LEADING UP TO SURGERY

November - December 2012.
The first week of November was pre-op week. Mamograms, ultrasounds, scans and what-not. Various needles involved, of course.  All leading up to the meeting on Friday with the surgeon who would pass sentence. I had a cold that week, now there's a surprise! It only lasted a day, mind, (sleep and rest and biomagnetism did the trick), while my partner's cold lasted two weeks.
The mamogram was a lot more bearable than any I had had previously, just freezing cold. The ultrasound doctor gave me scare when he said the tumour was ONLY one centimetre.  I protested and said what the oncologist had told me and what I had observed: they had inserted the titanium clip to mark the centre of the lump (which at that time, late September early October, they could barely pick up on the ultrasound it was so small) and since then tissue had been forming around the clip, the way our body deals with a splinter or any foreign body, (apparently this is very typical with these clips). The doctor agreed in his jolly way but also said it could be the tumour growing again.  He patted me on my naked back, exacerbating the goose bumps, and told me not to worry as he disappeared out the door. Really not the most sensitive doctor I'd met in the hospital to date. I had a mild panic for half an hour and then I realised this was a waste of time because I KNEW it wasn't the tumour growing, the way pregnant women know what's going on because it's happening inside YOUR BODY and if you listen and observe there's so much information coming your way. Interesting thing, when I had the tumour it was like a part of me, it didn't hurt in the slightest and I couldn't feel it from the inside.  I only felt it as a lump when examining my breast from the outside.  When they introduced the titanium clip I suddenly felt something foreign was inside me, it felt uncomfortable and in the days and weeks that followed there were repercussions in my back, other parts of my breast, my armpit and arm.
The MIR scan was as awful as I remembered, there's no getting away from it. Then at the end of the week the surgeon hit me with the following: out with all the lymph nodes and a huge chunk of my tiny breast. Wasn't expecting that one.  I'd been told my results were fabulous by the private oncologists, that few people made such progress in such a short space of time and here was the surgeon insinuating I was lucky it wasn't a mastectomy. He hadn't even received the results of the scan, which I had endured the day before (he finally got them right at the end of the consultation). Had he studied the other results or merely glanced at them? His decision was based on what I had been diagnosed with at the beginning of this whole malarkey and the fact that the oncologist had sent me to him meant it was operable so he didn't need to know more. For a second or two I felt as if the last 3 months and my spectacular progress meant nothing.
Well, I told the surgeon I'd think about it, which kind of flummoxed him, so I reckon he's just not used to people saying no. I got really scared and down that day and the next, and was feeling very sorry for myself, but by Sunday I had snapped out of it (thanks to my friend Montse's session too).  By Monday I felt good again and resolved that I wasn't going to have the surgery.  Been down this road before, though, said the same about chemotherapy and look what happened there.

THE END OF CHEMO

October 2012 onwards.  The original plan for treatment was 24 weeks.  Phase one: 12 weeks on TAXOL, the so-called mild chemotherapy drug, then phase two: 12 weeks of something unimaginably worse!  Well, mid-treatment during phase 1, end of September, I had been progressing so well with the tumour shrinking at a right ole rate of knots that the oncologist confirmed the treatment would be just 12 weeks after all.  That was a moment of celebration.
Week twelve came and the last chemo session. I saw the oncologist for the usual check up and everything seemed to be on track for the final dose the following day.  But wouldn't you know my body had other plans.  I had chronic diarrhea throughout the night and hardly got a wink of sleep so that when I turned up for the last chemo session I was faint and wobbly weak.  They didn't give me the chemo session but checked me into the oncology emergency room for the day and did all the tests on me (Jesus Christ more needles, my poor veins). I have to say I was impressed that they had the means to deal with emergency oncology patients.  There have been so many cutbacks in the health service in Spain in recent years that I kept expecting to come up against some sort of set back in receiving treatment.  Thankfully this hasn't been the case.
The strange thing about it was that it wasn't a bout of diarrhea just after receiving a chemo session, it was at the point when my body was about to receive one.  Hmmm. Well, I was fine actually, I had had diarrhea and I just needed to sleep, I got progressively better during the day spent in hospital and they checked me out by the evening.  The doctors were looking for external causes, like what I had eaten, or a delayed reaction to the previous chemo session, but quite frankly I think it was my body/soul saying basta, don't want anymore drug inside me thank you very much.  So I had a whole week off from chemo, which I thought would be fabulous, although I had so much inside me by now that I can't say that I noticed any difference.
Back with the oncologist a week later and I had to ask THE question: would she let me off the last chemo session, never imagining she would.  But she did!  Now that was a real celebration.  I danced on the spot, hugged the doctor (this is Spain, that's what people do) and happily skipped off home.  It was over, over, over.  I felt pure relief in every nerve, every cell of my body, waves and waves of it.
Then again, the relief was short-lived as it dawned on me that I still had surgery to go through and I still had to receive the HER2 vaccine - intravenously. Oh great!
Yogis spend their lives trying to live in the moment, to not project forward, to not live in the past, to switch off the incessant workings of the mind, just experience and just be.  Nothing like being an oncology patient to force you to do just that! Or at least to deal with one hurdle at a time.

HAIR LOSS

August through to November 2012. Obviously this is the most noticeable thing for other people.  It used to fill me with such horror when I saw women with scarves on their heads, covering up their baldness, but oh how we change.  By the end of chemo, I would see such women and myself with brand new eyes.  I now see beauty, pride, courage, strength and humanity. I see the real woman in myself and in the eyes of other oncology patients.

It was round about session 3/4 that my hair started to gradually fall out.  I had obstinately not had it cut short, in denial up to the end, and I don't know if this was such a bad thing all things told.  What it meant was I lost my hair little by little (and boy did I have a lot) and somehow this helped me get used to the idea.  It was shocking and distressful to start with, but then after a while I also took a perverse kind of pleasure in pulling out loose locks.   Like popping bubble wrap or bursting balloons. I mean, when else in your life will you be able to do such a rebellious, anarchic act with such wild abandon?  When it got so tangled up at the back, loose hair twisted round in a ball, I took out the scissors and gave it the chop.  Pure peverse pleasure again.  I was wearing a handkerchief on my head by then, and still had hair that showed, so it didn't matter how it was cut.  Well, by week 11 there were wisps left.  Perhaps more hair would have remained if I had cut it short from the start (I mean I pulled out enough hair for 3 wigs), who knows?  

People do stare at you, or rather look for a second too long. It doesn't bother me, surprisingly it didn't bother from the very start (I have far more serious things to think about) but I do confess there are certain acquaintances I haven't wanted to see me looking like this, perhaps people I put up a front with, people with whom I'm on the defensive, people whom I don't trust fully.  Oh, the ego. With strangers I couldn't give a flying hoot, and with good friends I have no qualms taking off whatever is covering my head. It was a shock for my sister when we first skyped during chemo and she absent-mindedly said on seeing me "what's that tea cozy doing on your head?" I whipped off my woolly hat and she screamed "put it on again"!  It was very funny to make her squeal.  I think it took her just the length of that one call to get used to the idea.  And I have immense admiration for the women who don't cover their head at all.

Four weeks after finishing chemo, I look like a skinhead - a nice fuzzy growth sprouting all over my scalp.  Taking longer than I thought, but then again nothing about this whole process is anything like what I imagined.  Chemo stopped 16 October, while still warm in Barcelona.  Now it's late November and I just want hair to keep warm!  Never thought I'd ever say that!