Welcome to the Himalayas

It’s amazing how much of a mess a “nearly” 3 year old can make in the blink of an eye. Before Sam went into hospital this afternoon the house was quite tidy. I only took my eye off the ball for about 10 minutes and it looked like a tornado went through the front room. There was a train set to the left,  a toy medical kit briefcase with the contents emptied to the right and around 14 books scattered across the middle. How did she manage to move so quickly and quietly without me noticing? In fact, when did she move?? That coupled with Charlie’s nappy exploding up his back made me realise that maybe I should turn FIFA off and attempt a little damage control. After spending almost 15 minutes trying to work out how to get Charlie’s babygrow/vest off of his body, (without smearing the exploded contents of the nappy on his face or in his hair), I decided that legs were the safer option. I should go downwards instead of upwards (he’ll thank me for that in the long run) .

On the way up to the bathroom to wash Charlie’s legs, I realised that everything that had gathered around the dinner table during the morning (jacket, post, kids toys, the odd mug) was still there. That’s when I realised that they are always “still there” it’s just Sam has always got to it first. You see, it’s not that she’s always tidying up after me (honest), it’s just her “mess threshold” is lower than mine. I mean, I’ll tidy it of course but it’s normally at a point where I notice it’s a mess. Unfortunately, it’s only when Sam isn’t here that it ever hits my threshold.

When my mum died last year, my dad said something to me on the morning of her funeral. It was something that I never fully understood until now. He looked at me and said “That’s the end of my childhood”. I couldn’t quite work it out then. I get it now.

We have this little joke in our house about the boxer short fairy (there’s a sock fairy too). It keeps filling up the drawers just when they are about to become empty. You see, if I go to the drawer and it’s empty then I think “better do some washing”. It’s just that it never gets to that point because the fairy always gets there first.

I think the fairy is going to need to take a rest for a while.

This is going to be a lot harder than I thought (and we haven’t even started yet).

Had the meeting this morning with Nia (our cancer nurse counsellor) and she went through everything that’s going to happen in the coming months. She explained about the procedure tomorrow and what it involves. Sam has to go into hospital and have a Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy. This is where they go into the armpit area and take out the first 2 to 3 lymph nodes to just double check there is definitely no cancer in them. Even though the MRI came back as clear, it still wouldn’t show any microscopic particles of cancer that may have found it’s way in there. They’re just playing safe. It will involve her having a general anaesthetic and going into operation mode. The way they find the lymph nodes is by injecting Sam with some blue dye. This will lead the way to their intended targets and make sure the procedure goes swiftly. One of the little side effects from this though will be a blue nipple. She will have a bright blue nipple for the next 6 months!! (What?? Really??). Yes. Really. Other things that she’ll notice is that she’ll have a slight blue tinge in the whites of her eyes, her skin will be grey, her wee will be bright blue and her bowels will be green. (They’ve really got to change the sales pitch on that one).

Nia then explained about the chemotherapy stage. She went through the side effects and what will happen to Sam. She will suffer from hair loss, sore mouth (with ulcers), fatigue and loss of appetite. The chemotherapy sessions will be 2.5 hours once every 3 weeks. There will either be 6 or 8 sessions depending on how the tumour reacts. They’ll be hoping to start the treatment in around 3 to 4 weeks but that depends on whether everything from tomorrow heals properly. They’ll put a permanent tube into Sam’s arm so that all they have to do is connect another tube up each time (easy on, easy off) and Sam’s hair will start to fall out at around the 3rd week after the first session. Apparently it can be quite stressful when it happens. Nia said that some of her ladies wear a beenie hat to bed so when they wake up in the morning there is no hair on the pillow. They will then go to the bathroom, take the hat off, throw the hair in the toilet and then flush. This way they won’t see how much has fallen out during the night and it lessens the impact. The hair usually starts to grow back around the fifth session of chemotherapy and we are told that when it does start to grow back it will be completely different to before you lost it.

Sam said she hopes her hair comes back straight as she doesn’t like her naturally curly hair. Knowing her luck at the moment, I wouldn’t be surprised if it came back as an afro.

