Four Years On

Nearly four years on from my diagnosis and I am still in and out of hospital.  I am so over 'procedures' and just wish I could have my life back.  Breast cancer is such shit.  Some people can have their treatment and move on as though nothing had ever happened.  Some people struggle with their ongoing treatments and life just revolves around trying to be as comfortable as possible.  Others more unfortunate move on to stage 4 and life is a constant struggle to stay alive.  I fall somewhere inbetween the first and second group.  Most of the time I can almost forget that I have had cancer but I do have the constant tightness in my stomach and the numbness and pain in my arm which I still don't have full use of.

 I do appear however to be on the doctor merry go round and feel like I will never get off.  As part of my hormone therapy my oncologist advised me to have my ovaries removed.  This would make me post menopausal and therefore able to change my medication from Tamoxifen to Femara.  Apparently studies show that women do better after breast cancer if they do a few years of Tamoxifen and then a few of Femara.  OK, this seemed a little price to pay if it was going to increase the odds of survival.  Since September 2009 I have had a mastectomy, four months of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiotherapy, a 10 hour operation in which a new breast was made out of my tummy fat, a follow up operation to tweak the reconstruction, nipple reconstruction with areola tattoo, D & C with hysteroscopy and a bilateral salpingo oophorectomy (removal of ovaries and fallopian tubes). This last operation has always been on the cards but we were hoping that it would become unnecessary as my ovaries gave up the ghost naturally.  Anyway, no big drama, I would have them removed, change to the new drug and then finally move on and end this stream of doctors' appointments.

As is the way, nothing ever goes to plan.  The operation went well and I was back at work a week later, however, whilst in there the surgeon noticed a growth on the outside of my colon.  He took a photo and showed it to a colleague who is a colorectal surgeon (remember the good old proctologists?) So just when I thought things were moving on I now have yet another specialist to visit with.  I have to say that I have been very lucky with the specialists that I have had and this man is no exception.  He told me that he is fairly sure that it was nothing sinister but he wanted to do a colonoscopy just to make sure.  Great, that makes pretty much every last shred of dignity gone, I have been poked and prodded everywhere now.  After a weekend of bowel preparation which we won't go into I went off for yet another procedure, a colonoscopy.  Upon waking I was told that it looked good and was all clear.

Yesterday I had the post surgery consultation with the surgeon and and he confirmed that all looked great but there is still the issue of what this growth is.  He reiterated that he still didn't think it was anything sinister but he wants to go in and have a look at it.  So yes, yet another operation much the same as the oophorectomy which was keyhole.  My poor pretend bellybutton is still healing from the last time they shoved a camera down it and now here we go again.  I did ask the doctor what it could be and got told of four things.  Cancer of which I always imagine breast cancer but I'm not sure if there is some other type of cancer it could be, a simply fatty deposit, diverticular disease or endometriosis.  Of course the worst case scenario is if it is breast cancer but he assures me that breast cancer doesn't often spread to the colon and the few women who he has seen with mets to their colon did not look like this.  He is fairly sure it is not that.  Diverticular disease is quite common, not nice but not life threatening, I'm not sure if he will remove it if it is that or just let it go.  Same with a fatty deposit, will he remove it or will he just take a biopsy and leave it there?  I don't know.