Hello
I posted this on the After treatment has finished but wonders should it be here?
DX 21st Dec 04 (Happy Christmas!!) ILC- chemo/ mast/rads 05. prophylactic mast with tissue expanders followed by exchange surgery 06 1 year op/treatment free so I should be getting back on top (up beat throughout treatments) Tamoxifen until last Nov now on Arimidex so… why is it catching up now? I get so tired (and emotional) I do work full time {12hr} shifts which cant help. Anyone else out there feeling the same? Rosemary : (
Hi Rosemary
Whilst you are waiting for the other forum users to reply to your post with their experiences it may help to contact our helpline and talk through in confidence how you are feeling at the moment. Sometimes just talking can about your concerns can really help and the staff on the helpline will be happy to offer a ‘listening ear’. BCC are here to support you so please use us if you think it might help. The number to call is 0808 800 6000 and the lines are open Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm and Saturday, 9am - 2pm.
I hope this helps.
Kind regards
Sam
BCC Facilitator
Hello Sam and thanks, I may just do that. Its very difficult to speak of feeling at times low when you have been universally congratulated as being strong! I know I’m entitled to be and that its not uncommon to be low when the worst is over and all appears well, I also think the Arimidex has something to do with it. Thank you again for taking the time to respond to me ~ I just wondered if anyone else felt the same.
Rosemary
surely I cant be the only one?
Hi Rosemary
You are certainly not alone in how you are feeling. I do so understand how distressing your feelings are.
I was dx invasive lobular 2005 - thought I had done well post mastectomy etc. You know, held it all together for the family and just tried to pick up my life again. Everyone thought how well I had coped and the number of times I was told ‘you are strong so you will get through it’!!!
Now I too am struggling with trying to find a way through the despair, exhaustion and I guess, the delayed realisation that it did all happen to me.
I don’t think life can ever be the same as before you were living with breast cancer - it’s taken me a long time to accept that life will be different - although those around me simply don’t understand how things change forever and think that once your treatment is over everything is okay-" so why aren’t you!"
pleas
Rosemary
Whoops!! pressed the wrong key before I had finished!
Just want to send you a big hug and please keep writing - it does help to know these feelings are normal.
Love Seren x
Hi There,
I had lumpectomy, Chemo, Rads and now on tamoxifen for 5 years with I am told a good prognosis. I kept upbeat and chirpy all the way through until my last Rad in Feb 08. I suddenly felt in limbo and I panic about every ache and pain. My OH also has always given me the you,re so strong, brave etc and I always played everything down for the sake of my 2 kids.
The couple of times that I,ve felt a bit depressed and cried in front of my husband, it has really upset him also.
So I tend to keep my worries about the future to myself. I feel its sometimes better not to burden my friends and family too much, especially when they have their own problems. Its a good job that we have these forums to let everything come out to people in the same boat.
lots of love
Andrea x
Seren and Andrea
it means so much to me that you took the time to reply to my post and that you UNDERSTAND, outwardly I’m fine but I suppose it comes out eventually ~ at the time I played it all down for the sake of all my family and friends but now I think GAWD!! it happened to me! thanks for the hug~ its helped.
Rosemary xx
PS its good to know Im not the only Lobular girl out there
Hi Rosemary,
The article by Dr. Peter Harvey is often referred to on forums but you may find it a lot of help for how you are feeling right now. This is the link:
cancercounselling.org.uk/northsouth/extra4.nsf/WebResClient/1761049276601BD68025735B00604834/FILE/article3.pdf?openElement
but if the Moderator isn’t happy with me posting it and it gets edited out then google ‘After the Treatment Finishes - Then What?’
dawnhc
Hi Rosemary
I was DX on May 2 2007 so am now approaching my 1st anniversary [cards and pressies welcome!] I had lumpectomy, 20 lymphs removed, 3FEC 3TAX, 15 +2 rads and am now on Tamoxifen.
