots of cake sales, lots of businesses using breast cancer to make a profit - ranging from the silly to the downright offensive ("Buy our limited edition pink toilet brush and 5% of profit will go to breast cancer awareness!"). Lots of sexy images of glamorous, white, large-breasted women in pink bras "raising awareness". It drove me mad!

 

This year, during October, I want this blog to do some real breast cancer awareness. I've set a target of at least one new post every day.

So if you are a young woman in the UK who has, or has previously had breast cancer please submit a post for the blog for October. It doesn't matter whether you are an experienced blogger, or if you have never written for a blog in your life. The Young Women's Breast Cancer Blog needs YOU!

I am calling out for posts about anything related to your personal experience of breast cancer (primary and secondary). These might include, but are not limited to, posts about:

• The signs, symptoms and events that led to your diagnosis
• What happened when, and immediately after you were diagnosed
• How breast cancer treatment has affected you
• Anything you know now that you wish you had known before you were diagnosed with breast cancer
• The impact of breast cancer on your life (for example, relationships, work, sex and intimacy, children, hobbies and interests)
• A letter to the newly diagnosed (from women who have completed treatment)
• Things you think it would be helpful for friends, families, colleagues and neighbours of young women with breast cancer to know (eg how they might be able to support/what things never to say/gift ideas)
• The aspects of breast cancer that you don't think are talked about enough, or honestly enough.
• Recognising a relevant family history prior to diagnosis.
• Anything else you would like to share during breast cancer awareness month.

Submissions can be emailed to ywbcblog@yahoo.co.uk. (I'm collecting from now - it would be wonderful to get as many as possible submitted in September so I can get them ready for publishing from October 1st). If you are planning to submit a post, please have a read of the general guidance here too: http://youngwomensbreastcancerblog.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-posts-about-breast-cancer.html.

If you have any queries, please send them to ywbcblog@yahoo.co.uk.

And please share this post far and wide!

Thank you
Sarah

Storm in a teacup: The end? Haha yeah right

Author: Danielle

 

So the end of my active treatment officially finished on 29th June, that was my last radiotherapy treatment. I went on my own. In hindsight not such a good idea! I cried big fat blobby tears on the table and I continued to cry the whole drive home. I still don't know what started the onslaught of emotion, was I upset? Was I happy? Was I relieved? I've no idea. The cancer "endurance test" as one of my YBCN sisters so eloquently put it, sucks you up, spins you around, chews you up & then spits you straight back out again. And then you are left bereft, I think that's the right word, I think what I felt laying there having my last fraction of radiotherapy was complete and utter shock!!!!! What the hell just happened?.

The end of treatment isn't the end of the story though...I so wish it were. I wish as soon as that last little bit is done you can just go back to whatever it was you were blissfully doing before.......oh how I wish it was exactly how people who haven't had to endure cancer treatment themselves or who haven't watched a loved one suffer the effects think it is. That the last day of active treatment is the end, book closed, case solved, finished, done!............ hummmm!

My celebrations were delayed due to the fact that I was awaiting a biopsy of bad boob which couldn't be done until radiotherapy was complete. Before rads had started my bad boob started to change. It became red, hot, felt weird & had taken on an orange peel look. I was scanned midway thro radio and the area was thickened but no obvious lumps showed on ultrasound, they wanted to do a biopsy but as I have triple negative breast cancer radio was the last weapon in my armoury. So it was decided to wait until rads had finished so as not to risk any delays due to infections or breaking down of the biopsy site. So a few days after I had it done. Also before rads had started I was suffering really badly with pain in one of my ribs, painkillers weren't shifting it but the ribs are sensitive creatures as they are constantly on the move so it was understandable but never the less a worry. I'm sure every woman who gets a referral to breast clinic thinks a primary breast cancer diagnosis could be the worst thing that could happen to them, I did, and it isn't a barrel of laughs let me tell you. But you get the diagnosis and you don't fall apart, you carry on through treatment but you come to a realisation that a secondary breast cancer diagnosis is the worst thing that could happen to you! Bones, liver, lungs or brain are the 4 most common places for any possible rouge BC cells to roam around and decide to set up camp. Secondary doesn't mean it's not as bad or its second to primary. Secondary breast cancer kills! It is incurable, it has killed beautiful, vibrant young women and mothers that I have had the pleasure to talk to and get to know online. It's the diagnosis that anyone with breast cancer doesn't want to get. So the boob biopsy was a drop in the ocean at worst a possible local recurrence, I'd just have to do the endurance test all over again and hope that the chemo while not wholly effective was effective enough not to let any hikers make camp. The bone scan was a whole other pile of crap - at worst secondary breast cancer, metastasis to my bones..........thankfully the boob is lymphedema and the rib is surgical pain..........phew!!! I'm over the bloody moon. I literally can't put into words how happy this makes me. I feel like I can mentally and physically begin to readjust, recoup and rebuild.

