Breaking the news

Day 48 

General status update: 

Hair: dormant, confined in Smurf hat/snood. Out for the count. Wish I was, too. 

Nausea demon: rather testy, and making a bit of a fight back today. 

Chemo Muse: urging me on to write some more of the back story, even though I’m feeling really sick. She’s so mean. They’re so mean. 

Chemo Brian: It’s so hard to resist when he holds his arms out from the sofa, and says ‘come over here and curl up next to me’. Not today, though. I need to work before the fatigue really sets in. 

Chemo Rat Brian: has settled in nicely on the sofa 

Fatigue/weakness: Still had a bit of steroid energy left this morning, but now it’s starting to drain away.

 

Sleep, lack of: asleep before 2am. Slight improvement. 

Anxiety level (1-10): lessened this cycle by having adequate supply of ALL anti-emetic drugs, which are just about holding me together. No nausea crisis seems imminent, which makes a nice change from FEC1 and FEC2 

State of mind: How did I get here? HOW?

 

Previously on Chemo Nights: it is the morning of Thursday 30^th August, 2012, and I have just received a diagnosis of breast cancer at the Charing Cross Hospital.

Now read on…

We emerge from the hospital, shell-shocked and silent, into a cold, damp August morning, and walk hand in hand up the Fulham Palace Road towards Hammersmith Broadway. There isn’t much conversation; we are both too stunned by what we have just heard, and I am trying not to cry. It’s getting on towards lunch time, so we stop at Pret to get some sandwiches on the way home.

Back at the flat, neither of us has much appetite as we sit at the table with our lunch, and discuss what to do next. The immediate problem is disseminating the bad news to those who need to know: close family and friends.

A few people know that I have been for a biopsy, and am going to receive the results today: my sisters, my close female friends and, unfortunately, my mother. I very much did not want my 81 year old mother to know even that I was going for the biopsy, not wishing to cause her unnecessary stress and anxiety should it turn out to be a false alarm; one of my sisters, unable to resist the temptation, has told her anyway, and I am quite angry about this.  My mother will be waiting to hear, very worried, and we need to let her know straight away.

As we talk about this I am crying, and know that I will not be able to hold a conversation with anyone else today, so I ask R to call BigSisFo, tell her, and ask her to call our mother, and other family members. While he does this, I retreat to the bedroom, close the door, and curl up on the bed; I do not want to listen. When R comes in a while later, he tells me that BigSisFo, greatly distressed by the news, has agreed to tell other family members, but couldn’t bear the thought of telling my mother so soon after hearing the news herself. So R decides to do this himself. Heroically, considering that at this point in our relationship he has only met my mother once, R calls her home in the Tramuntana mountains in Mallorca; after a brief conversation with my stepfather he is handed over to my mother, who is agitated and demanding the phone, and tells her that her middle daughter has breast cancer.

 

MamaFo apparently takes the news stoically, saying that as the mother of three daughters, this is a phone call she has dreaded receiving all her life. She understands that I cannot speak to anyone now, and tells R that she will call me tomorrow.

There still remains the problem of telling others, and I decide to do this immediately by email, as I want to get it over with in one go. The thought of having to have multiple conversations on the subject appals me. At this point I realise I need to be alone for a while, and that R could probably also do with some mental space in which to process the news, and I send him off to the office, although we both know he won’t be getting much done.  

I make some coffee, sit down at the computer and, pretty much on auto-pilot, start to write, deciding to focus on the positive aspects of the situation, so as not to alarm anyone. At 11 minutes past four, I send out this email to family members and friends, copying it to R.

 

Subject: Some bad news...

Caroline Foster <carolinefo@gmail.com>						30/08/2012

... but it could have been worse. 

In brief, and as a round robin, because I'm too done in to think/talk about this much more for today: 

This morning at the Charing Cross Hospital they told me I have invasive ductal breast cancer, Grade 2. The lump is not huge, about 1 1/2 centimetres.

This is the most common form of breast cancer, and the 'best' sort to have; they have got the treatment off to a fine art. And at the stage it's at, it's not likely to kill me.

They will do a lumpectomy (in 3/4 weeks' time), whip out the lump, and a margin around it to check if it has started spreading. Afterwards the scarring should be fairly minimal, and the appearance of the breast normal. It helps that my breast is largish.

The operation can be done as a day op, so although it's a general anaesthetic, I won't even have to stay in overnight. R will take me home to have pizza.

They will also take out a lymph node, to check if it has spread there, but at the moment they don't think it has. 

Then I will have 3-6 weeks of radiotherapy, which is 15 mins every day, Mon-Friday. It doesn't hurt or make your hair fall out, but it does make you quite tired, apparently. At this stage I am not going to bother researching what other side effects there may be - we'll deal with that when we come to it. 

Unless it turns out to be worse than they think (and they can't be 100% sure until they do the op), I won't have to have chemotherapy, which is a huge plus. Although I had already decided on going for the full hijab rather than a wig, if necessary. So much more stylish. 

If all goes well, the treatment will be over by the New Year, and I can get on with my life. So, really, it's very annoying, and tiresome, and won't be a bundle of laughs, but it could have been an awful lot worse. I have my own cancer care nurse, Vanessa, who is lovely, very knowledgeable and helpful, and there are all sorts of support services. Breast cancer is very well catered for. 

Anyway, it's much better knowing than not knowing, because once you know you can work out how to manage it - and this sounds eminently manageable. As the op won't be for several weeks, I will be back at the swimming pool tomorrow to resume training for next year's planned swim across the Hellespont, which will take place, coincidentally, exactly one year from today - inshallah! 

C xxx

p.s. Not unnaturally, over the last couple of weeks I have given some thought to provisional funeral plans, and have settled upon being cremated and then having my ashes fired into the sky in a huge rocket, which is not quite as a good as a Viking funeral, but not half bad (and possible to arrange, which a Viking funeral sadly no longer is). Given the high survival rate of my particular form of cancer, these plans will have to be put on hold for the foreseeable future, but I'm warning you all now that my funeral, when it eventually happens, hopefully many decades from now, is unlikely to be an understated affair.

 

R emails me back immediately: 

Good. Well done tatlim. Xxxxxx

 

When he comes home that evening we drink a lot of red wine to anaesthetise ourselves as we cuddle up on the sofa together, watching the Paralympics on the television. For this day, that is quite enough.

 

We will have plenty of time to talk and think about cancer later on.