It’s out! and I’m out too!

Got home a while ago…I feel drowsy, tired and sleepy.  I won’t make much sense so this will be a short one.

It went well. I can’t believe how the anesthetic just knocks you down straight away! the last words I heard were: “the time now is twenty to four”. The assistant anesthetist told me that when she goes for an operation herself (apparently she has had many) she likes knowing what time it is when she is knocked down. I woke up asking for the chocolate bar that nick bought me before I went into surgery.

My boob is doing well. It’s not in too much pain and the surgeon did an amazing job! I now have to look after it properly and treat it with love and care.

Having never been in hospital I know now why people complain about hospital food. Foul!

More to come about my stay in hospital another day. Now it’s time for a nap…

The day!

It’s operation day! right now I’m feeling ok (a bit hungry though). How could I not? Had a great night at the pub with dad and lots of my mates watching the footie….and BARCA won!!!

I think all the anxiety and fear will kick in once I get to the hospital and they change me into the blue dressing gown, and they make me lie down in one of their beds, ready to go into the operation theatre. That will be the only time that I will have been truly alone since my diagnosis. No friends, no family, no email, no blog, no mobile phone…just me and the lump.

See you later guys!

The day before

Hiiiiii,

So my dad woke me up at the crack of dawn to let me know he was on his way to Liverpool street from Stansted airport. I shall not complain as he is coming all the way from Morocco, and his flight was at 2 am (craaaazy time!eh?).  So he had not slept all night. We ran some errands, went for coffee and had some nice lunch. I got very emotional and cried when I first saw him and we embraced. His turn to cry was at the coffee shop later on in the morning.

I am feeling generally ok. Having everyone’s well wishes and receiving cards from people all over the world makes you feel stronger. But there are times when reality hits me. I am having a big operation tomorrow. I will have to recover from it.I will have to have chemo after. It’s not fair. I don’t wanna do it!! My life will change after the removal of the lumps. My body will take over!I’m bracing myself for a big ride.

Here is a pic of my dad and I. We were queing at the post office to send my doctor’s sick note, stating that I’m off for 3 months for breast cancer treatment, to my supervisor.

One more thing…

So about the operation… I forgot to say that I may stay in hospital overnight, but there is also a chance that they will send me home the same day…so that doesn’t leave any time really for hospital visits, flowers and balloons. You can visit me home at some point though!

And finally an amazing performance by le tigre. Love the energy that this song has (it’s a treadmill favourite of mine).

 

operating and treating my lump

Thursday is so close! I can’t believe it, the lump will finally be removed from my insides! I asked the consultant if I’d be allowed to see it, “If you want to” she said, pulling a face that was adding “you weirdo” to her verbal reply. But to me it’s just natural to want to meet my lump face to face! It’s a being that has turned my life upside down. It belongs to me and my body, even if it needs to be taken out (for obvious reasons). If you had a cancerous lump taken out, would you want to see it? what are your views?

Moving on from the lump onto me, the other day I caught myself thinking “I’m scared”. And I have decided there is no room for such thoughts, and no point in having them. If I tell myself that I’m scared then I will be, right? So I turned it into excitement. I am excited that they are taking the lump out because that is the first step towards a cancer-free life. Also, it’s a new experience. Last time I was in hospital I was 3 and it was because a tick was stuck behind my ear, sucking my blood out. Unlike the lump, which no-one knows where it came from, the tick came from my dog. I had the habit of having naps in the garden with him you see…

My growing acceptance and strength has made me realise how far I’ve come in such little time. I was diagnosed on a wednesday afternoon, and by friday I was having my first test (a bone scan to be precise). Being the inexperienced person I was with hospitals, tests and cancer stuff I went along on my own, just like I do when I go to see the gp or the dentist. Bad idea. Since my train was delayed and I feared I would be late, I decided to travel by bus. The first leg of the journey was fine, but then I started panicking about not being on time. Thus I decided that money don’t matter today, and I found myself in the middle of mare street, trying to find a taxi, being drenched by the pouring rain.  No black cabs. “Shit shit shit”. Walk to the taxi company nearby. Rain. As I’m about to cross pavements, on a little side street I spot a black cab. “Yes” I run towards it. “Where are you going?” asked the taxi driver in the most unfriendly manner you can imagine. “The independent hospital”, I replied. I then started to cry, freaked out by the whole situation, realising that I was going to hospital to have my first test to see if the cancer had spread. The trigger was of course the taxi driver’s rudeness. He did a gesture with his hand telling me to move away “I do not know where that is”. Sob sob sob. Then another cab appeared. “What’s wrong darling?”. Sob, sob, sob. “That taxi driver was very rude”. So nice taxi driver takes me in. He knows where I am going. He knows why I am going there. He asked me and I could have said “for a bone scan”, but being inexperienced as I was I told him it was “I was diagnosed with breast cancer two days ago”. He says he’s sorry to hear. We chat. I feel protected in the taxi. Warm and dry, I look at the rain from the window and I stop the sobbing.

