I just noticed I'd posted exactly one year ago that I'd been diagnosed with breast cancer and that the diagnosis had initially been missed. The doctor who missed it also missed another diagnosis about a month ago, this time for a cracked rib. I'm not giving her a third shot. Fortunately, the mop-up squad identified and fixed things, before my cancer spread.
Looking back on the year of three operations (first, the port insertion, second, the lumpectomy, and third, the follow-up to get the few bad cancer cells out from the margins), chemotherapy (sixteen of 'em) and radiation (twenty-eight of those) I can heartily attest to being glad to be done with cancer. Except for the pills--the pills, the pills, the pills! The ones I have to take plus the ones from the clinical trial, plus the three-month check-ups and yes, they will probably be mammograms, and probably my insurance doesn't pay for the three-way mammo or the MRI, but maybe I'll get that anyway as part of my clinical trial. I'm almost certain I'm getting the placebo, since I've experienced no side effects and this pill is the one pill I've ever taken in my life that produces zero side effects, but I like the idea of the free bone scans and blood tests. Maybe they'll make up, in diagnostic power, for what I won't be getting if I can't get that MRI or three-way mammo. I can't say I've gotten a bad deal here in Germany: every few months I got a bill for either seventy or ninety euros. If I'd been in New York, I probably would have had to sell my apartment plus borrow my way into the middle of my dotage, I should live so long. Neither Trumpcare nor Obamacare would have taken care of me. A New York friend cautioned me, just as I was starting chemo, to make sure I asked for and purchased that Emend pill, even though it was either fifty or seventy-five bucks--it was really worth it, stopping the nausea. Here in Germany, I got the Emend as part of a packet of pills my doctors told me I had to take, and I paid little for them--they must have been in those occasional bills for seventy or ninety, usually bills that arrived after ten chemos or ten radiations. I've heard the mastectomy rate is as high as it is in the States because radiation is so expensive. In Russia there's no radiation, so they just chop. Germany has been good to me, very good, in the health care department. Have I learned that cancer is a journey? No, it is a massive bother and no fun at all. Have I been spiritually enhanced? Are you kidding? Have I had "preventative" mastectomies so that I won't have to worry about cancer returning? I keep asking myself who would do that--who'd voluntarily lose sexy nipple sensation? A woman who was the tenth in her family to get cancer, and who had the BRCA gene, did so, and I can completely understand. But I've heard so many tales of women just having their breasts hacked off even if they're not (yet) cancerous, sometimes even cutting off a healthy breast when there's no BRCA gene. Then there are the non-reconstructionists, the Flat-is Fab crowd, the gals with the tattoos across their empty chests. Brrrrrr. To me, that's sad. If I'd lost a breast to a mastectomy, I'd want at least the feeling I had one, yes, even without sensation. I can't help but think the Flat-is-Fab crowd is in angry denial. I bet I'll get a couple of angry reactions to this post, but they'd be welcome. Happy Anniversary.
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