I know I sound ungrateful. Believe me I couldn't be happier that I no longer have to endure the medicines and treatments that make me feel so god damn awful. I was happy to have finished treatment but call me superstitious I don't care I wasn't about to go shouting from the rooftops that I'm cured, that I've beaten it and won because in all honesty I'm on a precipice right now treatment is done all I can hope is that it was successful but until years start to pass I can't believe that it has gone, because if I do and it comes back................. well................I just can't think about it. So for now be happy that I'm no longer being made to feel like shite. Please don't tell me well done on beating cancer because the little superstitious person in me cowers at these words. Just inwardly know that this stage is complete but continue to support me and ask how I'm doing. Don't expect me to bound around saying I'm cured, I won't, I can't. But I am happy that I've finished treatment I'm ecstatic in fact and I hope beyond all hope that I never have to have any of it ever again. Please don't mistake my caution for sadness or grief or depression. I don't expect you to understand I just ask for compassion.

Every day I can feel a little bit of me coming back. Every week I loose a little more chemo bloat. Every few days I set to task at getting another part of my house back in order. I'm wearing mascara again, I missed being able to just slap on a little bit of mascara, it's the little things. My brows are growing. I have to consider hair removal for the rest of my body for the first time since January. I no longer wear my wig, there are a few reasons. Firstly it's been bloody roasting and that is not conducive to a comfortable wig wearing environment. Secondly it rubs on my new baby hair and gives me bald spots. Thirdly and most importantly I feel well enough to not care what people think about my baldy bits. My rads burns are finally on the turn around 3 weeks after finishing and look like they are beginning to heal. Yes guys and girls radiotherapy takes 2-3 weeks to become inactive so although we were done, we weren't done done! A little bit at a time.......bit by bit........I'm tired, I ache, bits of me hurt, I don't feel the same as I used to but I feel better than I did last week and I feel twice as well as I felt the week before. I may never be rid of the tingling in my fingers and toes. I may never get the full use of my arm back, I almost definitely won't get the sensation back in the top of my arm but I don't feel unwell!!!

Unbelievably people have challenged me on how I've felt over the course of my treatment and compared me to people they may know who have seemingly "coped" with it all better than I have. To those people I say this; there are no Olympic cancer treatment games, there are no gold medals for coming out on top. Everyone's treatments are different and everyone reacts differently to those treatments. No one is the same. No one is battling against each other and if they knew you were comparing me to them they would be devastated that you were doing such a thing. There will be people out there who may also use me as an example of someone who has coped through all of this, please don't, just support them, it is not conducive to their well being or recovery to hear that someone else sailed through chemo or had no side effects to radiation treatment. The people who are closest to me, my husband, my parents, my eldest brother, my children, my cousin and my 2 closest friends have seen me at my lowest lows, they've looked after me when I couldn't, they've taken me to appointments, they've looked after my children, I couldn't have done it without them. They have had to be the brave ones to watch me at time suffer and know there is nothing they could do to help me. But they have helped me in so many other ways. They've also seen my at my highs they've laughed and cried with me. They are the only people who can make a judgement on how well I have coped. Because the reality of it is for everyone else it's just been easier for me to say I'm doing ok. It's tiring enough enduring the effects of treatment without having to relive it to everyone who asks, I'm sorry. I would love to give you a blow by blow account but the reality of it is the people who seemingly "cope" through it all are just shielding you from how utterly awful it is. So chemo might only slow one person slightly or it might completely wipe someone else of their white blood cell & neutrophils count each round that they end up hospitalised on IV antibiotics because any form of infection could make them so poorly they could die. Nobody knows how it will effect each individual so do not compare. I can almost categorically say that anyone who has gone through treatment will live with the fear, the fear that one day your cancer will come back and worst still it will be terminal, how people cope with that is also different but no one should judge. It's not a competition.

