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Timeline

20 March 2018

Cancer Diagnosis, Healing and Feeling Timeline in Pictures

 

Denial

I was in denial the moment I felt the pea sized lump. I was too stressed at work to deal with it and it came and went with my cycle so it was only once I had quit my job a few months later that I found the time to make a doctors appointment. Denial then went into overdrive.

 

My world collapses in

You are bombarded with so many percentages you are repeatedly told that your five year survival relies on you doing as you are told.   I knew no one with cancer and those I knew who had had loved ones die from it, they were at the six year point so I didn’t understand why FIVE years was the figure banned about. I wanted a percentage for FORTY year survival. I found that in natural healed stories.

 

Muppets or Puppets

We are told we should trust doctors, but having finally experienced a number of them on my cancer journey, I have discovered that most of their hearts are in the right place but their knowledge is not. Are they trusting what they are taught or questioning it? What system have they been sucked into?

 

Percentage this, Percentage that

You are bombarded with so many percentages you are repeatedly told that your five year survival relies on you doing as you are told.   I knew no one with cancer and those I knew who had had loved ones die from it, they were at the six year point so I didn’t understand why FIVE years was the figure banned about. I wanted a percentage for FORTY year survival. I found that in natural healed stories.

 

Information Overload

The doctors can tell you as much as they want and you come home with a bag full of leaflets from MacMillan. Reading it all and looking for the straight facts that you want listed out for you is impossible alone as I discovered. You keep wanting to find the leaflet that just tells you straight what you should do. As none of them where answering my questions, just making more questions I became even more confused. I have learnt that there are answers out there but most Doctors have been blinkered.

 

I am a person, not a disease

From my pre-op for the lumpectomy, I discovered I had a hole in my heart. I discovered that that cancer didn’t worry me, the hole in my heart didn’t worry me, but the fear of lymphodema in my arm was petrifying. At no point did anyone want to help me with my fears. Percentages were just thrown at me to confuse me more. Not once was I given help that helped me.

 

Learn to Listen to Yourself

 

I remember my instinct was to not have the lymph node surgery as that was my biggest fear. I had no counselling to see if I would be able to deal with the aftermath, I ignored my intuition, as that is what I had learnt to do, and convinced myself I would be fine and that no nodes would be removed. I later found out that even the one sentinel node removal for testing could cause lymphodema, Why was I not told this?

 

Avatar

Paramhansa Yogananda explained that the term avatar refers to a soul who has been freed from maya (delusion) and is sent by the will of God back into manifested existence to help others.

An ex friend, when I said that they would inject blue dye into me to highlight the lymph nodes, said I would be an avatar. A bit more sexy than a smurfette I think. I was told I would be blue for 12-18 months. I am still blue nearly 3 years on.

 

One Lump or Two?

After having a mammogram, an ultrasound and a biopsy where they couldn’t get the needle in the tumour, eventually leaving me black and blue, I was told I had one tumour and a lumpectomy would be done. They get you in for surgery before you have time to look into options. A target to hit perhaps? You discover on waking that you actually had two tumours. A grade 2 invasive mucinous carcinoma and a grade 2 invasive ductal carcinoma where discovered. So was the mammogram wrong or did the biopsy spread the tumour? Because I had quit my job a month before, I was much happier, eating better and exercising more, was my tumour encapsulating? Is that why they had a hard time doing the biopsy? Was the mammogram correct and did the biopsy spread the cancer cells? I am learning that no one knows, so why do they try so hard to convince us that we should believe what they tell us. I was told because of my age, breasts are dense so mammograms are not accurate, in which case why is this inaccurate, outdated technology being used? So my smaller breast is now even smaller!!