Skip to main content

It's not pink, and it's not fluffy

 October is breast cancer awareness month. So here's some real talk.

Two and a half years into my metastatic breast cancer journey, I have declined significantly in less than two months. Mid-August I was enjoying NYC with my girls, averaging 20,000 steps a day. I planned that trip even though I couldn't afford it because with this disease you just don't know what the future holds, so best to do stuff when you can. I'm glad I did because now, two months later, I can barely walk to my car. Not sure if it's because of cancer pressing on my spinal cord or if I've just coincidentally developed sciatica, but my left leg has been weak and very painful ever since I found out I've had progression into my bones at the end of August. I've also had horrific pain in various places around my ribcage. At first I thought I'd pulled a muscle, or trapped a nerve. Then the pain moved but was just as intense. So intense I haven't been able to take a deep breath for at least two weeks now. When I try to inflate my lungs, a pain like being kicked in the ribcage by a donkey makes me gasp/grunt and snarl 'Fuck!' through gritted teeth. The last scan picked up areas of malignancy in my spine and in my lungs, so who knows. I've worried I have pleurisy, then wondered if it's a pulmonary embolism. Now I suspect it might be pleural effusions. Not good. I've also felt flu-like and achy, headachy and grossly fatigued. I've had a mild fever a few times. I thought I had a cold. I've done lots of covid tests and all have come back negative.


I have a decent pain threshold (two home births under my belt, darlings). But I've been playing Spin the Bottle with the oramorph and popping Naproxen two or three times a day just to take the edge off and be able to vaguely function.

I've been waiting for some updated scans as part of a clinical trial I'm hoping to join, but my scanxiety has been supplanted by the anxiety of having been off treatment now for six weeks while I wait to hear if I can join the trial. Up till now, I have not had cancer in my bones, and I have not had pain like this. So I'm frankly very scared of what the scans will reveal and simultaneously very keen to see if they shed some light on the pain. I have wondered if it's psychosomatic, as it all started at the same time I received my last scan results.

I got some blood results today that confirmed it's not all in my head, though. First they said they'd need a urine sample as according to my bloods, I was pregnant! (Erm...not unless it was the immaculate conception.) Then they asked if I'm suffering with oedema as I appear to be malnourished - low albumin (a protein), low haemoglobin and anaemic. So no wonder I'm so fatigued and feel like I'm struggling for oxygen on mild exertion. High HCG (the pregnancy hormone)...I googled and it says one cause (if you aren't, in fact, pregnant) can be certain tumours. Low albumin is a sign of chronic or acute inflammation response - which might be why I have felt like I have a flu-type virus for a couple of weeks now. Up till now, aside from my neutrophils (immune-system blood cells), all my blood work has been great. Even when I had Covid last year, my inflammation markers were low.

I hope they figure it out soon and there's a solution to get me back to feeling reasonably good. Because constant pain is so demoralising and exhausting. Especially when you don't really have any support - family or a partner - to take over running the house, or even to run you a bath.

Sorry for all the complaining. But this is the side of cancer that isn't pink and fluffy and fun.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

starting treatment

What a wild month. Days of feeling like this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to me. Days of thinking this is going to be the most amazing year of my life. Swimming in the depths of utter despair. The blackest of times. Understanding what it is like to not be able to get out of bed in the morning. The tears, how they have fallen. Hugs. Hugs like no other hugs I've received. I haven't been able to feel my own mother's arms around me, but the arms of many mothers have held me this month. I have sobbed into their necks, wetted their hair with my sadness. And though my dad is too far away to make it all better, I have felt the strength and protection in the arms of the fathers I know here. When you stare Death in his beady little eyes, you have two choices: curl up and give up, or Live. I have chosen the latter. Today marked the start of treatment. I have opted to have neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. Three cycles of FEC followed by three cycles of docetaxel. You can...
9 comments
Read more

it's all fun and games, until someone loses a nipple

A couple of weeks ago, I watched the film ‘Dallas Buyers Club’. I went expecting to see a gritty portrayal of a rodeo star’s experience with HIV. I wasn’t expecting to spend most of the film scrunched down in my seat, crying fat, silent tears into my scarf. I cried when the doctor surprised the main character with the news he was a dead man walking, because I remember clearly the shock and denial I felt the moment my doctor issued my death sentence. I cried because I remember thinking - in the midst of the most horrific conversation of my life - “This is why they tell people to sit down for bad news.” If I hadn’t been sitting when he told me, I’d have surely found myself on the floor in a broken heap.  But the scene that hit me like a sucker-punch to the back of the head was when the protagonist’s young friend, a transvestite, told his father he was HIV positive. When the young man broke the news to his father, he apologised.  I cried, because when I told my parents...
6 comments
Read more

bad dreams

I'm a pretty good sleeper, on the whole. I haven't always been - for years I laid awake in bed each night, sometimes for hours, waiting for the curtain of somnolence to fall across my eyelids. Whilst pregnant with my third daughter, I began listening to a relaxation CD at bedtime. Perhaps the strain of being pregnant for a third time in four years was the real cause, but I'm pretty sure those ten minutes I was guided by a soothing voice to "...three...two...one...relaaax..." helped me on my way to gentle rest. Sleep problems are very common amongst people with cancer - stress and anxiety coupled with side effects of medications conspire to steal zzzzzzzzz's when they are most needed. Fortunately, I have rarely experienced disrupted sleep, for not long after I was diagnosed, I was given another relaxation CD by a friend's mother (I encourage you to check out her website ), which has helped me to find sleep quickly and easily most nights. -------------...
5 comments
Read more