Now that all that is behind me I am beginning to see this whole thing as a kind of grieving process, let me explain why. 16 years ago my mum was killed in a car accident at the age of 52, obviously this came from nowhere and blew us all apart and for at least 5 years, probably longer, life was referred to as “before mum died” and “after mum died” and I feel the same way at the moment. When we talk about things, look at photos, remember holidays etc we now comment on whether they were before DX or after DX. It is easy for people to think you can just go back to normal after all this, sometimes I think it helps them which is fair enough, they to have been through a frightening ordeal wondering if they are going to loose us and to some extent for them it is now over. But we are still grieving for our life before BC and struggling to find a “new” life, we want things to go back to how they were, even if we weren’t necessarily that happy about some things, but they can’t. BC is way too big to be swept under the carpet and forgotten, at least for a while.
Without sounding like I go out and hug a tree everyday I am trying to make each day a good day but it is hard and none of us should beat ourselves up just because we can’t always be on top of our game.
Talking to gals on here is certainly a help and I think we all need to give ourselves a break, let someone else wear the knickers on the outside of their trousers, I’m going to bury my head under the duvet for 10 minutes [if the tamoxifen will allow it anyway]
Love and hugs to everyone
AJxxx
Hi Rosemary
This is the first time I’ve wrote on here I only joined yesterday because I feel just like you. I was diagnosed Octpber 2005 and I was very lucky to have Herceptine after my treament, every one thought how brave and strong I was (and I thought so too) as you do. The trouble is when you get back to your normal life, like going back to work, doing the house work, and in my case looking after my grandkids (who I love to bits, love to see them, glad to see them go home) and every thing else your family and friends think you cured, they don’t know the fear you live in, every ache and pain you think is it coming back, and you don’t want to worry them, so I suppose we just plod on bottling things up but its not good for us, but I think writting this down will help me and I hope it will help you too. take care and remember you are not on your own.
Best wishes Patxx
Gosh Oct 2005, there must have been an epidemic of BC, hi to Lobular ladies too.
I have said this before on another post I don’t think we can ever live like we did before BC. Ok we may do all the same things job family hols but its the ‘fear’ we live with of re-ocurrence. Before Dx if you have a pain its just a pain its muscular or viral but once Dx its always this little voice saying ‘what if its cancer again’
I struggled after DX infact i was a ‘wreck’ but got through all the treatment. Just this past 6 months i have been getting back to the ‘old’ me working more, planning trips and going on them,talking about the future and guess what? I dont mean to be miserable here or frightening anyone but i am waiting for tests on a lump under my arm and thinking 'here we go AGAIN. I went to Gp with pain under my arm and was shocked she found a lump.
My mum had cancer for 6yrs and she upset me once saying to me ‘No one understands or knows what its like once you have had a diagnosis of cancer’ I was so close to her and was a little upset by what she said, until being Dx myself.
I have told hubby I am alone in this, I dont want anyone with me at the hosp because if it comes to further treatment its ME who has to deal with it. Anyone ever felt the same?
I felt so jealous today when i was with friends at church because their lives are cancer free.
The one thing i am so glad about is i can come on this site and just be ‘me’ and pour out my heart and tell it like it is, crying now which is something we can’t do infront of people.
That article you gave the info for Dawn is one of the best i have ever read, i even printed it out and kept it, i am sure BCC wont mind you posting it on here.
Rx
i
I too know exactly what you all mean. I was dx in March 07’ had WLE and node removal, chemo and rads. Now on zolodex and letrozole and I have found that the article is so true in everything it says. someone posted it on here for me to read a couple of weeks ago and I have printed it out and given it to a few people. mind you they probably did not read it but at least I feel better that I have given it to them.