Someone on the YBCN said just this morning that they were fed up of people saying how brave they are when she doesn't feel brave at all and actually it just makes her feel like she should be. Put yourself in a situation, on top of a cliff, in a pit of snakes, in shark infested waters, covered in spiders and someone tells you, you can do this you are brave! So it's fight or flight you either submerge yourself in your biggest fear with a smile on your face or you run away kicking and screaming. Or consider facing your biggest phobia with someone holding your hand, someone saying we can do it together, I'll help you, I'll support you and I'll fight along side you. Which would you rather?

So for now my treatment is finished. I'm getting better it's slow don't expect miracles, but know I want me back on my feet as much as you do. I will have to live with the fear. Sometimes I may want to talk about my fears and that's ok, it doesn't mean I'm giving up it just means it's got so much it's spilling over and I don't want to drown in it. I won't be who I was before it would be silly to presume I will be. But I'll keep going till I get near as damn it and actually I'd like to think I'll be a better version of the old me x x 

"You can never step into the same water twice"

Author: Anat F C

I went on a very well earned holiday.

It was promised to me the day I was diagnosed by my husband. "Pick whatever you want,we can go wherever,you just need to finish that shit!!!".

Needless to say,this 'shit' will never be over,it will always be in the back of my head....

In my last meeting with my counsellor, before I left ,it was agreed that it would be interesting to see if I'm capable not to think about it. 

I failed!!!...

I constantly think about the philosopher Kant, that said:" you can never step into the same water twice." No,I definitely can't!!! I will never be the same person. When I put my foot in the sea,I thought to myself,this hair never been to the sea, these boobs never been to sea and this person has never been to the sea...

This person has never lost a friend to the same illness that she had/has...

Last week we went few of us to a shiva. For the ones of you don't know what it is, it the Jewish seven days of mourning after someone dies. Our friend Rosie,had passed away.  She had breast cancer that had metastasised to her liver. She was one the most special people I have spoken to, we never met. We all celebrated her life with some sparkly,the way she would have wanted us to do.


One of us said:"we should live our life to the fullest,we don't know what can happen tomorrow,we could be hit by a truck." This is something that every cancer patient always hear from everyone. 

I said:" I can tell you I'd be fucking angry if after all that a truck would kill me!!!"  So since chemo I'm very careful while crossing the road.  But I will definitely live my life to the fullest!!!

This person has entered the see today...

Friendships

Author: Sarah

I'm still here, please don't fear.
I need a friend someone on whom I can depend.
I don't need much, just fun and such.
The treatment may be rough but I've got that I'm tough.
Please take heed to what I need.
Friendship gives me wings to fly on the day every inch of my body cries.
A coffee, a walk, a call it's enough to help me stand tall.
I won't ask, I won't call, I won't tell you I need you but you can be sure that I do.
Just for now please do the giving, I'm trying my best to just do the living.
If you can't talk about the scary C, well that's fine just come and have a cup of tea.
Who knows the future neither you not I. Imagine how you'd want to feel and please try.

Cancer hasn't killed me, please don't kill our friendship.

The innocents

Author: Sarah

Eight months ago I felt a fairly integral part of the general population and certainly of my own middle class mostly incredibly fortunate community. I have always been a bit of a mild mannered anarchist at heart and my style is often to purposely choose the barely beaten track. Looking back on that now I couldn't have chosen a wilder less trodden path than the one I'm now on if I'd tried.

Now I am not a depressive or dark character I am actually a very upbeat sort of a gal who tends to just keep going always at a steady unrelenting jog. But lately my thoughts are more complex, an insidious oil slick of colours, hues of grey and black but with rich and vivid metallics in shades of green, purple and blue similar to the dramatic and all seeing eye of a peacocks tail.

