Cancer is a guest, it walks into the room and changes the whole milieu. It can turn life into a pity part, a battle, a comedy sketch, a medical parade. Read the rest of this entry »

Bottom line, the oncologist felt, statistically, in the case of my size and type of tumor and my age of onset etc, that without chemo followed by hormone therapy, that I had a 25% chance of dying from recurrence within the next 15 years. He felt that statistically chemo followed by hormone therapy would reduce that chance to 10%. This was based on this occurring in someone without my immune deficiencies, meaning the prognosis would perhaps be even tougher in that context if I don’t do chemo followed by hormone therapy. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, scenario, you had a breast cancer tumor. It was 3cm. They removed it. The sentinel lymph node showed no cancer but was ‘benign with reactive changes’. But when breast cancer tumors are 3cm+ a clear lymph node result (ie no cancer there) has a 14% chance of being a false negative. Plus cancer can travel through the lymph node without embedding there and cancer cells can float away from the tumor, off into the lymph only to later embed in other body parts; lung, liver, bowel, bone. Read the rest of this entry »

My breast cancer tumor was thought to be 2.2cm. Scans showed no cancer in the lymph nodes. The doc understood I lived with immune deficiencies, that my family had an extremely high cancer rate and that I was nervous of how taxing radiation or chemo would be. I knew I didn’t care about cleavage, that I’d invested my life in my personality, not my breasts. Read the rest of this entry »

My breast cancer should have been “in situ”, meaning contained and non invasive. After all comedocarcinoma is usually not invasive. But seems there are cases where usually in-situ breast cancer does become invasive. And if its going to do that, Comedocarcinoma cells move fast. Read the rest of this entry »

Today was the day of the pathology results from last week’s biopsy for breast cancer. Seems I have Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Nos (IDC Nos). This is the most common form of breast cancer with 70-80% of those diagnosed with breast cancer having this IDC Nos. Read the rest of this entry »

Today a friend came over, we joked about cancer. It was side splitting, wonderful, hilarious and therapeutic. Read the rest of this entry »

I saw my cancer on the ultrasound during the biopsies. It’s not nice and round and tidy with smooth unthreatening self contained edges living in an easy to cut out non life threatening space. Mine lives at 12 o’clock in breast positioning, my left breast and 12 o’clock, so pretty much its where my heart is and deep in boonies of breast-ville. Read the rest of this entry »

Someone on Facebook asked ‘why is it that good people get cancer?’. I answered that it isn’t good people who get cancer, or bad people, that its just PEOPLE who get cancer. I added that animals get cancer, cats, dogs, horses, birds, fish. They get cancer whether they got distance healing, whether people prayed for them, whether they loved their mothers, whether they clicked their heals 3 times and spun according to their OCD compulsions or not. Read the rest of this entry »

Seems the C word sends everyone mad. Friends suddenly lose their equilibrium, they can run about like mad chickens, look ready to throw you a pity-party, find a mission in healing you, become a resource machine, tell you one size fits all happy ever after stories of some archetypal ‘Mary Smith’ who had cancer, tell you how ignorant your oncologist or surgeon is and how they have found one who is much better, or how your cancer could really be a banana or sweat gland or anything other than what your doctor says it is, or they disappear altogether unable to face you. In short, your friends may suddenly turn into ‘idiots’. Read the rest of this entry »