After two surgeries in the Summer to remove the cancer, I went on holiday to Switzerland to see my parents and sister. Travelling back I had a sense of closure: barring perhaps a bit of radiotherapy, I was about to enter a ‘new normal’ marked by the end of breast cancer treatments. But the next day, on 7th September the surgeon rang to say that my Oncotype DX score was high. Oncotype DX is a genomic assay used to prevent unnecessary prescription of chemotherapy in many cases of early breast cancer. For a post-menopausal woman like me, if the score had been low or even intermediate, that would have meant chemotherapy would increase my risk of distance recurrence by only a very small amount. A high score is a different story, so I have been invited to an appointment with an oncologist to discuss the results on 28th September. One would expect that this great standard of care would make me feel safe, yet I’ve had two weeks of insecurity with questions, speculations, second-guessings and list makings, and such an abundance of ruminations and agitation that I had to draw the line on all this mental hemorraging and make a pledge with myself to simply trust the oncologist, who after all, is a member of the interdisciplinary team that meets weekly to discuss the patients under their care.
