Living a Year in Reverse

I only got as far reading the first chapter in my “Grieving Mindfully” book when I then exchanged it for reading (or attempting to read) “Mindfulness: A kindly approach to being with cancer”. Tomorrow marks both my official diagnosis anniversary and the anniversary of my Gran’s funeral. And in my head I feel a bit like I am still catching up and trying to process last year. Mostly, my mind is happily engaged in the here and now but a bit of it remembers and feels a little stuck in last year.

Even though I am now a year on it has been weird going through certain dates. I feel like it was such a crazy experience and whirlwind of pushing through post ops and chemo, that my head now only has the space to really try to process it.

I found my lump when just creaming my body as normal on Mother’s Day. Sometimes little lumps come and go with hormones but this one felt kind of different. It felt just like a blocked milk duct, an event that wasn’t uncommon when I was feeding my Childers, waaaay back in those early baby days. I remember thinking, oh this is odd, am I imagining it? So I ran downstairs, just as my husband was about to leave the house and asked him to check it – which was probably one of the best offers he’d had in ages or at least in a very long time since then!

The next morning, the lump was still there, so I rang the Doctor’s Surgery and was given a same day nurse appointment. The nurse confirmed the presence of the lump, around 12 o’clock and 0.5cm. Despite my Gran having had two mastectomies, due to the fact that they were later in life, I was told I was just been referred to the Breast Unit as a precaution, but "9 out of 10 times, it is nothing" and I was young. I do understand them not wanting to cause anxiety in a person but...

If I have one bone to pick with medical staff it is the line “you are young” as in “you’ll be fine” and “it won’t be cancer, because you are young”. I have spent a year on and off in waiting rooms, with a considerable number of young women. I joined a Facebook group for young women with breast cancer and although it is a global group, there are a whole lot of us, you know the young ones, who “shouldn’t" have cancer but somehow do. Cancer cares very little about your age.

I’d actually had a strange premonition that I would have cancer and would go through chemo. I tend to not be too much on Facebook but one day I had gone on not long before this and seen a friend of a friend celebrate the bell ringing after a journey through chemo. And I felt like, this was the road ahead I was going to have to walk. But you still very much live in hope that it isn’t! Nobody wants cancer and nobody wants to tread that road; sometimes you just don’t get a choice in the path ahead. You can get angry or mad and all of these are normal feelings but I very much like the country song “It Happens” by Sugarland.

And so I waited for the next appointment. This was pretty much the only delay I experienced, minus one appointment rescheduling, in the cancer journey. The usual two weeks wait to be seen at the clinic was four weeks. I think somewhere around the point when the lump was still there a week later, I figured I needed to find a way to live with it and accept its presence, whatever it was. So I called it Lilia the Lump! I was pretty much meditating daily at this point, a habit I really must get back into and during the month, Lilia went from being not really noticeable to being able to be felt when I was doing deep breathing during meditation. Lilia was definitely not going anywhere and growing. By the time I was seen in the clinic, it was estimated to be 32mm, potentially 44mm based on the mammogram results.

I arrived at the clinic on 9th April and noted I was actually the youngest in the clinic, though plenty of people weren’t of the silver hair variety. I was initially examined by a consultant who seemed to indicate a fairly positive outlook but I’d need to wait for an ultrasound. Depending on the result of that it would be a mammogram and biopsy. I think I was pretty much the last person for ultrasound at the clinic that morning. I settled down to flash yet another person and chatted to make up for feeling kind of uncomfortable. It was weird to be going through a process that I had studied during my degree. All starts well, the biopsy guy mentions the consultant didn’t seem worried and the atmosphere is possibly fairly jovial…and then it gets quieter and quieter and you know that the ultrasound is not quite going so well. That is doubly confirmed when you then have to have that mammogram that you might not have needed. Off to my first experience of the squishing machine. My Gran used to refer to her appointments as being turned into book ends! Double sided squish and back to the ultrasound for a biopsy…and my head returning to my degree wondered whether it would be a fine needle aspiration? It very much wasn’t! Going by the subsequent bruises I had five samples taken (punch core biopsy) and then a metal probe inserted and then back to the mammogram for another squishing to check the probe. A mammogram after biopsy is not so pleasant. I did manage to find the brighter side though and informed my other half I'd been microchipped like the Fluffs in the family!

And literally I say I can do any day for the results but not April 13th with it being my Gran’s funeral. So once all checks are complete, the results day is of course April 13th. Since the funeral is four hours away I try to see if I must be seen and yes I am advised I must, enough said. So, I kind of figured from there I did have cancer, I just didn’t know what kind or how advanced.

Image Source: https://www.wcrf-uk.org/cancer-types/breast-cancer/