So yeah, it’s funny how quickly you become accustomed to having breast cancer.  This is my life now and this is what is waiting for me:

1) Lumpectomy on thursday. They take out your lump, plus 2cm around it. If those 2 cm are cancer free, that’s it. If they are not, then they will take a bigger chunk which could lead to a mastectomy or complete removal of my boob. They are also clearing my armpit’s lymph nodes.

2) 6 weeks later I will start chemo. I am very happy about the timing, as it’ll be after nadia’s hen weekend, the blur concert in hyde park and nadia’s wedding in france. The chemo is FEC (more info here http://www.cancerbackup.org.uk/Treatments/Chemotherapy/Combinationregimen/FEC#6878). I will have it for 18 weeks, and I feel quite lucky that I got this particular treatmen. I go in one week a month for a day, stay in hospital for a couple of hours while they inject me with the poison. Then I rest for 3 weeks! I am hoping that once I get into the routine I will carry on writing my phd. I am excited about finishing it now! perfect activity for rainy days. I shall be finished with chemo mid november. By then I will feel very tired, and I expect those few months to be hard and nauseous. But I have christmas to look forward to!  Oh and I will be bald by august. Bald and beautiful, oh yeah ;-). Will I be able to pull the “cancer chic” look ? (as fausto and I call it)

3) radiotherapy. Don’t know so much about this one. I think it will start like a month after chemo, so just before christmas? after christmas? and I think it’s for 4-6 weeks?  more details to follow.

So all in all I shall be done with treatment sometime in january 2010. Then give me 2-3 months to recover (hair, energy levels…) and I will be out and about and dancing all around once more.

The next train on platform 1 will be the…

If you ever happened to be in dalston kingsland station and I was there too,  more often than not I would be standing on platform 1 waiting for the westbound train. This train took me to my most common destinations: my friend’s homes and their local pubs, university, town for an evening of fun…My brain was so programmed into rushing down to take the westbound train that once when I had to take the eastbound train from platform 2 I automatically went to platform 1. As the train approached I walked in, unaware that I was going in the wrong direction. I kid you not. It was only when I got to highbury and islington, my usual stop, that I realised I had made a mistake ( and that I had added an extra 20 minutes to my already late schedule, arrrgh!).

Nowadays I find myslef day in day out on platform 2, ready to take the eastbound train to Homerton hospital. As I was sitting on a bench in the platform the other day, I looked across to platform 1 and I realised how symbolic that is of how life can just unexpectedly change direction…I used to travel west, now I travel east. 

While my westbound train carried certain anxieties about my future (where should I live? what should I do? should I or should I not?) my eastbound one now carries new ones. All my future fears have been replaced by a very present concern: the overcoming of illness. This does not meant that any of those worries about the future have disappeared. It just means that at least for now, they have been replaced by others: fertility, embryos, treatment, side effects and ultimately survival.

Surgery date!!

Hiiiiii!

I am one happy girl (with a massive headache due to the many hours spent at the hospital). My operation date is thursday 28th of May! Yeah. The lump will be out by then! I go in at 12 pm. They get you ready for the operation and then you just wait for your turn.I cannot eat or drink anything as from 7 am, so my plan is to get up at 6 and stuff my face! 🙂 I have never had any surgery so this is all new to me and it has not yet sunk in. My dad is coming over the day before the op, to look after me. It feels good to know my papa will be here! he will no doubt bring a lot of humour into it!

So about the surgery…Best case scenario is that I will end up with a wonky breast that will be fixed at a later date (after chemo and radio). In the meantime, they will give me a breast prothesis which truly resembles  a chicken fillet ( I had a feel of a lookalike version of my future bit-of-tit). This is done so to the outside world I have a well-balanced pair of boobs. You can also have stick on nipples, to put on your prostheses, but I think I will give those a miss. Worse case scenario is a mastectomy, that is, getting rid off the whole boob, and then doing a complete reconstruction. But since that is not yet an option I won’t even go into it.

I’m exhausted at the moment. I spend so many hours at the hospital going from one specialist to the other, from one waiting room to the next. My head is constantly being filled with information, facts, weird names, possible side effects,choices, and finally with further appointments to be had… I used to never answer the phone if it was a private or unknown caller. Now I haven’t got that option. When the number on the phone screen is hidden that means is a call from the hospital. Deep breath… “hello?”…”Is this Rosa?”…”Yes it is”.

Today Fausto was with me again, which helps me cope with it all. A lot. To be fair I’m already sick and tired of this cancer stuff and this is only the beginning! It’s oh-so-boring. Can’t wait to start shopping for wigs! that somehow feels bloody exciting now!

Latest news

In a nutshell: chemo for 24 weeks then operation or operation then chemo for 18 weeks? that is the question! seeing my consultant tomorrow and I’m hoping that the ball will start rolling then.

I think I want to have surgery before the chemo. I want the lump out of the body!

Oh and did you know that if they get rid of your breast (which may not be the case with me) and then they reconstruct or if you lose your nipple through surgery they can:

1) tattoo your nipple!!! to resemble your other one.wow.

