Hi there beautiful people,
My amazing wife was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer back in May, this was discovered after attending a 5 year check up with the cancer team. She battled stage 2 HER+ with lymph node involvement almost 5 years to the date. At the 5 year appointment she mentioned a pain in her shoulder they recommend that it be checked over to rule anything suspicious out.
After receiving a PET scan the results came back and it wasn’t good news, they said you have cancer in your shoulder, liver and lymph nodes which are all incurable, after many scans, tests and biopsies we attended another appointment where they said it had also progressed to her lung but all of the areas were the same type of cancer as her initial breast cancer HER+ so could be treated with one set of drugs.
She started with an oral chemo tablet daily for 3 weeks then a week off, hormone injection every 4 weeks and bone strengthening injection every 4 weeks. She has been coping very well and looks extremely well.
Anyway she has had her first CT scan 3 weeks ago and we attended to get the results yesterday only to be told that the initial drugs are not working and everything has progressed, the next step is chemo therapy.
She has been the strongest and most positive person I have ever known through all of this where I have been so scared, yesterday’s appointment has really knocked her as we were hoping the first line treatment would have worked for a period we are now both really struggling and thinking the worst.
I am not really sure why I am even writing this I guess I’m looking for a little bit of hope out there from this awful situation.
I know everyone reading these posts must be on their own journey I hope and pray for positive outcomes for everyone.
xx
Hi MikeyC
Sorry to hear about your wife's cancer and the disappointment that the treatment she had did not help. Chemotherapy can seem very frightening - my wife has had two rounds, the first had to be stopped half way through due to some other problems that then were fixed. The second round however was successful in putting her cancer to sleep - 10 years now with no evidence of progression.
It is really very common to hear carers struggling and saying how there partner seems to be coping much better, if we look at our emotions when someone has cancer if can help us feel a bit less alone - the power I find on here of talking to people in a similar situation can help us feel like things are still normal even if the world feels less normal than ever.
There are lots of useful tips around in dealing with chemotherapy - do post if you have any questions but more important of all is probably making sure you have contact details for the hospital when you need. Janice had a couple of admissions for IV antibiotics when she picked up some other infection but that was pretty much as expected.
<<hugs>>
Steve
