Cancer Sucks

I got that embroidered in a nice script by a friend of my mom on a fitted pink v-neck t-shirt last week. It looks lovely and is probably surprising when it is read.
But it is so SO true!
I am not sure how much I've written about cancer in my blog. I do try not to think about it unless it is a current concern, which it has not been that much in the last 5 years. But it is becoming so now, so I am going to write.
I got cancer in 2004. I was about to turn 29, had a small lump, and an excisional biopsy (meaning they cut open and remove the lump as opposed to a core needle biopsy, where they put in a huge gigantic needle and extract an amount of tissue, or a fine needle biopsy, where they put in a smaller more comfortable needle and take a little amount of tissue) because the lump was hard to discern in an ultrasound, and the other two kinds of biopsies are performed with and guided by an ultrasound. After the removal of the lump, and the discovery that it was indeed cancer, the surgeon had to do another surgery to take a larger area and make sure it had negative margins (no cancer in it), and also to check the lymph nodes in my armpit area to see that the cancer had not spread. They thought there was no spread.
I had had a second opinion clinic of doctors before the surgery to determine whether I should get a lumpectomy (which just removes the lump and not the breast) or a mastectomy (which removes the whole breast). My take after that clinic was that a lumpectomy was good enough and with radiation, my likelyhood of getting cancer again was the same as any other woman.
Turns out that that is not true. The fatality rate might be the same but the recurrence rate is not the same at all.
I have 1% more likelyhood every year after I had breast cancer to get a recurrence. It caps off at about 25-35 percent. WOW. If I get a double mastectomy, my likelyhood of recurrence is less than 1%.
I watched "Why I wore Lipstick to my Mastectomy", wherein a 27 year old woman gets breast cancer and is advised by multiple doctors, some to get a lumpectomy and to keep what she can and others to have a mastectomy. One of the doctors in the movie said "Why hit it with a feather when you can hit it with a hammer." She decided to get the mastectomy, has two kids now and is doing fine.
I met a person in my bible study who got cancer at 28 and decided on a double mastectomy and reconstruction, she is happy with that decision and is doing well, about to have her second child.
I have been thinking about these things in the last few weeks and talking to people and doing a lot of reading on reconstruction techniques. After feeling like I was getting a punch in my stomach looking at online pictures of post mastectomy cancer survivors without reconstruction yet (two huge scars across a shrunken area which should have had breasts) and studying a lot of reconstructed breasts, I can say that I have thought a lot about it.
The last 5 years of my life have been yearly mammograms, (which show nothing because the breast tissue in young women is very dense), leading to an ultra-sound, (which always shows some things that are usually nothing and treated as such unless you have already had cancer and then they become maybe somethings ) and then MRI's (which show lots of stuff in everyone) which leads to a recommendation to have a nother MRI in 6 months to remind themselves of what they saw last time and whether anything has changed, and then to a biopsy to check out the suspicious area that they are just not sure about. All of which time I have lived in three different states and had to run my records to every new doctor I go to.
I was so hoping that when that "magic" 5 year mark happened, that my cancer doctor would do a quick check of me and say, all is well, move on and have kids and don't worry anymore.
Last June was that check up and none of that was said. My doctor felt something and requested that I get a mammogram and an ultra-sound. (Where had I heard that before????) After 2 1/2 weeks of agony and waiting I got the tests and the radiologist said that I am fine and should just come back in 6 months or 1 year (Where had I heard that before???) to make sure that nothing had changed.
This was when I realized that it is not just the 5 years after cancer. It is FOREVER. One test after another, one suspicious lump and feeling after another for the rest of my life. There is no "magic" time when worrying ends.
I also still feel that little lump, right in the same area as my previous lump, showing calcifications in the mammogram, that makes me worry.
I then decided to try another doctor, who gave me the statistics on recurrence mentioned above and to seriously think about double mastectomy with reconstruction. A little pain in the present, when I have no kids, or a job and can handle healing, versus a lifetime of suspicious crazyness in my breasts, who have already tried once to kill me.
I think I have thought about it! (It bugged me yesterday when the surgeon I consulted with talked very condescendingly about whether I had thought about it or not.)
I am going to try a consult with another surgeon, hopefully I can get to her this week, as well as see a plastic surgeon. I want it done and over!