2) give you stick on nipples. double wow?

3) Do nothing.

Was an emotional day and had a bit of a cry here and there. Thankfully Nick was around and offered a shoulder to cry on. Literally. Then my mum cheered me up! but I think she deserves her own entry. So I’ll stop now.

oh! one more thing. New (free) haircut by the talented Stuart Sears at http://www.taylortaylorlondon.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi  first of the many styles to come leading to my baldness.

Embryos

Ok so I’m trying to freeze embryos. And for this I may get a donor. For the modest fee of 500 euros you can buy some sperm from Finland (as recommended by the nhs, do not ask me why, good genes?). They then fertilise some of my eggs with it to create tissue (also known as embryo) and the proceed to freeze them. This tissue is what would become my child later in life. This is nuts, and it all happens so quickly that the whole moral aspect is hard to engage with. I do find it so weird how science and technology can mimic the reproductive cycle in a lab. Did I ever think I would be here? No. Does it hurt? yes. Why do I have to be thinking about embryos and donors and whether I will want biological children? and whether I will regret it if I do not get these embryos done and frozen on time… I should be thinking about my PhD, my move to Barcelona, having fun with my mates and…you know, that kind of thing. 

Amongst all what I find weird is that I am chosing the potential father of my child from a list of donors, which gives you their height, eye and hair colour and current occupation. If you pay extra you get to know more about them, like see their baby photos,  listen to their interviews and even what the staff thought about them! What the hell? Surely, it wasn’t meant to be like that? what happens to girl meets boy? girl and boy fall in love…

Check this out if you do not believe me…go to the donor list http://www.europeanspermbank.com/

I have a 10% chance of  losing my fertility. Or a 90% chance of keeping it. May luck be on my side.

And then it was cancer

I had to wait a couple of weeks for my results, which was fine with me, because I was going to be ok, right? I had just turned 30, so the possibility of BC seemed so small that I didn’t entertain it. My appointment was at 13:50 on a wednesday, and a few days before I got a message “This is the mammography department, you have an appointment qt 13:30 on wednesday”. “At half one? but in the letter it says at ten to two?” I thought to myself  “must be a mistake”. I forgot about it but the day before I thought that I’d better check what this time business was., so I rang the hospital/”Oh I have to come in for a mammography as well as for results??!?!?!?”. I then knew something wasn’t right.

In times like this google is your best friend, and your worst enemy as well. I was straight on my laptops searching for “mammography women under 35”, as I knew, as explained on another post that this test was NOT commonly done on women my age. ‘Course I came across a medical book, called something along the lines of  “Essentials of mammography”, via google scholar. It said that mammograms on women under 35 should only be done when there is a good indication of cancer. WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!!! panic panic panic.

The second round of tests a the hospital, when they squeezed my boobs and took a lil’ chunk of my lump out, was so different from the first one. No longer I was getting the “It will probably be nothing”, “You’ll be fine” type of comments. There was no reassurance that “it may be nothing, but we are just double checking”. They referred to the cells that were analysed from my lumps as “a bit suspicious”, which then changed to “very suspicious”. They were also referred to as “not right”. Motherfucker cells. Anyhow. We left the hospital thinking that it was cancer. You could not think otherwise.

As the week passed I became increasingly hopeful, and the “I’m too young” discourse entered my mind again. “I can’t have cancer! I’m making everyone worry for no reason”. When the results day arrived the lovelies that came with me were Nick and Fausto, sitting on the waiting corridor, sipping coffee and reading some teenage magazine called Sugar, making fun of it and having a giggle. After a while though I realised that everyone was going in before me. At that point I told Fausto that the news were bad and they were leaving me for the end, you know, in case I had some nervous breakdown, or started kicking chairs around or god-knows-what reaction I could have.

We go in. Consultant is fiddling with the papers on my files. “What is she looking at?”. Then she asked me if I’ve had a needle biopsy. “Yes” I say. “Get one with it!” I think. And she did…”I’m AFRAID…hg&***£$%ns%…have CONFIRMED…kl0&*££”. These are the only words I remember. The rest is history.

Oh, but what was my reaction? I didn’t hit anyone, didn’t break any hospital equipment. In true Rosa style I swore, “Fuck, fuck fuck”, “shit shit shit” with occasional apologies for my bad language. I said a few wacko things (lets not get into that). And apparently I laughed too. I cannot remember much, but Faustotold me I went through a whole range of emotions. Course I also remember saying “I do not want to die”. Which is something that I am not currently worried about.  My current worries are:

1) Will I lose my fertility?

2) Do I have time to freeze some embryos (in case the answer to question 1 is yes)?

3) When will I start chemo?

4) Will I become bloated (from the chemo)?

5) How many haircuts can I fit in between now and chemo?

6) Will I lose all or some of my hair?

7) Will i lose my taste buds? will all food taste bitter? metallic? like cardboard?

8) Will the nausea take over?

Please note worries are not listed in order of importance. ‘Course, there are other worries, but there are the most immediate ones. Seeing the oncologist this afternoon. Scary!!!!!