Hi ,
I'm Sarah martin, I am 41,I am married and have been happily for 10 years to Michael,I have a 6 year old daughter Olivia,
3 weeks ago i have been diagnosed with breast cancer
a little bit of back ground :
After a long struggle(20 years on and off) with cancer my mum passed away the end of August 2012, she was on her 3rd round of the big C and it had spread to her spine and brain , she decided to refuse Chemo at this point as she said she would rather have a good quality of life she had left, than spending it being ill due to chemo that was not going to cure her anyway......brave woman my mum.......
We had her funeral two weeks after she died, it was a Friday (it was nice as funerals go , it was so my mum) then on the Sunday i found a massive golf ball lump on my left breast, I knew it was not normal as I did check regularly over the past few years,
NO MATTER WHAT AGE YOU ARE PLEASE CHECK YOUR BREAST, MALE AND FEMALE.
I had tried to get on the early screening but due to reasons i do not understand i was refused.
When i found it I had no idea how to say that "i had found a lump" to my family especially my husband because of what they have just been through with my mum, so that Sunday i was very quiet and hardly spoke,
my husband just put it down to me missing my mum.
That evening i told him and that was when the roller coaster started,.
Monday morning i was in the docs , who referred me to the hospital, trying to reassure me that 8/10 lumps found are not cancerous and all my symptoms , pain , lump movement, lump size change all pointed to cyst of some kind
The hospital were really quick and the following Friday I was in having a mammogram, ultra sound, core biopsy ouch!, then the waiting started , I would not get the results for 10 days after that ..............
this had to be the longest 10 days of my life , why could it not go fast like my annual holiday seams to.
I could not eat for 3 days , i felt sick , i seamed to sleep but not heavy and the second i woke up i could feel the anxiety build up from my toe to the top of my head
The dreaded day came... my husband and i sat in silence waiting for my name to be called , i was the first one in , the doc came in followed by my mums Macmillan nurse, she smiled and winked at me, the doc sat next to me and said you have two malignant tumors.
I was dumb struck, Mike was distraught,I did not know what to say , and for some strange reason i did not cry, even though my husband broke down . I remember the doc saying "you were not expecting that" the hell i wasn't.
I asked questions like,
ME: how big are they?
Doc : small 8mm and 14mm small
ME: treatment ?
Doc : 6 doses of chemo
i have a choice of where i wanted to go to , i chose The Christie as that is all they do and the care they took of my mum pending staffing levels was amazing.
a few other question were asked but its all going into a haze now
I now have the task of telling my beautiful 6 year old daughter , that mummy has the same thing that grandma has just die of............................
I needed back up , we had tried talking about it when she was out of ear shot, buy as 6 year old do she always came in when we were crying or sad, she knew something was wrong but she never asked,.
I asked my brother Nick and his better half over for moral support ,i needed to tell her about mummy.
I had done a bit of trawling on the Macmillan site and a lady had put a video of how she told her kids about it ,
So i told her in language she understood, she took it well ..too well
then it was bed time , she went upstairs and broke down as i had said its breast cancer and she had heard brain cancer (which i what my mum had, in the end)
after a lot of hugs and reassurance that mummy was not going any where, she went to bed.
The day after it was the Macmillan coffee morning so i decided to go with hubby to the hospital one,we had collected over £700 from mums funeral to give to them as she had requested.
My BCN (breast cancer nurse) Debbie is fab, she was worrying that it might remind me about mum her being my nurse as well,but it helps as i do not have to explain it all over to some one new,
she gave me a book for My daughter called "mummy's Lump" and bugger me its almost word for word how i told Olivia .. i was well proud of my self.
since then i have stayed away from google (its the worse this you can do,Google stuff) and i have stayed on the good sites like Macmillan , breast cancer care,
I have been poked , pin pricked , flushed with die, bloody taken.
****************
It is now 3 weeks later , i feel the best i have felt in years,eating , sleeping , very few anxiety attacks, i have had my hair cut shorter as it will fall out anyway and its the best hair cut i have ever had bloody typical....
i have agreed to join in a drug trial for future generations of cancer patients to help ( may be it will help me as well, it cant make it any worse)
i have arranged with my future sister in law to go Wig hunting , i have bought scarfs, hats and have been practicing how to wear them and how to do my make up when all my hair is gone,
If you see me do not ignore me , come and speak, i dont want sympathy, Hugs are nice, i will talk about it if you ask me to , or you can just load your worries on me , it gives me a break from mine,
i'm going to keep this blog going as much as i can on my ups and down of treatment.
so you can keep up with me journey...........
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