Self-discovery through Triple Negative Cancer

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 cance...

It has been over a year of fighting this horrible cancer. What a year it has been.  I was diagnosed on the 27th January 2022 with Triple Negative Breast Cancer after turning 40 and having a routine mammogram. I had no signs or symptoms but was just being precautionary. So I was in a bit of shock when the news was broken to me. I was 40 and couldn’t believe I had the most aggressive type of breast cancer.  The next six months was the hardest six months I had experienced. It started with dose dense red devil which was the harshest treatment to experience. It took my hair, energy, and zest for life. The fatigue was the hardest but I managed to push through each day. Scans at the end of the 4 dose dense treatments showed that this drug had shrunk my cancer significantly which was a motivator to keep going.  The next stage was dose dense Taxol. I was meant to have 12 doses but because I had managed the dose dense regime with the red devil drug they decided to go dose dense wit...

  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...