So, for those of you who are my friends on
Facebook, you’ll know that I had my 3 month scan last week and everything came
back looking positive. My heart’s still beating, my bones are still mending and
the lesions in my liver look like they’re miraculously getting a bit smaller.
Which is weird, cos the Herceptin and Pertuzumab are supposed to control rather
than kill, but who am I to argue with the facts? Anyway, the post I put up was
to the effect of: Boom! 3 month scan and the bugger’s being kept at bay! Boom!
Now then. If I’m being completely honest
(and that, after all, is the point of all this)… that post wasn’t strictly
true.
In November last year I noticed a bit of a
rash on my chest. A week before my jaunt Down Under. Bit annoying, I thought.
Not very nice to look at, I thought. Maybe it’s cancer, I thought (in a tiny voice in the back of my mind).
So I did the grown up thing. I popped into
the clinic to see the oncology registrar and check it was nothing to worry
about. She had a look and said no, that looks OK. Maybe an allergic reaction to
something? Maybe the sun would actually clear it up? Let’s suck it and see eh?
But it didn’t look like breast cancer would look like in the skin.
And so, off I set on my merry way for the
very best of holidays ever and had a lovely time. The rash enjoyed itself too.
So much so that it got a bit redder, and developed more of a definite shape – a
very defined triangle from collar bone to sternum and back half way up the boob
that’s still there.
Getting back home, I was due for my 3
month check up, so I thought I should bring up the rash with my oncologist.
Hmmm, she said. Odd, she said. It doesn’t look like cancer. Or at least not
like any she’d seen. So we called in one of the surgeons. Hmmm, he said. Odd,
he said. It doesn’t look like cancer. And so we called in the dermatologist.
Hmmm, he said. It looks like a photo-sensitive delayed allergic reaction to the
chemo, he said. So he gave me steroid cream and I diligently applied it for 3
weeks over Christmas and the rash didn’t go anywhere. In fact, if anything, it
got a bit redder, and a bit more triangular. Although it very definitely didn’t
stray from that shape. It was just plain odd.
So I went back to see the dermatologist,
and he thought it was probably worth doing a biopsy. Just to rule out it being the
cancer spreading. Just to be sure. After all, no-one at the hospital had seen
this manifestation before, and it would be very, very rare if it was cancer.
And it didn’t look like cancer. Let’s remember that. So I should probably not
worry.
So we did the biopsy and my sliver of skin
went off to the lab.
(I think we all know where this is going
don’t we?).
Two weeks later, and I’m back in his
office. As thought (not as I’d
thought, but anyway…), it was the very, very, very rare thing. And you know in the adverts when everything stops
and someone’s sitting in a room hunched in a chair looking at the person who’s
talking like they’re a blethering idiot? That happened. I couldn’t think of any
questions, I didn’t really know what to say. I didn’t want to cry in front of
him (mainly cos I thought he was quite a nice looking chap and I think there’s
some sort of ethics business in place which means I’m not allowed to think
that). So I just sat there and stared at him like a slack-jawed fool and tried
not to cry.
What I do remember though, is him
elaborating on the rarity of this whole thing. Something so rare that he could
only find two other incidences of this triangular rash manifestation in
literature IN THE WORLD. Two. In the WHOLE WORLD. Which, with me thrown in for
good measure makes me 1 in 3 billion or something ludicrous. I mean, I know I’m
special and everything, but that’s just ridiculous. I’ve since looked it up on
the internet and found these other two incidences, who seem to be blokes in
their fifties and sixties with salivary gland cancer. Which makes ME even MORE
special. Or weird.
Very importantly though, and he was at
great pains to stress, I had to go and get photos taken so they could write me
up and I could join the two gentlemen in the medical literature. Me! Published
in a medical journal! What larks.
Anyway, off I went to Dr S to see what on
earth we were going to do about this. Because after all she hadn’t really seen
it before either. But before seeing me she’d researched it and spoken to the
Royal Free about this fancy treatment called electro-chemo. She didn’t really
know what it involved, just that it could potentially work for me. And she
didn’t want to stop the other treatment I’m on because my liver, bones and lung
are happily playing ball on that front. So she referred me over to the Royal
Free and off I went to see what it was all about.
Next stop the consultant oncologist at the
Royal Free, who explained everything to me. It’s quite a new treatment, but I
think they’ve actually treated 8 other people with it, so I’m not quite as much
of a medical marvel as I thought. But still, I seem to be the only one with
this triangular shape, so I’m clinging on to that as an oddity… And 8 people
just knocks me down to 1 in a billion or something instead. Anyway, in a nutshell, they
knock me out under general, give me a low dose of chemo and then use loads of
tiny needles to administer an electrical pulse that causes the cells walls to
open and chemo to flood in and kill them, meaning the individual cells get a
much higher dose than they would ordinarily. It’s SO clever!
Then on to a meeting with the surgeon who’s
going to perform this magic. He’s a genius. And a lovely man. And I think
that’s pretty much all I have to say about him. An actual genius.
So all this brings me to yesterday – lying
on a trolley thinking once again that I’m going to be the one person that anaesthetic
won’t work on, before 10, 9, 8, zzzzzzzzzzzz…………
“Do you know where you are?”
“Have they done it yet?”.
Every time. Why am I always so surprised to
wake up from a general to find they’ve actually done what they were planning?
Quick visit in recovery from the surgeon
who very proudly told me that he’d administered 429 needles in 30 minutes –
something of a record it seems! Which, if he did one at a time is a needle
every 4.2 seconds (something I was sooooo bothered about working out in my head
when I was coming round from the general. So weird.). But surely he can’t have
been that quick… Even if he did 4 needles at once that’s 1 stab every 16.8
seconds. Which is still pretty bloody quick. But he IS a genius though, so I’m
prepared to believe anything…
And finally to this morning, when I very much
felt like I’d been stabbed with 429 needles, regardless of how quickly or how
magically he did it. It’s achey and burny and tight and tender. It’s OK if I
sit in one position, but it hurts like hell if I sit in another. Going from
sitting to standing is horrendous, and I’m going to have to sleep propped up
like an old lady. But d’you know what? It’s that or cancer innit? And this
morning felt better than last night. And this evening feels better than this
morning. And I can only imagine tomorrow will feel better than today. So you
just get on with it don’t you?