I find these forums invaluable as it is so true that nobody really knows how you feel unless they have had a dx of cancer themselves. I know I will never be the same person again because you look at everything in such a different way. Yes, I am the same person but now I have really realised how fragile life can be and how quickly everything can be taken away from you. In a way this makes me feel that I have to appreciate what is important and what is not and things that other people see as important seem silly and ridiculous. and I find I have very little patience with other peoples minor aches and pains.
Hopefully I will regain some of my patience as time goes on but I do not think I will ever look at life in the same way again. Another thing I must say I have noticed is that it certainly makes you realise who your friends are and has made me prioritise who I can be bothered with and who I cannot. In fact, some people seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth, and I certainly will not be going out of my way to find them. So all that said, I feel much better now I have off loaded, and I certainly hope everything goes well for you liverbird
Best wishes
Dawne
Hi Liverbird,
I think i would be the same and would go for tests myself, without telling anyone. I read a post on here the other day where a lady was being told that she was mad by her family and needed her head read etc for worrying about aches and pains.
You carry on pouring your heart out on here ( your messages are truly inspiring ).
Best of luck with your test results
lots of luck
Andrea x
Hi Rosemary
Glad the hug helped!!
How are you today?
Do try and read the article on the Cancer Counselling Trust site by Dr Peter Harvey titled After The Treatment Finishes- Then What? I found it so helpful and still re-read it when I get low.
That’s the thing I am finding about living with this - one minute you are feeling as if there is actually ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ and you are spending days without the shadow of ‘what if’s’ spoiling your sunny disposition, then some little thing reminds you all over again.
I am hoping that as time goes by my cloudy days are outnumbered by my sunny ones !
I don’t know of many folk with invasive lobular dx - even when I look for posts here from folk with same, I rarely find any that are recent. I would find it very helpful to be able to chat with others about this type as it seems to be very different in presentation and spread etc.
Pity there isn’t a category for invasive lobular where we ladies could exchange information.
Sending you a little bit of my ‘sunshine’ today - remember to keep posting when you need to talk as we all gain strength from those who truly understand.
Love Seren x
Hi Liver!
Thought I hadn’t read any postings from you recently, was wondering how things are - glad to hear you have been busy making plans etc.
Hope your tests show it’s benign - know exactly how you are feeling after going to unit with new lump a couple of weeks ago - the waiting is horrendous!
Thinking of you
Seren x
Hello Everyone, I am so pleased to have found this site. Yes, everyone tells me how brave I am, there is only my husband who knows how much I have cried and ranted. But even he thinks I am brave. I’m not brave, you just have to get on with it. I know what you mean Liverbird about feeling jealous about people without cancer, I went through that big time last year, somehow it seems to have dimmed a bit at the moment. Having had chemo, mastectomy, radio & now on herceptin & tamoxifen (just changed to arimidex), the old me seems like a million years ago, but at least I am still here to hear the dawn chorus and smell my garden. I just feel so sorry for my hubbie, he has gone through such a lot, and never moaned or showed a bit if self pity.
My hubby is the same. will do any thing for me, lets me cry when I want and holdsme ,makes me laugh most days, keeps my spirits up and asks for nothing back.
What is normal now? I get angry now with people who mess with their bodies and not be grateful for being healthy.There was a section on This Morning about a woman who paid over £2000 to have some gel injected into her breast, to make them bigger it was done under local anaesthetic and took half an hour.It will last two years and she will need a top up after a year That jusy for vanity, that would not have bothered me last year but infuriates me now
Sorry for the rant, but feel better for it ha ha
Mary
x
Hi Liverbird
Know how you feel, went to the docs myself today with an ache in my arm had it for a few weeks hoping it would go away, she checked me over and could’nt find any lumps under my arm but felt another lump in my breast again, she thinks it is scar tissue but is writing to the hospital for an appointment to be on the safe side, I hope it is scar tissue. and yes I too feel jealous of people who are cancer free, but I also would not wish this on anyone.
Thinking of you all
Patxx
Pat
Best of luck with your test results. Finger are crossed for you
sending you big hugs
Love Andrea x