Sometimes it feels like we’ve joined a new club. It feels like we’ve got our new membership badges and we’re being trained from scratch. Essentially that’s exactly what it is. For example, they don’t class cancer in stages here in the UK. I always remember Michael Douglas announcing that he had stage 4 throat cancer on David Letterman. That’s more of a US thing apparently (Although I’m almost 100% sure that we were told Sam’s was stage 2 breast cancer last week). Anyway, here in the UK we use the TNM grading system:

T stands for tumour
N stands for nodes
M stands for metastasis

(Still tuned in? Good, because I wasn’t at this point)

Sitting in the corridor of the hospital is a nightmare. I’m getting more and more nervous, whereas Sam (who has been wobbly all day) is now remarkably calm. We are surrounded by leaflet after leaflet about detecting breast cancer or preventing breast cancer. It’s weird knowing that we can skip all those now and just go straight to the welcome sheets.

We are taken into a room and told that our consultant will be here shortly. Turns out this is the numero uno of breast cancer surgeons here at the hospital. Breast is all she deals with. The other two consultants that we’ve seen have both been general surgeons but with the man having a special interest in boobies. (dirty boy!)

2 ladies walk into the room (not the start of a joke) , introduce themselves and immediately apologise for not being the same people that we saw last week or the same people that we saw the week before that. (They like you to try to see the same people each week so you build up a rapport and feel more comfortable). The head honcho sits down and opens her file. Inside are the MRI results. The tumour is 4cm long (shaped like a dumbell) and in the left breast. It doesn’t look like it has spread to the lymph nodes (so far so good) and there is no detection of cancer in the right breast or anywhere else in the body (Phew!). It’s quite a sizable tumour though. At 4cm it will mean Sam would have to have a full mastectomy to cut it out. There is no way they’re going to get this sucker out neatly.

Last week the consultant ( a different one) said that the main priority was to have the tumour cut out within 2-3 weeks but now that tactic seems to have changed due to the size. The course of action is now to have “upfront” chemotherapy to try to shrink the size of it so that there is a smaller area to cut out. This would avoid a full mastectomy and also inform them if the tumour reacts to the chemotherapy. So it looks like the plan is this:

Hospital tomorrow (Thursday) to see other people and have a pre op where they draw all over Sam’s armpit with a marker pen.

Biopsy operation to have a couple of lymph nodes removed to check no cancer present. (This Friday).

Appointment to see the chemo doctor to discuss the timetable of treatment (next Wednesday) and hopefully get the results of the lymph node biopsy.

And then go from there………..

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention Sam’s grading of cancer. It is:

T – 2
N – 0
M – 0

Just thought you may want to know.

“Why 1545??!!”

“why so late?”

“Can’t we have a morning appointment so that we can actually relax for the day?”

Those are the thoughts that keep going through my head as we wait to find out which direction we’re going to go next. The unknown is a horrible thing. Not knowing what fate has in store for us is torture. Sam is actually finding it much harder dealing with this tonight. I feel on tenterhooks so I hate to think how horrible she is feeling right now. I keep trying to avoid saying those cliché things such as “it’ll be ok” or “I’m here with you all the way” but they come out anyway.

We have to remain positive. They did an ultra scan on her lymph nodes which showed that they were clear so that has to be a good thing. The cancer responds to hormones so that means that they have a way to fight it and we’re told that if you’re going to get breast cancer then this is the one to get. So at least there are some nuggets of hope. Things will be clearer tomorrow at least.

It’s kind of weird watching the same story play out on a TV programme (Eastenders) as you are living it in real life. It’s surreal. At least we’ll be able to see if they did their research properly.

I just wish it was me taking the pain and hurt instead of her………..

It’s nearly 1 week since we were given the news and everything has sort of been a blur. I still can’t get over hearing the “C” word and Sam’s name in the same sentence. Things have been moving pretty fast though. Sam managed to get her MRI appointment for Saturday (which she had) and we are due to get the results of this on Wednesday this week.

Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. That is the title that’s written in the notes in Sam’s little blue book. It’s the most common breast cancer out there so we’re told. We’re also told that this cancer feeds off the hormones that the body produces (which is a good thing apparently). Unfortunately the mammogram didn’t give enough detail to the doctors so that’s why the MRI was needed. This will give us more details for going foward. How big is it?, how much breast needs to be removed?, when is the surgery going to be? It’s all things that we’ll find out this week.