back to earth with a bump

I’m feeling pretty good at present, lots of positives in my life and not too many sleepless nights. Had my last theraputic massage today, it’s been a wonderful experience and provided by my NHS hosp in the onc dept.

So, I was walking through the oncology dept afterwards and bumped into a lady that I met on a ‘looking good feeling good’ make-up course. That was few months ago and she was so fit and well, had been through the mill but was well on the road to recovery, she had grown her hair back and had been free of treatments for over a yr.

She now has lung mets and is back on chemo with herceptin and has been so poorly. It really made me think. Firstly how awful it is for her, but also, how it is so easy to forget all the crap stuff and the what ifs when you don’t need to visit that place, the place where all the crap started, the hospital.

I must sound really selfish, I hope not. I just wish I could leave all that behind and be blissfully ignorant of lung mets and herceptin and arimidex etc etc. It’s a language I wish I didn’t know or have to use. And it’s a place where the reminders jump from the back of my mind and sit in the front. I feel another sleepless night coming on.

Anyone else feel the same?

Irene

Yes Irene I do, I have a good Friend who is in a similar position. Its a reality shock isn’t it, its only now that treatment and recon is over that the enormity of it all is catching up ~ it manifests it self in ridiculous worries IE did I say or do the wrong thing at work ? etc etc, I think I’m on top of it but I did warn everyone that I may spontaneously com-bust when its all over! apparently I remained cheerful through out but then I wasn’t going to let the B****** win. Its almost as though I dreamed the whole thing. And no Irene you are not at all selfish.

Rosemary

I had to go into the oncology centre for 3 nights as an emergency as my PICC line caused a blood clot and then again yesterday to have a central line put in. The first visit was the first time that I had encountered several very ill people, with secondaries etc. I had been mostly very positive until then as my oncologist has given me a reasonably good prognosis, but I became much more fearful of the future. I suppose though that we have to remember all the people who do get through this and don’t have further problems, it’s just that we don’t always come across them so easily.

I also really wish I could be just as I was before all this. Friends say that I know so much of the medical terminology now - well I wish I hadn’t had to learn it!

Just like to say, please don’t be scared of us with secondaries- life doesn’t end when you are diagnosed, and most of my days are good. We are all, in essence, women living and coping and with breast cancer, whatever stage we’re at.

I also see my knowing medical terminology as something to help me negotiate, understand and have an input into my treatment.

Hope you don’t mind me putting my two pennyth in

L
india

I am only relatively new to this, but i will never feel the same as i did before bc, my life is very surreal now, i find that i seem to have gained a new inner sense of calm, if anything happens, well, it happens, but i do get sick of people going on about how positive i appear, well I’m not positive or negative, I’m just a lot more realistic about life and my expectations, i also feel that i have the right to feel sad and tearful when i think of what has gone, people don’t always realise that we have to mourn what we have lost.

lots of love

Alisonxxxxx

Hi Irene

I know just what you mean. You aren’t being selfish. We all want to try and get some normality back into our lives. Yes there are a lot of people out there worse off than each of us. You only have to read this site to see that.

It is horrible to think that the cancer may come back, but we have to try and get on with our lives in the best way we can. Don’t feel guilty. Enjoy your good health when you can. As we have all learnt, you never know what is round the corner. However, we can live in hope that the worst is over and we can live normal lives again.

Julie.

Hi Irene

No, you do not sound selfish! Most days I feel really upbeat and hope it is all behind me, but I know realistically that it is always going to be at the back of my mind even though I feel really well.

I take every day as it comes and enjoy it. I don’t let petty things or people annoy me now, more likely to say what I think, without offending people I hope, though as Rosemary says some day I may spontaneously com-bust. (sounds great fun, I can just picture their faces at work). I try to take a more relaxed attitude to things going wrong, after what most of us have been through do some things really matter.

Please do not have a sleepless night; and you are not selfish, what you are feeling is perfectly normal and I am sure most of us feel the same.

