BREAST CANCER. THE TERRORIST WITHIN
There’s nothing quite as uplifting a bit of good news on the breast cancer front. And the statistics released this week by Cancer Council Victoria is just that.
More Victorian women who are diagnosed with breast cancer are beating it, with 89% of them still alive after the magical 5-year survival period.
Image via teenytinyturkey on Flickr.
That’s significantly up on the survival rates some 20 years ago. The message now must be: “don’t let the better detection and treatment make you complacent”.
Just like there’s nothing like a bit of good news on the breast cancer front, there’s nothing more harrowing than being diagnosed. It’s literally a life changing experience, as anyone who has been through breast cancer knows.
I am amongst them. “Complacency” isn’t in my vocab.
I was 39 when a palpable lump appeared on my left breast. Breast cancer was the last thing on my mind, with an 18-month-old baby, a happy marriage and a great job. When my surgeon told me he was fairly sure we were looking at cancer, my reaction was: “What are you talking about? I don’t have time for cancer!”
In an afternoon, the meaning of “time” changed.
Looking back, it is hard to discern what was more harrowing: coming home to the hugs of a baby I wasn’t at all sure I’d be there to care for, for much longer? Having a big bit of my left breast cut out, along with a fair few lymph nodes to make sure there was no cancer in them? Undergoing radiotherapy? Dealing with chemical and surgical menopause? Battling incurable lymphedema caused by a small mosquito bite? Dealing with wanting my illness kept out of the public domain when I was a public figure but having Crikey assert that my absence from the ABC airwaves was because I had been removed from my position as host of The World Today?
One of the biggest of the battles was having to pretend, for years after surgery, that I was “back to pre-cancer normal” when I really felt that my body had been struck by a terrorist who’s evil I would have to forever be on guard against – when I no longer knew what “normal” was.
Surgery was really just the beginning. But as I learned, the surgeon can be the beginning, the middle and the triumphant victory over a torturous mind game.
A great surgeon is like winning lotto when you’re on your last kopek. Professor David Gillett was my lucky number. If not for his skill with a knife, his gentle personality, his willing me to health, his constant availability, and that he understood the mind game cancer plays, I might have gone certifiably mad in the years that followed diagnosis. Had anyone other than Professor Gillett and his offsider Catherine Kennedy known what was happening to me, they might have offered me a ride to a psychiatric facility!
Every pain I felt had me convinced that the cancer had returned.
I can’t even recall the number of bone scans I put myself through, every twinge in my aging body ushering in a new bout of paranoia. There were a few brain scans too, along with blood tests and cervical ultrasounds, few of which I would tell my family I was undergoing. With the cancer gone, I was meant to be “over it”, cured, recovered, wasn’t I?
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16 Responses to this article
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Jenny October 8, 2012
Thanks for your positive story. It is just what I needed to hear today, as my mum is having a double mastectomy this afternoon and I am quite nervous about it all… Got to keep focusing on the good stuff.
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Chris October 8, 2012
Thank you for your account, which accurately portrays the ongoing fear. Like you I dissolve as soon as anything about breast cancer comes up. October equals great turmoil although I salute the breast cancer fund raising and the people that care.
There has been no getting back to old “normal” -for me – this is a whole nother llfe, in another galaxy – or at least it feels so.
Nearly three years post surgery and I have not told my parents or siblings. What good can it do? Those that care would be upset and those that don’t, don’t. I also suspect any knowledge of my cancer diagnosis would encourage parents to consider deleting me from inheriting anything – as a childless lesbian daughter I am already regarded as an unsuitable heir, so a cancer diagnosis has the potential to provide external justification for existing biases or prejudice towards more conventional relatives.
The big change in post cancer life is my friendship network. I realised in most pre-cancer relationships I did all the heavy lifting – I went to their houses, I met them for meals in restaurants close of their home but hours away from mine, I was the one making dates, attending their important life events with a gift in hand. It was fascinating to see who disappeared when exhaustion meant I could no longer chase the connection. As time wore on, it revealed something fundamental about the true nature of my connection with some people I would have previously described as life long – 30+ years – friends.
I have a far simpler, less cluttered, but also more physically circumscribed post cancer life. -
Serin October 8, 2012
I used to be able to have my breastscreen (mammogram) without a doctor’s referral twice year through Breastscreen Victoria bi annually. This was done just with a phone call to the Breastscreen Victoria offices here in South West Victoria. After having a mother and sisters diagnosed with breastcancer this year, Mum in Britain and 84 sister here in Victoria and 52. My doctor suggested I take up having my breasts screened yearly. Well I went to the local St John of God-hospital that now has seems to have taken over the booking in of appointments – ( Breastscreen Victoria continues to hire consulting rooms from the hospital I think). A rather “officious “receptionist has now told me I need to have a referral from my doctor to actually get an appoinment. I went back to my GP’s practise and my my GP’s receptionist who is a vivid contrast to the hospital receptionist said to me “My God you have enough stress in your life” , and made the appointment for me with the Hospital- and is faxing a referral from my Gp. So when some women in the medical field and at the “cold face” (be it in admin) have scant empathy for the impact of this disease- we have a lot of educating still to do.
