Hi All
Whilst at my GP last week with yet another ailment which I thought was the return of bc but wasn’t she told me that I should be “moving on” by now and not thinking every pain is the return.
She said this is normal for about a year but most people dont think this way after 3 years.
Wondering if I need some help . . . .
Alise x
I think its a bit harsh and very naive of your GP to be say most people worry for a year and move on. Surely everyone reacts differently depending on the severity of their disease and also their individual personalities. Some people are natural worriers and others are more relaxed but doesnt make you abnormal in the least. Have you considered seeing a counsellor? They would help you clarify your thinking next time you had an ailment you worried about so you could think more logically and work out if it was serious or just something trivial that will pass. I have great respect and great faith in counsellors as they do show you how to stop these negative ways of thinking.
I would agree with Cathy. It does sound as if you would benefit from some form of counselling. There are no hard and fast rules about how long it takes each individual to come to terms with what has hapened…but 3 years is a long time, to still be worrying over every ache and pain.You’re effectively letting the fear of cancer dominate your life, and whilst your gp may have sounded quite harsh, if she’s been seeing you for ever minor niggle and ailment over such a long period of time, then she may feel that pyschological counselling will be of more use to you, teaching you how to cope with worry and stress, and learning to think about problems a little more logically when they happen. By your own admission, you were at the gp with “yet another ailment which I thought was the return of bc”, so I think maybe your next visit to her would be to request counselling! Good luck-the fear of recurrence will always be there, but don’t let it cripple your life-I’m not advocating complacency, as I have mets to lung, liver and bone, but it would help you enormously and give you much peace if you could learn to relax slightly.
Alise I am still worrying over any niggle 2 years post dx and I think it is normal for up to 5.We are all different and react in individual ways.I think it would be shortsighted not to be aware of the possibility of recurrence or spread.See a counsellor if you think you need to but I think you are normal.Love Vxx
Possibly horace-but do you see your gp with every ache, or worry for a while before accepting that we can have aches that aren’t related to our previous illness? I think there’s a huge difference between worrying about aches and pains (which I agree is “normal”), and needing to have every ache checked out.
Knowledge is power.
I agree with cathy59 that your GP was harsh. I could tell quite a lot of stories of GPs who have sent away people with secondary breast cancer…
Are you aware of the most likely symptoms of a return of breast cancer? A regional or local rceurrence would be a lump in breast or chest wall, or in the neck for example, or a change in skin near surgery scar. Secondaries to the bones cause pain which is often worse at night, secondaries in the liver may cause shoulder pain, or nausea, secondaries in the brain…persistent headaches, secondaries in the lung niggly cough which doesn’t go away. These are the commnonest sites of secondary recurrence.
One general ‘riule of thumb’ is that any aches or pain which is new to you and which doesn’t go away after say 2/3 weeks should be investigated.
Someimes too secondaries don’t cause any symptoms.
The otehr thing to bear in mind is your original prognossi…was it a good one, or a not so good one?
We each worry in different ways and at different times. Like Cathy I think counselling can be very helpful…but you have to find the right counsellor.
I’d get a diferent GP if I were you.
best wishes
Jane
Hi Alise
my secondary was diagnosed at my 6monthly check because when asked how I was feeling I said"fine just a bit tired" the rest is history.
I think I would change GP.
Love Debsxxx
At the beginning of the year my GP told me I just needed to “go away, be positive and get on with it” when I asked if I could get his permission for my breast clinic to send me for counselling. He was adamant I was not seeing a clinical psychologist despite the fact I was struggling with all sorts of things which were being made worse by the menopause; I had also just lost my father 12 months before I was hit with this diagnosis and as some of you know my test results came back clear 4 weeks before I found out I had cancer. It was when I started having disturbing dreams about terminal illness that I knew I had to get help - my GP gave me Tamazepam. I felt very let down as he had been so supportive all the way through, so I was a bit shocked when the duty of care failed me at the end tbh.
