So what's been happening ?
Well, I decided to take an extra month off to recover after surgery, going straight from chop to burn just seemed bonkers to me, so I politely disagreed with my radiation oncologist and took two instead of one month off to recover, I knew it was what my body and mind needed. I was after all, doing everything I once swore I would never do and I had to take my sweet time to come to terms with it.
I was pretty set against doing the recommended radiation after surgery, as far as I was concerned I'd been given the all clear, I felt better than I had in years and all was well, why would I burn the bejesus out of myself just as a precaution ? Pre-surgery, my radiation oncologist said I had a 20-25% chance of recurrence, I saw that as a 75% chance of being healthy for the rest of my life and yes'd her to death when she strongly recommended treatment. I told them I needed more time to make my decision and got very busy being completely confused.
On one hand I was cancer free and didn't want to be bullied into doing a harmful treatment because of fear based statistics, on the other hand I knew that my triple-negative lobular is a nasty aggressive breast cancer that tends to recur in the chest wall....hmmmm ....Totally head-wrecked I consulted with my sage acupuncturist at Pine street clinic, he wisely had me gather all the facts of my case and knowing that I record every single meeting, asked me to summarize the last two meetings with my radiation oncologist. This forced me to listen to those meetings with objective ears and to my surprise I heard something I didn't want to hear the first time. She told me that based on my age, cancer type and the fact that chemo didn't nuke my cancer entirely, that each of those individual factors puts me into the 25-35% rate of recurrence bracket, however and this was the thing, there is no data on hand to guesstimate what happens when a patient has all three factors, she intuits that with these factors combined I was in the high 45-50% rate of recurrence in the chest wall and that doing radiation treatment would bring this down to 10%. Well.....those are some numbers...
That was my 90% of my decision right there.
Then I played the game of regret reduction, could I live with those numbers, even if it was a scare tactic ? Could I move past this and get on with the rest of my life and not have those numbers niggle away at me till I was driven demented ? The answer was NO and besides, everyone I spoke to had stories to tell of women who had refused radiation for the same reasons, were back in cancer land once again, this time with a messy, nasty, stage 4 nightmare... I wanted to be able to walk away from this knowing I did absolutely everything, leaving no stone unturned and with no regrets, so bizarrely, even to myself that meant I had to do it.
A wise person once told me that all healing is self healing, you have to decide that this therapy, no matter what it is, is going to make you better. If you can get your whole being into that state of mind then you get healed, well it took me a minute to get to that place.
What you see in the picture above is what I have been looking at in treatment for the last 5 weeks, silly childish stickers that some wonderful warrior put there to brighten the day of a fellow cancer patient. Being a big kid at heart I beamed at seeing these on my first nervous day, what a lovely thing to see rainbows and stars stuck onto a three million dollar machine, the message of hope it imparted was a saviour to me on dark days, smile kid, wish yourself well, don't let it get you down... it worked a charm and there are loads of little things like this covertly planted all over the radiation department, in lockers and on walls in the changing rooms, egging us on in this, the last leg of a long series of treatments....It's the little things in life that make the hard things bearable.
I added my own stickers to the machine the other day, can you guess which ?? Tell me your answers, the winner will receive a lifetime's supply of big beautiful hugs !!!
Treatment wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, granted I am quite burnt and a little sore but thanks to my acupuncture team's protocol of supplements, Chinese herbs and a diet rich in seaweed and miso I have emerged once again virtually unscathed. They encouraged me to really up my exercise regime, promising me it would stave off radiation fatigue, so just for shits and giggles I took up jogging, stop laughing. Not only did it work, it was surprisingly empowering, giving me tears of joy runner's highs and a new found faith in my body's strength and resolve.
So today my dears was my last session. No more cancer treatment, I'm done, it's over.............
em what ?
I'm floored, overjoyed, relieved and somewhat discombobulated, it's a weird and wonderful thing to come to the end of this and then to be done, I feel like a baby that's been birthed from the womb who's not quite sure what to do with all this light and space... it's all a bit blinding and confusing....
I do know one thing though, I am very lucky to be alive, I did my work and earned myself the gold star of a healthy body and spirit, who now loves this life more than she ever did and most importantly loves herself now, body mind and soul.
I have more to say and many to thank but that's for another post, so if you'll excuse me, I have some celebrating to do.......
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx !!!!!!!!
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