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Mar. 23rd, 2007 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottishlassSome ppl might wonder why I can write so casually about my breast cancer treatment and that I go out and about, walking the dogs, going shopping etc. I think I have to make something clear. I have lived with the illness or disease or whatever you want to call it, for a long time now. I'm pissed off at cancer but I won't let a bloody illness dictate my life or take away such a small pleasure like walking my dogs (even if it is more like crawling rather than walking actually). Oh and no, I'm not faking it as someone pointed out to me in an email (which enthused this whole post). I wish I was faking it, then I would be healthy and strong and not ill, thank you very much.
I could make an lj-cut here, but I decided against it, because ppl shoudl know about what it means to have breast cancer. It can happen to anyone.
Anyway, I have stage 4 breast cancer, meaning without immediate treatment I can die. Period. BUT! Breast cancer is not like breast cancer, there is hormonal, genetical and bone-based (where the tumors sit more on the rips and diaphragm than the actual breast themselves) forms of mamma carcinoma, the most common being the genetical and bone-based ones which are also the most fatal ones.
Hormonal breast cancer make about 2% to 4% (depending on the research studies from different countries) of all breast cancer patients. These women (and some few men) have difficulties with their hormonal set-up. I'm one of them.
Back in 1996 I got my first prescription of anti-baby pills. Unfortunately, my then gynecologist didn't make a hormonal test to see if I can actually use this particular brand of pill. As she didn't make the test and I didn't know that there should be a test, I took the pill for three months (!!), never knowing that I was fertile despite the pill because my hormonal make-up already has a high production of estrogen and the pill actually increased said production. Due to some obscure genetic defect thanks to my biological father I have a high production of estrogen and calcium in my body already. During puberty, my bones didn't all grow in length but a lot (fingers, toes, torso/ribs) grew in circumference rather than length. With this and the pill effecting the hypothalamus and hence the ovarian steroids (like estrogen) the calcium in my mamma ovaries plus the additional estrogen produced created breast cancer. It is what is called estrogen-receptor positive cancer, it means with more and more estrogen being produced carcinoma can grow both in the breasts but also in the vulva.
Good thing is, not all cases (about 80%) are fatal. With the right hormonal therapy, cancer cell suppressing medicine and cortisone based pills, you can actually live with cancer for years, as I'm doing since 1996.
Now you could ask, why not remove the vulva and the breasts? A question I have asked my doctors again and again with getting the same ol' answer. Once these particular areas in the body are removed, the estrogen plus the high calcium levels will find other areas, mainly bones. It will spread from a mere mamma carcinoma to all kinds of cancers, including osteosarcoma (malignant bone cancer) or multiple myeloma (cancer of plasma cells, leukemia etc.)
So ... I should count myself lucky in a way. I have been going on and off weak chemo therapies for 11 years now, with the current now being my fifth. If I can live another 11 years with this kind of shit, then okay so be it.
Oh and btw, I have removed the person who sent me the email from my flist and I would appreciate her doing the same. I'm sorry to hear her aunt died of breast cancer, but obviously she had a different form than me. Telling me that I was faking it as I'm obviously not dead already was bad taste and even though it didn't hurt me, it made me very sad. I know grief is talking here, but you don't know me as I don't know you in RL. I can't act as your emotional punching ball.
Having said all that, all I can do is to ask everyone on my flist to go to at least yearly breast cancer prevention check-ups. It can save lives!!
I could make an lj-cut here, but I decided against it, because ppl shoudl know about what it means to have breast cancer. It can happen to anyone.
Anyway, I have stage 4 breast cancer, meaning without immediate treatment I can die. Period. BUT! Breast cancer is not like breast cancer, there is hormonal, genetical and bone-based (where the tumors sit more on the rips and diaphragm than the actual breast themselves) forms of mamma carcinoma, the most common being the genetical and bone-based ones which are also the most fatal ones.
Hormonal breast cancer make about 2% to 4% (depending on the research studies from different countries) of all breast cancer patients. These women (and some few men) have difficulties with their hormonal set-up. I'm one of them.
Back in 1996 I got my first prescription of anti-baby pills. Unfortunately, my then gynecologist didn't make a hormonal test to see if I can actually use this particular brand of pill. As she didn't make the test and I didn't know that there should be a test, I took the pill for three months (!!), never knowing that I was fertile despite the pill because my hormonal make-up already has a high production of estrogen and the pill actually increased said production. Due to some obscure genetic defect thanks to my biological father I have a high production of estrogen and calcium in my body already. During puberty, my bones didn't all grow in length but a lot (fingers, toes, torso/ribs) grew in circumference rather than length. With this and the pill effecting the hypothalamus and hence the ovarian steroids (like estrogen) the calcium in my mamma ovaries plus the additional estrogen produced created breast cancer. It is what is called estrogen-receptor positive cancer, it means with more and more estrogen being produced carcinoma can grow both in the breasts but also in the vulva.
Good thing is, not all cases (about 80%) are fatal. With the right hormonal therapy, cancer cell suppressing medicine and cortisone based pills, you can actually live with cancer for years, as I'm doing since 1996.
Now you could ask, why not remove the vulva and the breasts? A question I have asked my doctors again and again with getting the same ol' answer. Once these particular areas in the body are removed, the estrogen plus the high calcium levels will find other areas, mainly bones. It will spread from a mere mamma carcinoma to all kinds of cancers, including osteosarcoma (malignant bone cancer) or multiple myeloma (cancer of plasma cells, leukemia etc.)
So ... I should count myself lucky in a way. I have been going on and off weak chemo therapies for 11 years now, with the current now being my fifth. If I can live another 11 years with this kind of shit, then okay so be it.
Oh and btw, I have removed the person who sent me the email from my flist and I would appreciate her doing the same. I'm sorry to hear her aunt died of breast cancer, but obviously she had a different form than me. Telling me that I was faking it as I'm obviously not dead already was bad taste and even though it didn't hurt me, it made me very sad. I know grief is talking here, but you don't know me as I don't know you in RL. I can't act as your emotional punching ball.
Having said all that, all I can do is to ask everyone on my flist to go to at least yearly breast cancer prevention check-ups. It can save lives!!
