Skip to main content

2 years from diagnosis


Today is my two year anniversary from my triple negative breast cancer diagnosis and one year from the end of treatment. I am so grateful that I am here and able to write this blog. The hardship, that has been the last two years, has made me so much stronger. 

It has not been all rainbows and butterflies since fighting the terrible disease. The after effects of chemotherapy have left me with long term issues such as weak bones, osteoarthritis, neuropathy and plantar fasciitis in my feet, lack of fitness and the inability to lose weight and then the mental side of things which is all to do with the fear of the disease coming back. 

On top of that, the day I was told that my margins were clear from my lumpectomy was the day my mum went in to have a mass looked at in her pancreas which turned out to be pancreatic cancer which is terminal. The timing of this was ironic as I couldn’t celebrate the feeling of surviving this horrible disease when mum was at the beginning of her cancer journey. 

I finished my oral chemotherapy about a year after my diagnosis and then in March 2023, I decided to have a double mastectomy and reconstruction to try and prevent it from coming back. I have healed nicely from this surgery and have been back to some sort of normality however not really feeling like I did before this all began. 

I appreciate the simple things in life like the relationships you form with those close to you, the love of nature and the ocean, spending time doing the things I love like taking photographs, camping and travelling. I am no longer putting things on hold and if I can afford to, I will go on that international holiday or take time out to do something for myself. 

I do have a fear of the cancer coming back but try to put those thoughts to the back of my head and focus on the here and now. No one understands this fear unless they have been through a similar thing and trust me, it is scary as hell.

Please keep getting those regular checks whether it be a mammogram or checking your breasts regularly for any lumps. The mammogram saved my life. Here’s hoping in another year’s time I am still cancer free and getting closer to the odds being in my favour of the cancer not returning.






 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Taxol Dose Dense Treatment

My first experience with Taxol dose dense treatment follows two months of AC dose dense treatment and was certainly something to write about. Obviously everyone’s experience is different and I can only reflect on my experience with the drug.  Dose dense basically means that I receive the chemotherapy drugs with less time between treatments than standard chemotherapy which allows the drugs to interrupt the rapid growth phase of the tumour cells.  There has been a fair bit of research completed on the benefits of dose dense and one article in particular grabbed my attention. It is called ‘Dose Dense-Intensive Chemotherapy Improves Survival in Early Stage Breast Cancer.’ (Cancerconnect, 2020).  A couple of stats within this article state that: Overall survival was improved by nearly 30% among the women treated with dose-dense chemotherapy. At 10 years, survival for women with hormone-negative breast cancer (cancer that is not stimulated to grow from exposure to female hormon...
Post a Comment
Read more

Life saving lumpectomy

  Second part of this triple negative cancer journey involved having a lumpectomy to remove the remainder of the cancer. It had shrunk from 2.7cm to 0.5cm by the end of chemotherapy. Originally I was having a double mastectomy, but due to poor timing my plans changed to fit in with my surgical team. So next step was to have a lumpectomy to remove cancer and surrounding healthy tissue along with the removal of sentinel nodes. The sentinel node biopsy is a used to determine whether the cancer has spread beyond a primary tumour into the lymphatic system. The cancer is also tested to see if it is still active or if it is pathologically cancer free (PCR).  I arrived at radiology at 8am in the morning to undergo the first part of this procedure. They needed to put radioactivity into my lymph channels. This was the most painful part of any procedure I have had to date with breast cancer. The lovely nurse (who I knew) placed the needle directly into the areola and it felt like a bee s...
Post a Comment
Read more

My hair loss journey

Today I lost my hair, but gained inner strength knowing that chemo is fighting bloody hard to fight this cancer inside of me. The chemo attacks rapid cell growth which includes hair and skin cells. So knowing that the chemo is making my hair fall out means knowing that it is attacking the triple negative cancer in my breast.  I didn’t know what to expect when they said you will lose your hair. Do I just wake up with no hair, does it come out in clumps?? So I have journaled the process to show you what you can expect if you have chemo and lose your hair.  This was me before chemo, blonde curly hair. I started chemo 19 days ago so I managed to keep my hair for 19 days. It started to fall out slowly at first at around day 6 and then each day it significantly got more and more strands of hair coming out. On day 9 my head felt tender like it was sunburnt and was lacking nutrients, feeling like straw so I decided to give myself a little hair cut to freshen it back up somewhat. ...
1 comment
Read more