jingleupthehighway I am 11 years post mastectomy and in the last 11 years I have met a lot of women who have had various sorts of breast surgery and I think smee may be very unlucky, or my friends lucky? I haven't heard of anyone having the post op pain smee mentions but I had read about it and that you can get the same sensations as amputees, of the boob still being there. (smee that is annoying and unlucky, will it fade as the nerves grow back? I would say most of my sensation had returned to entirely normal by 3 years post op) The only problem I had post mastectomy was the numbness which if someone touched the numb area felt a bit like the throb you get with an electric shock. However that was only if someone touched it firmly, bras, prosthesis etc weren't a problem. It improved in the first months, very quickly at first but then more slowly and now I have all normal sensation back apart from a very small numb patch at the back of my armpit.
My friend who has a strong family history, not one of the known genes but the researchers are sure she has one they have yet to identify. She caught a lump very early 10 years ago but has just had a recurrence in a lymph node, she has been treated successfully and has just had her ovaries removed but that feeling it is lying in wait is always there, just hoping medical science is going to have moved on enough to treat it if it happens again. As indeed it has, since she has been treated entirely by a hormone specialist whereas with a lymph node involved 10 years ago I had chemo even though my tumour was also very Estrogen positive. However I am sure she would say the peace of mind will be worth it.
I obviously woke to a flat chest, I was sad but also relieved to have got rid of the Cancer. I couldn't look at first but after my hair went as well I stood in front of the mirror and realised the dread was the worst thing, once it had happened I realised it was still me and I hadn't lost anything that really mattered. DH said the same.
pen It is entirely normal, and certainly how I felt. Apart from the shock and coming to terms with what is actually happening we all have lots of preconceptions and emotional issues with the word Cancer to deal with, in ourselves and others, even though they don't apply to our illness because Cancer isn't one illness, as we all know it is many. It helped me to do the telling to people by email, I know it sounds emotionally crippled but I just found it easier to get it over with and deal with people's reaction from behind a barrier. I'm afraid I even did that to my parents and closest friends but they understood.
gigs It might be worse than dumb gweilo though!!! You know the Chinese characters used colloquially for the round windowed Jardine Building in Hong Kong spell out House of a Thousand Arseholes .
I think the HVs have a brief to act if there is the slightest additional load to a family. I inadvertently mentioned at a pre natal class that my Mum had post natal depression. I didn't, in fact with a healthy baby after all the miscarriages and infertility I was on Cloud 9, but the HV who took the class wouldn't stop hovering for the first few months with questionnaires to find out if you were depressed which asked things like Do you feel sad? Then of course once disco queen cot hurdling DD could run she did, everywhere very fast, and was a specialist at nutting the skirting boards and door frames, and escaping Houdini style from harnesses in prams and shopping trolleys. Every trip to Casualty was followed by the HV visiting with deep suspicion etched all over her face. I only lost it once when DD2 was 3weeks old, our car was stolen, and DD had vaulted out of the pram (in spite of 3 harnesses) on the 3 mile walk to nursery and she looked at me as if I was pathetic and said "Some women have to cope with that all the time" when I finally conceded I was finding it a bit stressful with the added burden of spending 2/3 hours walking DD to nursery and back twice a day!!....... I am sure she was evil and I was not being paranoid!! I think you have every right to say I am coping fine, no problems, goodbye and thanks.