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Katie October 8, 2012
@Serin. Same here about the referral for annual screening. I acquired a positive family history of breast cancer after years of straightforward two-yearly Breastscreens. Suddenly I needed a referral every time – a bureaucratic stuff-up if you ask me. Why put a barrier in the way of those who probably need the screening most of all?
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kathryn October 8, 2012
I too was diagnosed with breast cancer at 39 with a 4 year old child. Had a double mastectomy and chemo. If you focus on the prospect of the cancer coming back you will go crazy! ….. I get my checkups….. take those little white pills every day and have started going to the gym 3 times a week and celebrate each birthday with joy.
I have refused to allow cancer to enter my head space again !
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Monica October 8, 2012
Good on you Kathryn. Full of admiration!
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Jane Salmon October 8, 2012
Hey Monica. Me too. So glad it has gone this well and hope for many happy checkups to come.
I’m really sorry that this has happened to you when you were raising a bub and perhaps hoping to have more.
Well done for chugging on.
The mental battle is indeed the toughest around.
Bless,
Jane Salmon
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Jane Salmon October 8, 2012
I’d just like to add that you have expressed this in words and from a perspective that I don’t yet have. It is wonderful to read something articulate that didn’t use the bloody word ‘journey’ once.
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kathryn October 8, 2012
Ha hate the word “JOURNEY” too !
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sue elliott October 8, 2012
21 years ago at the ripe age of 32, I too was diagnosed and treated. Monica, as I read your story, I thought if I sorted through old diaries I would have found such similar thoughts.
Now all these years later, I would like to say that things have changed, but I still go for annual checks and if I have an ongoing painful niggle anywhere I quietly jump straight to cancer as the cause, and so the bone scans etc are never far away.
On the whole though, I would say I am pretty ‘normal’ whatever that is, and am very very pleased to say that I have had great joy in rearing my lovely daughter (now 29) and am grateful for every minute of ‘Ma’ time with my grandie. -
Serin October 8, 2012
Kathryn all power to you- you sound a real inspiration to your other family members and other cancer patients, all the very best to you.
Katie, I went back today for my scan and it has to be said, the receptionist are a real discredit to womanhood, let alone the medical profession. Have you got your paper work was the first thing they asked me- I said what paper work? I was not given any paperwork. So then I get the reply-”we cannot see you without your paperwork.” I said hang on and repeated what had happened to me on Friday and the comment about enough on my plate- by my GP’s receptionist when I told her what had happened to me at the radiologist reception – I said to these radiology receptionists I (all with their Madonna microphones on) I THINK she was RIGHT I have got too much on my plate to deal with all this rig marole. It was then a registered nurse showed empathy and said that the reception meant I needed a referral, she checked for a referral and it had not arrived from my GP. She then got proactive and rang my GP and organised a referral to be faxed. When I went into for my scan the radiologist said that the Breastscreen will not do annual breast screens, and that Breast screen and the Radiology dept. are separate entities. This had not been explained as they share the same physical space. She went on to explain that yearly scans have to be done by the hospital’s radiology dept- after you receive a referral. “The reception could not explain that to me I said?” She said to me “I would not be the first person to complain about the way the reception dealt with people.” I took the name of one of the receptionist who did not have a name tag on- she said if you want to complain the practice manager is here. I saw that as a pointless exercise as it is in-house culture by the sounds of it. How can they do this especially in a small town- where reputation gets around? When I spoke to my friend, who had given me a lift to the radiologist’s she said yes one of them is known to have attitude.
I will be complaining but I need to find out who futher up the food chain I complain to. I am complaining for those who go after me, as I have more confidence to complain than some other more vulnerable people might have. -
Serin October 8, 2012
Monica, I am trying for my mum’s sake to live every day as it comes and enjoy it- she has asked me to do that- I hope you are in a good place now, as it sounds like you have had a victory against the terrorist. Thanks for sharing your story.
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Monica October 9, 2012
Thanks Serin. Yes I am enjoying life. And thus far, total victory! M
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Louisa October 12, 2012
Thank you for revealing your personal experience Monica. I will go and make an appointment right now.
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Mary October 30, 2012
Thank you for telling your story.
I had been diagnosed at 35yrs old, in 2005 a year after my sister who was diagnosed at 33yrs old. After testing we found that we had the BRCA1 gene.
I became a zealot about getting rid of ANY thing that would cause my cancer to return or get a new cancer. I had double mastectomy and a full hysterectomy/oopherectomy and also took tamoxifen and femara (letrozole) for much longer than required…. I kept telling my oncologist that a .5% extra safety net from taking the letrozole outweighed the side effects.I am doing anything to keep those evil thoughts of “what happens when it comes back” or “what if they didnt get EVERY single cancer cell”!
