Yesterday was a long, busy, tough day with some distractions dispersed in it. For example, I went to yoga practice in the morning, I went to the pub in the evening and saw more friends afterwords. But, C de Lune had an ear doctor appointment, I had a bank appointment and the big one, a medical oncologist appointment. That wasn't fun. So much information to take about my life and my health at once, it's overwhelming. So this is what I know now. The tumor, crappy tumor, was 1.2 cm X 2cm. That was what that 1cm -2cm was all about. Still in stage 1 though. Now my odds? Not as good as 5 to 10% for my lifetime (that's on my chest area). Realistically, it's a 20 to 25% chance that cancer will come back anywhere in me in the next 10 years. Since I'm so young, that's a lot of 10 year periods in front of me. So they say that those odds are unacceptable and ever though I'm probably already cured, they need to make it better. That means 6 rounds of nasty, nasty chemo every 3 weeks and total of 4 different kinds of poison drugs. Yes, they will stick a porta-cath in me --a tube that goes from my arm to my heart artery and that stays there, to prevent poking me every time (otherwise it's 6 IV's and 12 blood tests at least). Yes, I will lose my hair, I will be tired for 6 months, my brain will get foggy, I might be naughteous -although they were quite confidend that they could stop that, and yes, I will be menoposal for up to 2 years --chemo side effect. That means if it's anything like PMS, I'll end up not being able to cope and screaming at my poor child all the time. So, my "prognosis": I'm screwed if I do, I'm screwed it I don't.
My cancer was hormonal receptive for both estrogen and progestorone, which I feared, but I was told that that's a good thing. I thought if is wasn't, it just didn't grow, but that's not accurate. It means that my tumour needed spikes of hormones to grow, and without those, it didn't. What causes spikes is puberty and pregnancy. I knew there was a reason I only has one child... Anyways, cancers that are not hormonal receptive grow out of control, without any natural regulators. I still don't know about the HER2 gene mutation, but if I have that, I'm looking at one full year of drugs.
The good news in all of this is I might be cured already, I'm healthy and strong, I have an awesome heart --I'm not kidding, the average heart performs at a 5o to 55% and mine is at 65%, I might still look good without hair, and I'm getting fresh new breasts in a year. But even so, I'm having trouble accepting my fate. It will take me awhile I think.
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