I’m new to the group I’ve had double breast cancer surgery and I’ve got my consultation for chemotherapy on the 12th of October. Feeling scared and worried. Can anyone tell me if I’ll have to isolate from my family and friends for the entire 18 weeks please.
HI
Welcome to the Macmillan site, although equally - sorry that you find yourself here. You will find a great deal of support from the ladies on this group who may help with advice and support to ease your worry. I never had chemo. so I can't support you with this.
However, when you do start chemo. then your immune system will be compromised. It can take 21-28 days post chemo. for your immune system to recover.
Obviously it depends where in the country you are, but even in the harshest lockdowns I am pretty sure you can have a support 'bubble' and you may want to just think about your own circumstances and your risk when making the decisions. Do you have someone already at home with you? If so, what precautions will they be taking to protect you? This needs to be carefully considered by them - if for instance they work on the front line and are constantly meeting other people, do they need to look at changing anything they are doing until you have passed the 'risk' dates?
If you have no-one else to support you at home, then perhaps think about the 'least riskiest' person to support you from outside your household through your chemo. You will obviously want someone around for you, protect you from the worst by perhaps shopping for you etc. but you don't want to choose someone who's going to out and about loads and at risk of catching covid and being asymptomatic.
A lot of it will most likely down to how comfortable you feel / if you're in a low risk area (and tbh - some medium risk! I am in Dorset with 0.0056% of the population infected and we're described as medium risk because 6 more people caught it last week). If you want to mix with family and friends, on a nice day you could choose to meet out doors as we know this has proved to be the safest way to meet over the spring and summer.
It sort of goes back to what the government have been saying all along since the start of the pandemic, if we use our common sense and follow the cleaning regimes, then we can do our utmost to protect others and ourselves and those around you now need to be thinking very carefully about how they can protect you when you start your chemo.
Kindest wishes, Lesley
