The reality of a breast cancer experience

Friday 20 April, 2007 by Moira

As we were going away for a time I made an early appointment with my gynaecologist. She began to examine my breasts and I complained bitterly: she was poking so hard! Then she asked, When are you due to have a mammogram? I said it was in about 3 months time and she said she would organise one that day.

While I was having the mammogram, the technician said the doctor had also asked for an ultrasound and I began to wonder. I took the results back to my doctor, who looked at them and said, "I think you've got breast cancer." I saw the surgeon that afternoon, who confirmed it with a needle biopsy. I was booked in for a mastectomy about 10 days later.

In the time between the diagnosis and going in to hospital I was in an absolute dream. The night before the surgery all of the family visited me in hospital and only then did the realisation that I had breast cancer came to me . . Before that, I had been rushing around catching up on chores, visiting friends and family and ensuring I had what I needed for hospital! 

I didn't have any sense of mortality, I just had a sense that I had to get ready for something. I think once you are in a hospital room, just before surgery, you realise that you're on your own. You're there and you're it. So while I had wonderful support, you really have to make decisions for yourself.

I remember vividly one morning, when I think I'd had only one chemotherapy treatment, I was shampooing my hair and my hands were suddenly full of hair. Even though I'd been told about losing my hair, I found that quite distressing. Then my hair was in funny little bits, so I had my head shaved. Once I coped with the fact that I didn't have hair for the minute,  I quite enjoyed looking for hats and a wig and all of that sort of stuff.

My grandchildren hated me sitting without a hat. I found that quite off-putting. They just didn't like the look of me without hair - I didn't like it myself.

I think it's hard to get yourself looking as you'd like. When you have this incredible tiredness, you really can't be bothered. I wasn't reading, which was such a waste of time, because I had time to read. I think that first year was a bit of a blur.

The 'Look Good Feel Better' day was such a hoot - one of my daughters came with me and we had such fun. They're the sort of things that you really appreciate. Also the contact with other people when you're having chemo: my husband came with me to everything, including to the chemotherapy, and he became the tea lady! Those sort of things were so encouraging and helpful. I found everyone in the health team so good, so caring.

The mastectomies were a year apart.

Choosing to have a second mastectomy was a difficult decision. I thought about the long term and the fear that I could have further breast cancer. I decided that at my age, I really didn't need breasts. So that was it.

I felt guilty because I hadn't diagnosed the original breast cancer myself. It took a lot of persuasion to convince me that it wasn't a lump; it was a mass and it was hard to detect. I think I had the fear that it might happen in the other breast and I mightn't detect it. The cancer was also very aggressive. I had been having regular gynaecological checks and regular mammograms, so I had had a mammogram less than 2 years before. So all of that added up.

After the second mastectomy, I began to feel a freedom - I think because I felt I didn't have the risk any more.

There's a time when you should indulge yourself, look after yourself and let other people look after you. Families sometimes just don't know what to do to help. One thing that in retrospect I'm sorry I didn't do is to ask for help or to say, Yes, you could do this or that.

People also seem to appreciate somebody who understands how tired you get of the process and how hard it is to turn up for the next appointment for chemotherapy. You get to the point - especially if you're on a 3-week cycle - where by the third week you're beginning to feel almost normal and you're beginning to have some energy; then you have to gear yourself to face the whole process the next Monday morning. It's really hard. It's alright to feel like that, but to talk to someone who's already been through that experience and has survived, I think is helpful.

I think one of the most important things is that although you feel you're on your own, you don't have to do it on your own. You need to ask questions and not try to be too stoic. There's a lot of help available. We have to find out where it is and what sort of help suits us.

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We include these stories to give readers an insight into the experience of cancer. Each experience is unique. Different people react differently to the same treatments, and treatments can vary depending on a person's age, the stage of their cancer and other factors.

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