Processing this non-linear journey
I’ve been quiet for the last few weeks while I’ve been trying to deal with my own emotional rollercoaster. I’m discovering it has many more twists and turns that I anticipated and I really don’t like rollercoasters at the best of times.
Instagram and the community here are so helpful, comforting and supportive for the majority of the time and I am delighted to have made some really special friends here. BUT… there are times when I find it really triggering and hard to read and it sends my head in to a spiral of what ifs and the fear can be overwhelming. So, sometimes I take a step back, I stop posting, I stop looking and I take some time to try to deal with my emotions. This rollercoaster has a habit of making me sick if I don’t learn to step away from it at times.
My first oncology appointment since finishing chemo was last Thursday 1st December and I went in with a few niggles and some questions but I expected on the whole that it would be straightforward. I knew that the follow up was to see how I was doing after chemo and to start me on tamoxifen and I thought that, other than my own questions, it would be over at that, but I’m learning that this journey is never linear.
My own questions were that I thought I could feel a new lump on my mastectomy scar which was concerning but I was examined and my consultant was sure that it’s actually just my chest wall I was feeling (I felt a bit foolish but she assured me I wasn’t and that it’s important to get everything checked!). Secondly, my right shoulder and arm had been really sore for the last couple of weeks (my breast cancer was on my left side if this is even relevant!). My shoulder in particular felt really bruised, although I know I hadn’t hurt it in any way and I explained to her that it hurt more at night and even lifting it was sometimes hard. She examined it and said she thought it was muscular but that we would check it on a CT scan which she wanted me to have done for another reason. I was a little taken a back as she explained that when I had my initial MRI, CT and bone scans back when I was diagnosed in May that they had seen something in my pelvis on the CT scan. They believed at the time that it was a Peritoneal Inclusion Cyst and that it was benign but she wanted me to have another CT scan just to be sure that they have diagnosed it correctly and there have been no changes to it. So, of course, my mind went in to overdrive and honestly, the fear hasn’t left me since then.
I am now waiting for the appointment for the CT scan to drop through my door and of course, unwisely, I’ve been spending my time googling. I’ve read a lot about Peritoneal Inclusion Cysts (P.I.C’s) which themselves are not of concern but the concern is that what has been seen on the scan is something else and not P.I.C’s and this is of course where the fear starts to set in. From what I’ve read P.I.C’s occur “exclusively in premenopausal women with a history of previous abdominal or pelvic surgery, trauma, pelvic inflammatory disease, or endometriosis”. For me I know I am naturally premenopausal but other than giving birth 3 times I don’t fit any of the other markers for P.I.C’s, so that has me even more concerned.
Obviously if this had been seen on a routine scan, not being done due to a cancer diagnosis, I wouldn’t be thinking twice about it, but as we all know, after cancer everything is feared and all I can do is think about it and worry. I’m scared that what is there is not a P.I.C and that it is something on my ovary (P.I.C’s form around the ovaries as a result of the fluid produced by them getting trapped!) and no matter how much I try I can not shake that fear and probably won’t until I’ve had the scan and the results back. The fear is taking me to all sorts of dark places that I find it hard to drag myself out of, the worst being ‘what if this is something else, more cancer, and that this is my last Christmas’. I mean it’s bloody madness when I find myself in tears buying boxes of Christmas biscuits because I’m fearing that I’ll never get to do it again. Or I’m crying while ordering my daughters presents in case this is the last time! Cancer is a fucker and it messes with your head in ways you never thought it could be messed with!
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