Four months later my GP was overruled by my oncologist and the consultant gynaecologist who saw me about my menopausal symptoms. I’ve since had 5 sessions of counselling and have the 6th next week when I will be discharged from the service. I am so grateful I was given the opportunity to have these sessions as I’m now back on track, getting on with life and planning for the future in the business I run with my OH. I went to my late dad’s home of Belfast recently (October is my dad’s death and my diagnosis) and it really helped me dump some baggage. I felt I was able to say goodbye to dad properly and could feel him telling me to try to get on with things now.
This is an interesting thread because i have just had my 3 yrs anniversary since DX and have been thinking about how it all changed my life.
I remember at Dx my BC nurse said ‘cancer may not kill you, but it can take your life’ Sadly for me it has made me very under confident firstly in my body and secondly in taking on anything new and looking to the future.
I saw a psychologist and it helped a bit but i think its ultimately US who have to work hard at getting our lives on track. All the advice and help in the world isnt going to just change things.
I have refrained from going on any anti depressents as i didnt think for me they would help. I am not depressed just scared of it coming back.
Personally i think your GP is harsh but mine is the same. I do not think people should say in one year you should feel like this, in 2 like this, and if your still clear in 3yrs you should be perfectly normal. The reason they should not say this is because people like you and I and probably a lot of others on here then feel this great sense of failure, that we are not complying.
People are all different and people who struggle do not need added pressure to fit a ‘norm’ Who has set the standard for the ‘norm’ anyway?
I try now not too compare myself with people and take no notice of GP’s or people who make me feel i am not doing what i should be doin.
I am having a bone scan because of rib pain and awaiting my mammogram results, and YES I am scared
The friends i have learnt the most from recently have been those with secondaries though. One said to me 'i cannot do a thing about it but just live my life to the full whilst i am reasonably well.
That is what i want to do as i hopefully am well.
Rx
No Elaine I dont go to the doctor every time,because I am afraid of being a nuisance,that when I really need her I will have cried 'Wolf’too often etc.At the moment I am worried about frequent coughs[which do go then return],a sore eye[not always],a lot of bites[itchy but…],pain in the ‘good’ breast[had recent ultrasound but…].I could go on.The one thing I’m not worried about is that I am neurotic.My GP is great if I go to her she is understanding and has said,‘just come in if you want to talk’.I dont of course.
" I don’t,of course", being the vital clue, horace. I think the first thought most of us have when we have an ache, is “could it be c.”, but don’t jump to the conclusion that it needs to be checked out-we rationalise and accept that we will have other things go wrong with our battered bodies! Obviously that type of attitude can take many years to cultivate-it’s never easy to do, but if after several years, no progress is being made towards moving on, then perhaps it’s time to consider some specialised help. G.P.s are great-most of them doing very hard jobs under difficult situations-most would love to devote more time to each consultation, but simply can’t.So although alises’s g.p. may have ben a tad harsh, she hasn’t behaved unprofessionally nor been negligent-it’s another reason, I feel which suggests that alise may be better tackling her fears from another angle, and learning coping mechanisms to deal with her fear levels. It saddens me so much that cancer dominates so many lives for so long-alsie may never have a recurrence (fingers crossed!), but if she does, I’d hate her to be in the position of reflecting about all the healthy/good years that she devoted to worrying, when she could have been enjoying cancer free years.
Liverbird put it very neatly-“it has to be us who work hard to get our lives back on track”. And we must, otherwise in a perverse way the cancer has really won, even if it never recurrs.
Once you have had cancer or any other life threatening illness, you live with the Sword of Damocles dangling over you. Some will be able to acknowledge the “Sword” but not let it consume their lives, whereas others will be constantly staring at it, wondering when it is going to fall. Learning to accept that the fear will always be there and but to try and not let it take over your life is a very difficult thing to do and some people may need professional help in developing these coping strategies. Fear and worry will not stop cancer returning, neither will running off the the GP every five minutes. As Elaine says, GP’s are not always the best people to help with coping strategies mainly because of time constraints, but also because they are not trained in this specific area. Counselling and psycotherapy won’t stop cancer recurring or you having a car crash or losing your husband in an accident, but it will help you get the most of live, whatever happens.