The day I finished chemo I started to write, words just started to seep from my mind. I will admit to always having had a severely under occupied intellect and thus a very cluttered and busy mind, for the past few years I have been tending contentedly to my children, their education and my husbands career, my mind a relentless melange of varying philosophies, business ideas and unwritten theses. With hindsight the knowledge (I say knowledge as I had already been a cancer host for at least 18 months prior to diagnosis) of my breast cancer meant my already crowded mind quickly reached capacity and all new thoughts had to find an outlet. I'm sure this is why I started to type that day six weeks ago.

I love my life, I really do I am one of the most fortunate people I know, yes we've had health, money, business, parent and relationship issues but who hasn't that is an integral part of the pattern of life but I love my life and I am incredibly content in amongst the humdrum of my everyday existence. But what is missing now since my diagnosis are a significant number of my friends.

I have become slightly estranged from many of my friends over the last few months, some due to their apathy, some due to their lack of strength and maybe some due to my apparent phenomenal strength and independence. I have found that after the stomach blow of disappointment and the anger that many of your favourite human beings have almost inevitably it now seems let you down I am left with what can only be described as perhaps a mild resentment towards "the innocents".

The strange thing about this is that I'm not resentful that "the innocents" don't have cancer, not at all I wouldn't wish that on anyone or anything. I'm not bitter or angry that I did or do (I'll never know which it is unless it rears it's head again. I am currently classed as no evidence of disease the sometimes elusive NED sought by many cancer hosts). I seem to resent the general population or many of them for their insipid apathy towards all that makes them feel uncomfortable and it would appear that now includes me. It is difficult for them apparently to know what to say or what to do. They don't want to say the wrong thing, they don't want to ask or is it really that they don't want to know. They don't want to face the terrifying prospect that one day the sucker punch wall of life can throw you one almighty blow you won't even see coming, that is until you realise your nose is clearly broken due to the unmistakeable taste of blood in your mouth. I cannot comprehend this foolish but conscious choice to be so complacent. To pretend that life isn't fragile and precious, to risk all this by thinking out loud enough to be heard, "it won't happen to me". How dare they, why do they believe they are so different to me? I have never committed any crimes against humanity of any sort, I have always tried to be a kind person. I try to forgive. I always ate my greens!

I often look at "the innocents" the ones I know and feel that they show a blatant disregard for life! They occupy themselves with such triviality rather than face the real issues of life that can shape and change your character and make you feel truly alive. Have they not stopped to see, to learn the lesson from me, any one of them may already be in the same position just blissfully ignorant thus far and even if they are not, any one of us could be lost today to misfortune such is the fragility of this wondrous life. Having said that I do not mourn the ignorant life of before I do not envy "the innocents" I am happy in my new awareness, I just wish to continue in this new found state of awe and wonder for the rest of my natural days.

I am truly sorry if I embarrass them, I'm sorry it's hard to find the words but neglect is disrespectful and I have been upset and angry to have been sidelined and in fact forgotten. I forgive them all for they are indeed "the innocents"

I'm not currently dying and as a friend I have so very much to give. I am in fact so very much more alive than "the innocents".

A lesson from Rosie

Author: Sarah

Today has taught me the true potential of the human heart. Since I joined the young breast cancer network my heart has swelled with true love for all the other women in the world going through what we do. There is no sense to any of it other than the stark black and white of life and death. True success I now believe is acceptance of the miracle of life, finding the ability to treasure our time on earth and find peace with our fate whatever that may be. Not handbags and cars. I cannot believe that there can not be a higher calling for us for there must a reason these fantastic young women with so much to give are needed elsewhere. Our road is incredibly difficult, I use an analogy of old fashioned warfare, we are a troop, we stand and march together, we pick up our fallen and carry them for as long as is humanly possible. We grieve and mourn together for fallen comrades. This is not modern life as many know, it is a sometimes grim reality that's requires true grit but it is now our modern day reality. It is lucky my heart has swollen and grown so much because I lose a piece with every beautiful soul we lose.

We will carry each other for as long as we can allowing each other to have as much time as we can with loved ones and when one day that is not enough we will free each other from guilt and torment and allow our souls to fly free from pain and anguish reassuring each other that no matter what we ate or have done we did not invite this!