It’s been a hot minute since I was last here telling my story. Now it’s all about recurrence.
I’ve spent the last three years off living life, travelling, ticking off the bucket list and generally having a great time.
In May I was in Europe, I had a conference in San Sebastián, Spain, and then I would be joining my daughter in Syracuse, Italy after she went to a friend’s wedding there.
We were travelling cheap, so staying in hostels, and I was still working as I went.
With no desk, I would prop myself up on my pillows in bed, grab my laptop and get a couple of hours of work done before our day started.
This was when I felt it – a lump!
Because of the position I was in, my implant was pushed upwards, and the lump was sitting on top of it.
I have UTM implants, so the muscle is right under the skin. The lump was between the muscle and the skin.
When I stood up, I could not feel it at all. The lump sunk into the depression caused by my implant meeting my chest wall. It was very sneaky.
I just knew, straight away, that this was a recurrence.
As soon as I was back in Australia I made an appointment with my awesome surgeon.
He has always said to call if there are any issues, and I was able to see him the next day. Any times I have called like this I have been seen in less than 48 hours.
During that appointment, he did a fine needle biopsy right there and then.
He said he would have the results Friday night, but was hesitant to call me with them then, as he wouldn’t be able to see me to discuss it until Monday.
I told him I was sure it was a recurrence, and that calling me Friday night and giving me that news would not change my thoughts over the weekend.
“You were right” were his words when he called, and we made a time to meet Monday.
At that second appointment, he ordered a PET scan and a CT scan, and his equally fabulous receptionist put pressure on the radiology place to get me in the next morning.
I hadn’t had a PET or CT scan before, and I was surprised to discover that the waiting for these results was the most terrifying time I’ve had during this whole journey.
I mean, it is waiting to hear if you’ve been given a death sentence! If the cancer has spread, that’s effectively what you are going to hear.
I have never felt such relief to get to my appointment on Wednesday (just one week now since the first appointment) and hear the scans were all clear.
The next step was to take the lump out and get the pathology done on it.
Surgery was booked for the next Tuesday. See, I told you my surgeon is awesome. From first appointment, biopsy, scans, to surgery in less than 2 weeks.
Surgery was a breeze, the easiest one yet.
I did stay overnight in the hospital, but that will always happen because my surgeon operates in the evening, so discharge would be close to midnight, and it’s really not worth it.
I now have a new scar above my implant on my chest to add to the others.
Then the wait was on for the pathology results of the tumour. My surgeon had said to me he didn’t think I should be thinking about chemo, but I should be prepared for radiation.
I couldn’t believe I’d dodged the chemo bullet twice.
My relief was short-lived though. When I went back to get the pathology results, I was in for a bit of a shock.
Some of the results were just that little bit higher than what we were hoping, and when my surgeon discussed my case at his multi-disciplinary meeting, two other doctors recommended chemo.
I left this appointment a little shell-shocked, simply because that was not what I expected to hear.
As always, I had a copy of my pathology results so I could look them over, understand what they were saying and make a decision from there.
Now I am still stage 1, and nothing individually on my pathology report is a huge red flag, but when all added together, I could see there were some concerns.
Here are the things that I didn’t like:
- Grade 3
- Ki-67 of 15-20% (Ideally it should be below 10)
- Vascular invasion present
- High ER% and low PR% (worse prognosis than high ER high PR)
The first two of these hadn’t changed from my first diagnosis. This time though the tumour was larger (15mm) and I have already proven that I am good at growing cancer when in theory (taking Tamoxifen) I shouldn’t.
All in all, this says that the risk of recurrence this time was higher than the risk of recurrence last time. And last time, the cancer grew back.
It’s currently still early stage, and as far as we know it’s not gone beyond the breast tissue, but that vascular invasion scares me.
If there are cancer cells in the blood vessels just outside the tumour, in theory, the little bastards could be anywhere in my body, hiding away until just the right time.
And if that’s the case, there is really only one way to try to stop them, and that is with chemo.
So I am about to learn all the ins and outs of the chemo world as I take this next step in my cancer journey.
Have you joined a breast cancer support group on Facebook but been completely overwhelmed by some of the posts? It’s fantastic that these groups are an open forum and all sorts of questions, worries and issues are addressed, but sometimes they can be too much. In fact sometimes they can be downright scary.
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