Hi Alise, Your gp did not have a clue. She had obvously not had the hell that is bc. I am relatively ‘early’ post treatment and I know I will worry all the time. Everyone is different, there is no’set’ time to ‘get over it’. You wouldn’t have a gp saying you have ‘to get’ over the death of loved one. Or to be ‘positive’ about any disease other than cancer.
rach xxx
I thought I had moved on, yes, still worried by aches and pains but I thought it was only natural for me to feel that way so just accepted it. That all changed yesterday, I read an article about women with secondaries - one of which said she’d just felt under the weather and had a big bloaty stomach and people thought she was pregnant and it ended up she had secondaries in a couple of places. Well, I do a lot of exercise, but have been unable to shift post chemo/herceptin weight and someone asked me the other week whether i was pregnant. So, yesterday, I just lost it - off work today as I’ve just fallen apart, thought i’d read the forum to cheer me up but am just sitting and crying!!!
Hi Madbadger
I read that article - it was in the Daily Mail wasn’t it?? It REALLY upset me. My husband said Why the hell didi I read it which is true - but it was like I had to.
I too fell apart yesterday - the worse I have been for a long time and its then it hits home that a newspaper article has the power to reduce us to a jibbering wreck - it’s just crap.
Thank you all for replying with your thoughts.
Love to all
Alise
Hi all, if it was the article about the 5 ladies in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday mag, I too was a bit upset by it. I met one of the ladies featured last year and I was sad to read her cancer had progressed since I had met her. I didn’t sleep very well last night as it was playing on my mind a bit at bedtime and I kind of wished I had not seen the article. I had to take a deep breath today and say to myself that whilst it is very sad, it was not my story although that didn’t make me feel much better tbh.
One of the ladies from a BC group I go to rang me this afternoon and I was telling her about it. We are both ladies who were diagnosed in October 2006 and agreed that this time of the year is very hard for us with all the BC awareness stuff. However, we also agreed that it would be unrealistic to cut ourselves off from things in the press and media during this time.
Let’s face it, I read the horoscope fo Taurus every day but am faced with the sign of Cancer on the page as well.
alise - Don’t ever ever ever feel you have to apologise for your feelings; you came to cancer from where you were and you are where you are now; wherever you go, you go from here; feelings are real - who said we should be happy all the time? It is appropriate to feel afraid, sad, regretful, etc etc when faced with one’s own death, and the horrible treatments we endure to avoid it. It is decidedly peculiar to be happy, cheerful, etc when bad things happen. Moreover, who says that if you got diagnosed on, say, January 1, then you should be happy by January 1 of following year, or three years, or five…most of us never go back to where we were, and why should you; experience changes people; let it be a meaningful experience if not a good one, and take your own time to deal with it. Your own time. Breast cancer can return at any time - with breast cancer it is not true that at 5 years you can heave a sigh and say ‘got away with it’. So it is sensible to be aware of twinges. Sometimes we are fine and then find it doesn’t take much (an anniversary, an article, a word…) to knock us off balance again. If this doesn’t upset us, what could?
At my latest check up in June, 3 yrs after dx, my onc took my hand, looked me in the eyes and said:
“Listen, your prognosis is good, I do not think your cancer will come back, but I can’t give you any guarantee. Live and plan as if you will stay healthy”
I am going back in 8 weeks ( guess who’s counting down) and I am scared.
I know that she she cannot guarantee anything and this is all I seem to remember lots of times. What happened to the rest of her statement? Why can’t I dwell on that?
cava
My GP said she seen only three women at her practice with breast cancer so I doubt if generalising from three people would help her decide what is the norm for length of time women worry about having it come back. Also who cares what other people do? I have obsessive compulsive traits, so I doubt if anything which applies to the norm is going to apply to me.
GPs are meant to look at the individual but sadly their main expertise is in coughs and colds and referring on
I never see the same oncologist twice,resulting in finding it very hard to talk with them so i feel that after my visit i am no further on. So i often feel that i have not moved on because of this. does anyone else find this?