After I had that candid talk with my radiation oncologist last Friday about if I'm cancer free or not, I emailed my medical oncologist (I have an army of doctors) to ask when I'd be considered in remission. I don't know why, but this is important to me. I think mostly because it marks a finite ending point of having had cancer and gone through treatment to prevent a recurrence. Unfortunately, I didn't really care for Dr. Shek's answer. Due to the fact that I'm still going in for Herceptin until next March, and then I'll be on a hormone pill for 10 years, my ending point is a little tricky. Dr. Shek said it's an issue of semantics, but most would say I'd be considered in remission at the end of Herceptin. That's a whole lot of waiting to be able to officially consider myself cancer-free. So, I think I'm going to go with Dr. Fisch's idea that at the end of radiation I'll switch from have to had and consider myself in remission from that point. I think it's really a matter of when I feel ready to accept that we did as much as possible to get rid of any lingering cancer, and to move forward. It's not like a broken arm - okay, you need to spend 6 weeks in a cast, then we'll remove it, and a month after that you can resume all regular activities. I'll forever have to be cautious of how cancer has affected my body. For example, I can't have blood drawn or my blood pressure taken from my left arm due to having had lymph nodes removed. If I were to travel right now, I'd have to take this special card with me to the airport that states I have a portacath in my chest and would need a pat down search to get through security. Now, whenever I have concerning pains, I have to be cautious about x-rays, CT scans, and MRI's. The list goes on.
My anxiety about the end of treatment ebbs and flows. Some days, it's nonexistent, and I feel normal. Other days, it's stifling, and it's all I can do to not think "what if this pain in my side is cancer? What if the lump I still feel in my breast is some of the tumor they missed?" (it's not. It's scar tissue. I know this, but there's still that 'what if' hanging there). This is all part of the "new normal" that every cancer patient nearing the end of treatment talks about.
I guess the good part about my treatment being so long, is that it tapers off. Radiation is hard because it's 5 days a week, and I still have to go in for Herceptin. But once radiation is over, then it's only Herceptin once every 3 weeks, which is easy to handle in comparison to my whole chemotherapy arsenal. There's little to no side effects that I've noticed yet, and I'm in and out of the infusion center in less than an hour. Life will be fairly normalized when I'm down to just that. I've been reading up on other women's experiences with Tamoxifen, and their side effects are all across the board. Some experience weight gain, some weight loss, some nausea and vomiting, headaches... It makes me worried to find out what I'll have to deal with for the next 10 years. But I'll just have to remind myself that it's to save my life.
While I trust my doctor's with my life (I kind of have to - they know more science-y stuff than I do), I think making the decision for myself of when I'm deemed in remission will help me heal and move forward with life. It will close another chapter of my cancer story for me, and then I can move on to writing the next one.
There's no doubt that cancer changes your life. You have to mourn the loss of the life you once had, while trying to accept this new life that you never asked for.
Brought to you by one of the forums I frequent on breastcancer.org:
(In case anyone is wondering, the ultrasound I had of my abdomen came back normal. Which is yay happy, but also frustrating because I still have pain there, and I don't like being told that there's no cause for the pain. I also found out I have high cholesterol, so I have to actually start exercising again, not just saying I'm going to, and being more careful with my diet.)
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