Hi!\u00a0 I’m Sherry.\u00a0 I’m 54 years old, live in the UK (transplanted from the US), have an adult son and 6 cats.\u00a0 I also have a reoccurrence of breast cancer, one that they can’t make go away this time.\u00a0 I hope that, by sharing my experiences, I can help others who are going through cancer.\u00a0 It’s also a way for me to vent in a way.\u00a0 I have good and bad days, as do most people who are living with a cancer diagnosis.\u00a0 But let me start at the beginning of my story, because it began back in the autumn of 2019.<\/p>\n
What Is This Lump?<\/p>\n
Somewhere around August of 2019, I discovered a strange lump in my breast.\u00a0 I knew it felt different from other lumps, like benign cysts.\u00a0 Yet, I delayed going to my doctor to talk about it until January 2020.\u00a0 I know, stupid move.\u00a0 I also knew, deep down, that it was more than likely cancer.\u00a0 I kept it quiet through the Christmas holidays though.\u00a0 At the time, I was in a relationship that was starting to feel more toxic than good.\u00a0 Thankfully, we weren’t living together.\u00a0 I have my own home where I live with my now 25 year old son and my 6 cats.<\/p>\n
So, Christmas came and went.\u00a0 I went to my GP who fast-tracked me for an appointment with the McMillan Breast Care Center.\u00a0 My friend Loraine (ex-boyfriend’s Mom) went with me on the day of that appointment, and I will be forever grateful that I wasn’t alone.\u00a0 It was a bit of a blur of activity.\u00a0 They checked out the lump, did scans, did 5 biopsies, and then I was called in to see the consultant.\u00a0 I was confused at first because he went straight into cancer types and treatments.\u00a0 I remember saying “You mean if I have breast cancer?” and he got real quiet for a moment, then said “You definitely have breast cancer, we just need to see what type so that we can plan the right treatment for you.”<\/p>\n
I went numb at that point.\u00a0 Thankfully, Loraine had the foresight to take all of the notes the consultant wrote for me because I wanted to bolt.\u00a0 They took us into the “quiet room” to give me some time while they scheduled more scans (bone scan, full body scans, all to see if the cancer had migrated anywhere else).\u00a0 I cried.\u00a0 I thought of my Mom. My Mom had breast cancer. They had to remove lymph nodes with hers, but she beat it and stayed in remission for 5 years. Unfortunately, she passed away from other complications on March 5th<\/sup> 2017.<\/p>\n I slowly began to break the news to family and friends.\u00a0 I didn’t tell everyone at once because I wasn’t ready to deal with the deluge of “I’m so sorry”, “You’ll beat this, you’re strong”, etc.\u00a0 I was anxiously waiting to know what kind of breast cancer I had and just wanted to get started on whatever therapy I needed.\u00a0 Waiting is the hardest part in the beginning.\u00a0 You feel a bit set adrift, at least I did.\u00a0 I felt like I was just going through the motions of life while it all sank in.\u00a0 Mostly, I felt numb.\u00a0 I was more worried about how my son would handle the news but he did alright.<\/p>\n A word on biopsies:\u00a0 It’s normal for your boobs to leak for a few days after.\u00a0 It’s also normal for the area that they biopsied to feel hard.\u00a0 I nearly had a coronary when I suddenly felt more hard lumps in my breasts.\u00a0 But it was just the swelling from the punctured areas.\u00a0 The biopsy itself didn’t really hurt.\u00a0 They make sure to numb the whole area.\u00a0 You feel pressure and there is a loud click when they take a piece of the tumour that makes you jump.\u00a0 I did feel sore for a few days after and, as mentioned earlier, there was the leaking.<\/p>\n The Aftermath<\/p>\n I was “lucky” enough to start my cancer treatment while the Covid pandemic and lockdowns were happening.\u00a0 There was a flurry of CT scans and then the big day, March 10th!\u00a0 The reveal, so to speak.\u00a0 It was a mixed bag.\u00a0 My cancer hadn’t spread any further than a few lymph nodes.\u00a0 It was treatable, however, the cancer in the left breast was all through the ducts and skin.\u00a0 My treatment plan:\u00a0 6 cycles of chemo, a single mastectomy, and radiotherapy for 3 weeks.\u00a0 I was upset about the mastectomy.\u00a0 They did say I may be able to get reconstruction after all of my treatment was done, but that’s another part of the story.<\/p>\n What I had was Stage 3 invasive ductal carcinoma.\u00a0 They weren’t yet sure if it was triple negative.\u00a0 I think we found it wasn’t at the time.\u00a0 I went through all of my treatment and remained cancer-free for 3 years.\u00a0 Then, in March 2023 I went to see my GP about this constant hoarseness and chronic laryngitis I had been dealing with.\u00a0 They sent me to see an ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat specialist).\u00a0 They found my left vocal cord was mostly paralysed but couldn’t tell why.\u00a0 So I went for a CT scan.\u00a0 About a week later I had a call from Chesterfield hospital to let me know I was being referred back to the breast clinic because of something they picked up in the CT Scan.\u00a0 May 3rd, 2023 I had my appointment at the breast clinic for a mammogram of my good breast, CT scan and ultrasound on the suspicious side and a couple of biopsies.<\/p>\n May 19th was my consultation with the oncology team.\u00a0 The cancer had returned to some lymph nodes in the chest wall.\u00a0 I was there with my son.\u00a0 They told me that it wasn’t the kind they could make go away this time but there were still treatment options to manage it.\u00a0 I remember leaving the MacMillan center with my son and just stopped walking and then the tears came.\u00a0 I got into the truck (my ex-husband Raven) and just said, let’s go home, please.\u00a0 I then explained it to Raven.\u00a0 It was certainly a kick in the pants.\u00a0 I had to go through the whole “telling my family and friends” again in small doses.\u00a0 I told my Dad first.\u00a0 He was diagnosed with terminal cancer back in 2020 when I was going through my first fight.\u00a0 They gave him months but he has been here for 3 years now fighting away.\u00a0 It gives me hope.<\/p>\n That’s my background story about my cancer journey up until now.\u00a0 I’ll write about this second round mostly but may refer back to the first time I went through it from time to time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi!\u00a0 I’m Sherry.\u00a0 I’m 54 years old, live in the UK (transplanted from the US), have an adult son and 6 cats.\u00a0 I also have a reoccurrence of breast cancer, one that they can’t make go away this time.\u00a0 I hope that, by sharing my experiences, I can help others who are going through cancer.\u00a0 It’s also a way for me to vent in a way.\u00a0 I have good and bad days, as do most people who are living with a cancer diagnosis.\u00a0 But let me start at the beginning of my story, because it began back in the autumn…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1314,"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earthspirittarot.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}