| I had gone to the doctor in September because I wasn’t feeling well, and while I was there said “I’m gonna get my money’s worth out of this visit” and I told the PA about this pain I had been having for about 4-5 months now in my muscle on my right arm, where I couldn’t live my arm above my head without a lot of pain.
She decided to check it and then also gave me a breast exam. It was then she found a lump in my breast, from there it snowballed. I must confess I do not do self exams but I do faithfully go for my mammograms every year on or about my birthday. Well, I went for the mammo and then was told I needed to see a surgeon, I said I have my own thank you. I called him and we immediately set up an utlrasound guided biospy. I’ll tell you I don’t ever want that again, it hurt like hell. It came back negative, but, my surgeon and the radiologist both didn’t like the looks of things and wanted to go further and remove this lump (the size of an M&M, a regular one, not a peanut one as my surgeon described to me, LOL) to make sure. Well, the surgery was done on September 15th, 2011 and on the September 21st , Dr. Merrill called me to give me the news that it was “breast cancer”. I was devastated and didn’t really know what to do or say at the time. He explained things to me then, but I didn’t register it all till much later. I was at work at the time and the only person there was the owner of the company, my boss, I went to her and just broke down. She was wonderful and talked and listened to me while I expained what the doctor told me and then she told me I should go home and be with my husband or my sister, but I didn’t want to, I thought. That didn’t last long, I ended up going home and explained to my husband just what the doctor said and he just hugged me, as best he could. You see he has been out of work due to major surgery for hernia repairs since March and was pretty much immobile but he was there. From there things started to roll, I had to go for a lymphectomy in October, and that came back negative for having spread to the nodes, THANK GOD. My cancer is Stage 1 ductal breast cancer and the ONCODX came back with a 91% cure rate, and will respond best with 32 treatments of radiation and then 5 years of hormone therapy. I have had only one setback and that is that the Femara did not agree with me as it caused severe headaches and I already suffer migraines and also severe stomach pains, so I was switched to Tamoxifen for now. I am postmenoposal so that is the reason for the Femara, but I will see how things go with Tamoxifen. My silver lining is that my BC was caught very early and has a great chance for a cure and that there have been wonderful people taking care of me during my treatment. I count my blessings each day that research has come so far with BC. |
Robbin's Silver Linings
