Biography

I’ve thought long and hard about posting anything about my cancer. I’m totally at fault for where I am now. It’s actually humiliating that a grown woman would do what I didn’t do.

I was one of those people who put it off and put it off. First, I didn’t do regular self-exams. Then, I didn’t get mammograms. Then, I ignored symptoms and pain. I actually became an emergency case coming in through the hospital emergency room with a bleeding breast tumor.

Most of my life I worried about breast cancer being what would take my life. But I was so scared of, it that I did nothing proactive. And now I have the self-fulfilling prophesy for myself and my husband.

When I look at the chat rooms for breast cancer patients and see the many, many people that are stage 0 or 1, how I envy them and wish that it could be me that was looking at a future.

Despite feeling emotionally isolated from my medical team, I know that they are some of the very best in the cancer field. I’m in a clinical trial study so maybe I can pick up a little extra time.

The thing that I regret most is what this is doing to my husband. We have no children together. (He has a son by a previous marriage. We live hours and hours away from family. Too much is and will fall on him.

After the mastectomy at the end of August this year, I felt wonderful. Now, with chemotherapy and possibly other things going on in my body, I don’t feel well.

Comments:

hey, I understand how you feel, I wonder who might read what I write, but I also wonder who it might help…I was having headaches, and knew that before I had cut my hair short and they had eased off or what I thought went away… my husband wanted me to let my hair grow back out, and when I started having headaches again, I went and got it cut real short again, and still had the headaches, for 4 days and nights i tried to ignore them, then he made me go to the er..there they found the brain tumors that had moved from my lungs into the brain, and one was trying to rupture, so it was an emergency type surgery, they were able to remove 2 of them, and was afraid the 3rd would cause too much damage to remove, so I am just starting radiation on that one, and where they removed the 2..then they will look at treating the lung…so don’t cut your self short with ignoring the signs…and I have lost family members with cancer, and never thought it would happen to me… we do what we have to do, to protect our family’s from any heartache, and sometimes we cause more by ignoring the obviouse signs…I am here anytime you need a friend…hang in there we have alot of living to do. gail

Posted on April 23, 2009 at 4:07:52 PM by gschrier