Love and take care

Thistle

Hi India…I couldn’t agree more with you. Belinda.x.x.x

Yes India and yes alisoncamera

Both your posts are wonderfully refreshing. I hate the way women with secondaries can be regarded as the ‘horrific other’. I say this as someone balanced on a funny wall between primary and secondary diagnosis with a regional recurrence which is considered incurable and stage 4. Some women with mets live well and long. Some women with primary diagnosis today are dead within a year. And everything in between. We are all are a continuum.

I hate calls to ‘think positive’ and the moral pressure which goes with that mantra. I think there should be far more realism about what having breast cancer means (including realism about its 57 plus varieties), more ordinary talk, more OKness about tears and anger, less fluffy nonsense about how breast cancer makes us better people…NOT.

Jane

Hi Irene, It is a shock because it makes us realise that any one of us could be in the same situation. Life for me will never be the same. I am certainly not a better person for having it in fact I am not as ‘nice’ as I used to be. Not that I was particularly nice anyway!! I suffered fools gladly and now do not as I am afraid I am wasting valuable time Everything I seem to do is done with the knowledge that I might not be around long, and I did so want to be old and cantankerous and ram my Tesco trolley into young 'uns. Walk out into road and have everybody swerving to avoid me. Critisise anyone under 21 very loudly in public place. I am doing lots of things that I wouldn;t have done prior to having bc. Like borrowing money to help my son get his eyes lasored, pushing my 16 year old to apply for driving license. I feel that no-one else will do these things and encourage them so have a sense of urgency. I have to fight the urge to not listen to a bogart n my head saying ‘why buy that you probably won’t need it or be around to use it’ Then I spend silly money on lots of fabric and craft items telling myself to spend and enjoy it as I deserve it cos I might not be around much longer. I sound very pessimistic but am not I am a jolly happy person even now but still have these thoughts does anyone else ! I find myself singing Abba songs when driving and am surprised because how can I sing with this over my head> Had my say now can only talk like this on here Love Eileen

HI ALL,
Anne D Birmingham, thank you for all the input, this shared experience is so valuable and to know we are not alone. I’m coming up to a year since my lumpectomy and it has flown past, sometimes in a blur, I Understand the feeling around this new language and terminology we have had to get to grips with I have sat in hospital waiting rooms and felt a surreal feeling, but some-how i plod through every day i know we are all different and all have had different experiences but we have that common link of the B C road. thanks again for the shares anned

This is an interesting post, I have gone through times when i have thought should i obliterate anyone with BC from my life should i quit the sites should i never read another thing about the disease and perhaps pretend it isnt happening and hasnt ever happened. Ofcourse thats ridiculous but how my mind goes sometimes.So afraid if i am honest.

My mind goes back to March this year and my dear friend who has no family phoning me to go round. She had Bc and Liver mets at DX 3 yrs before. Had had chemo in the summer, we went thorugh it together had some great laughs and some tears, then she needed more chemo this March. I knew she was dying seen my own mum go through it.
Gosh did i want to run but I couldn’t. I held her and she said ‘its so nice to have the warmth and comfort of someone’ she died 4days later.

I have made the most fantastic friends during this journey and will always be there for them as they have been for me.

Has Bc changed me blimey ofcourse it has is it for the better I dont know.

Rx

Well it’s good to see so many of you supporting me and my concerns being analysed on here but I wouldn’t expect anything less. BC is something that has changed me on the surface, deep down I am the same person. On my good days, when I have forgotten the last 11 mths, I am still argumentitive and a bit of a control freak. On bad days, as yesterday, I am very submissive and listen to people droning on because I just can’t be bothered to argue!

Breast cancer has changed me though, and at times I have shocked myself at how strong I am. People have been telling me this for years but I never saw it before. You do need to be strong to get through this crap and when you feel weak, you need people like you lot who understand and listen without prejudice. Thankyou peeps!

Irene