Hi, I joined last year but had to rejoin because of the technical issue.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer stage 3 in January 2020 and had two tumors and 5 of my lymph nodes taken out in March 2020. After that, I had chemo from May-August and radiotherapy in October. I take Tamoxifen since September and will have to for ten years. This gives me hot flushes and freezing and insomnia but otherwise, I feel fine even though my joints and my shins are hurting a lot recently. I also get Zoledronic acid infusions every 6 months for two years. I somehow managed to get through all this pretty well probably with a good dose of denial, mindfulness and gratefulness but the stress seems to catch up with me now.
My hospital told me that there are no follow up examinations in the UK so I do not know if the treatment has worked or not. I am from Germany and a friend of mine had breast cancer just before I was diagnosed. She had an mrt and ultrasound a year after her operation to make sure nothing new has happened. I was told I need to keep checking my breast and they will have a look if I find something out of the order.
I am furloughed and would like to go back to work but get different advice all the time. I have a letter from the department for health to keep shielding but my hospital told me my immune system should be back to nearly normal and I could go back to work. My GP says to follow government advice. I had the first vaccination with just a few side-effects (shivering for a couple of hours and feeling tired the next day). It was the Astrazeneca vaccine. My employer is happy for me to stay off work. The furlough was good for me because it gave me more money than statutory sick pay which I would have gotten originally but I now start feeling anxious to go outside of our home. We have a big garden and I potter around outside and do some online learning and am in contact with friends online but I am off work for nearly a year and I just want to go back to some more normality.
Does anyone else feel like that?
Take good care of yourselves
Hi
It sounds like you've been through an awful lot over these last 12 months so it's natural that you'd want to connect with others who have been on a similar journey.
I noticed that your post hadn't had any replies yet and this is probably because this is such a busy group that posts can easily fall of the first page before someone with a similar experience has had chance to see them. Replying to you will 'bump' your post back to the top of the discussions list.
x
"Never regret a day in your life, good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience"
