Realization

I wrote this one on January 30th.

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I'm at this point that I am feeling better post-surgery.  My mind isn't constantly on pain or discomfort.  It is now focused on cancer.  I have been in survival mode since I was diagnosed so I really haven't processed the meaning of breast cancer.  What I know of it is what my doctors told me, but I never took the time or had the time to think it through.  I think that is why, in my mind, I haven't made it a big deal.  I was going to do whatever it took to aggressively fight the cancer and then be done with it.  When this is all over and years down the road, I would see this as a blip in my life.  I would move on like nothing ever happened.  This, my friends, is called DENIAL or NAIVE.  Maybe this was the coping mechanism I needed to make it through everything I have been through to this point.  Thinking beyond this time may have been too much for me to handle.

What I am getting at is that I have come to a realization that once I have completed radiation, that does not make me CURED.  There is no cure for breast cancer.  The chemotherapy, the double mastectomy, the radiation treatments, and the estrogen-blocking pill, Tamoxifen, are all aggressive measures to rid my body of the existing cancer and hope that it got any other cancer cells lingering around.  Only time will tell if I have a recurrence.

I'm learning my prognosis is always better as time goes on without a recurrence.  The first two years have a higher percentage for it coming back.  So my medical oncologist will see me two or three times each year in the next couple of years just to check in with me.  Five years is like a magic number...recurrence greatly diminishes at this milestone.

I'm not trying to be a downer about this, but realistic.  This is a disease that I have to manage and be aware.

I have done some reading and learned more about my disease.  I probably have had these cancer cells for 8-10 years but were not able to be detected until now.  During that time there was plenty of opportunity for the cancer cells to get out of the breast and spread to the rest of the my body.

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I didn't post this because I was still learning but also felt I was being too negative at the time.  I had just finished reading a book about four young women who where battling breast cancer.  Two of them died after it recurred a few years after their diagnosis.  Their cancer was caught early but still had a recurrence.  This scared me, and to be honest, it still weighs on my mind.  I'm sure as time goes on, those thoughts will lessen.