After frantically trying to get things ready at home for an surgical procedure I had not expected, including trying to arrange community transport and book day care for a few days over New Year, plus unpick all the New Year plans that had been dashed, I drove to London, swearing at all the lane-hogging nitwit drivers who sit in the middle and fast lanes and block the carriageway, fighting my way to the airport car park through ranks of idiots in the wrong stream, and parking in the wrong place to the woe of the parking controllers. On walking into departures, I promptly tried to go through fast security, still dragging my hold luggage having forgotten to 'bag drop'. I had clearly lost it badly. Once I had successfully completed the bag drop ahead of the queues of lost passengers who did not realise you could use any label-printing machine, not just queue for the one with the aircompany staff understandably helping the lost Spanish tourists, I whipped through security only showing my boarding card, not my passport. Very odd.
Sitting around airside in departures, I was still trying to arrange aftercare and find out how long I would be unable to drive when magically my flight number came up and I turned everything off. Stuff breast cancer, I was off to have Christmas with my family and nothing was going to stop me enjoying my last few days as the person I had been.
I've had a wonderful few days. Tomorrow, I fly home to get ready for the biospies on 28 December and hope that the surgeon (whomever it is) does not damage the muscles and nerves in my left arm too much, so that I can still use my arm properly until I have the main mastectomy in a month's time.
I have now lost hope that 1) the cancer has not spread and 2) that the oncologist is even vaguely interested in stoppping the current cancer, rather than just waiting to treat the matastiticised, more complicated version, in a year or two. I've been thinking a fair amount about whether to cut my losses - have a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy, no reconstruction - and just de-female-organ in one go, as opposed to prolonging the agony and leaving too many risk factors for recurrence in the way, limiting life expectancy unnecessarily for the sake of vanity. The truth is, there is no one to blame except myself for not really jumping on what I knew was trouble a few months ago. The delays now are making little difference. The damage has already been done. As my pharmacologically trained friends say, there is no such thing as an 100% effective drug, so the Tamoxifen can only do so much.
My current thinking is that the only chances at prolonging things for longer than people might expect are disrupting stem cells with aspirin, deterring existing cancer cells by blocking estrogen and progesterone through removing the main hormone engines, and radically changing diet and exercise to provide overall resistance. I'll be having those conversations once I've finished Christmas.
In the meantime, I'm off for more champagne, more ridiculous amounts of food, more hilarity with my family and more giggling with my friends on social media, even if everyone is in deep mourning over the raft of dead music super stars. The shite that has been 2016 grinds on.
