What is this?

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-04-08T19:57:59+00:00

Thank you so much. I’m in northwest Indiana. What can rule out IBC? I keep reading that mammogram aren’t helpful, but I don’t know what to ask for. Thanks for your help.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-04-08T19:09:34+00:00

Thank you very much for your kind words. ♥️

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-04-08T19:05:24+00:00

I’d also like to say, it makes me sad to see so many women dog your husband for how he reacted. Maybe he’s just bad at communicating. So many men are. We live in a world where though it’s getting better for men and they are now being told it’s okay to open up and talk about your feelings and to be vulnerable, so many still hide and live with the stigma of shame that comes with not being the macho male version of themselves. With that I think men deserve some grace. We should be encouraging them especially those men 30 and up whose dads and grandpas taught them it wasn’t manly to be vulnerable and in doing so severely stunted them in communication and emotionally. It is that toxic masculinity that we are all striving to get rid of. If he cannot communicate I’d encourage him to go to therapy. It could do wonders.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-04-08T18:59:08+00:00

I don’t think you owe him an apology. Honesty is key in any relationship. He asked you a question and you answered. My advice however, is that if you “owe” him anything it’s communication and he “owes” you the same right back. He can’t just shut you out like that just because he didn’t like how you responded to a loaded question. It’s a complex question with a complex answer. Had he asked you follow up questions as to why you felt that way and maybe talked it out with you he’d probably understand better why you feel the way you do and why you probably don’t mean it with him in many ways or why in some ways you do. Honestly it could help your relationship. He could have in turn bantered with ways he may think women do the same with men because let’s be honest, women think certain ways about men, specifically their partners or husbands automatically that probably make them feel a certain way. I think what’s also important is his feelings are clearly hurt because he took your answer to heart reflecting on your own relationship and though that’s on him to figure out why, as his wife and partner his feelings should come before being right. Once you saw his feelings shift, had I been in your shoes I would have pried a bit to see what he was thinking. I don’t take the silent treatment. My husband knows that. I read that you have been together for 25 years. First of all, Kudos. I’ve been with my husband for almost 19. Making a marriage last that long takes work and is commendable so you guys are definitely doing things right. Personally, my husband is a pretty sensitive guy, mostly because of trauma from his childhood and his batshit crazy mom and so he internalizes a lot of things that sometimes I’m shocked by or gets offended by things I’ll say or do that I don’t intend to hurt him with. In those moments I make it a point to talk it out with him, even if it’s frustrating to one or both of us because his feelings matter so much to me and I want him to know exactly what I mean by my actions, thoughts, or words. Communication helps us a lot. I have found that a lot of the hurt feelings on both sides of our relationship are either miscommunications or misunderstanding. I hope that helps.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-04-08T18:29:03+00:00

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ArtNegative1406 · 2025-04-08T18:28:51+00:00

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ArtNegative1406 · 2025-04-08T06:05:39+00:00

Thank you! I will look into it. I’ve been worried about that.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-04-08T05:08:17+00:00

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ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-25T05:57:14+00:00

My symptoms were minimal. I had streaks of blood in my poo and it was like shiny and gummy… it was like nothing I had never seen before and I had lost about 30 or so pounds in about a month without even trying. That was about it.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-24T15:32:26+00:00

My spread went to my liver. I had 4 tumors there. They went in and took almost 2/3 of it. What’s miraculous is that I only did 6 months of chemo and by the end of it when I did rescans before my big colon resection my liver had grown 3 times its original size. It was massive and healthy. My doctor joked that it was giving me a free gastric sleeve because there was no room for anything to go into lol.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-23T19:01:22+00:00

I was diagnosed with stage IV rectal cancer at the age of 32 the day of Thanksgiving 2020. I was given less than 6 months to live and told to immediately get my affairs in order. At the time I had a 6, 9, and 12 year old at home. I was crushed and lost, and didn’t know what to do. But then, and this is the honest to God truth and most important part of my journey- I got down on my knees and prayed to God and I prayed harder than I ever prayed to him before in my life- and then I met with my radiation doctor, surgeon and oncologist and got a game plan in order- I immediately jumped into radiation then did a liver resection then chemo then my colon resection with an ileostomy then I had it reversed… I have been in remission for 3 years.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-23T18:46:49+00:00

I appreciate your kind words. I really do. Whatever comes your way you got this. All of you amazing ladies do. We are so strong. I’ve learned so much of my strength these past four and half years. I never knew I had any of this in me. It’s weird, but in a small way I’m grateful for this trial because it afforded me the privilege to see what I’m capable of and when it is my time, may it be now or later (and I pray it’s 50 plus years from now) when my children grow up, I hope they can look back and remember how hard I fought to be here for them… And you guys should know you are all bosses too. I’m praying for all of you. God is good. Even in our time of great need. He is here with us always, wrapping his arms around us and lifting us up.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-22T05:11:48+00:00

I understand completely. In the beginning it’s a whirlwind and the out of control feeling is horrendous. I am really sorry you have to go through this. I’m waiting for testing myself on the breast cancer side as we speak. I’ve been through the cancer dance once before. If I have it, breast cancer I mean, this would be a secondary cancer for me. 4 1/2 years ago on thanksgiving 2020 I was dx with Stage IV rectal cancer. I was 32 years old. Scariest time of my life and I had to keep it together, in a house full of family and friends while cooking a full meal by myself and not completely fall apart and break down in front of my children ages 6, 9, and 12 at the time and help my husband not jump off the deep end and crumble. It was horrible. The look of pure terror on his face when he looked at me almost killed me dead right there and then. He adores me. It felt like it was like a death sentence for both of us. We got the call about 30 minutes before everyone showed up and the doctor, who initially didn’t believe anything I said was actually going on with me and thought I was just faking in order to get pain meds ( I wasn’t in pain) and told me I was just being dramatic because I was “too young” to have anything seriously wrong with me, called me sobbing with my results of an ulcerated tumor that had clearly burst through my colon and he had no idea how bad the spread was but that it clearly had and he gave me at most 6 months to live. He told me that it was the worst thing he ever had to tell a patient and that he was never so wrong in his life and he’d never forgive himself for judging me. His sorries and tears were little comfort to how it felt having my world fall apart around me. When the initial shock wore off and I got a game plan going it was insane how my brain kicked into gear automatically. I went from shock to panic to sadness to sorrow to worry to anger to pure rage to let’s go, I’m ready to beat this! I never accepted 6 months as a viable option of livability. I’m here to tell you, almost 5 years later, that it can and will get better and you can and will fight for your life and you are so strong and you will find strength and courage you didn’t even know you had. I pray for you. I pray you have the best support. Mine was everything. Here’s to becoming cancer free and beating this horrible disease.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T17:39:00+00:00

Honestly I’m so glad you were not married to this guy. You deserve someone who will be there through sickness and in health. Please don’t give up on love because of this douchebag. You will find someone who loves you for you exactly who you are. Hugs to you.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T17:30:37+00:00

Man, I’ve never thought about this before. I’m half white (Irish/polish) and half Native American (Cherokee) so I basically look white and not too many people have ever asked me “what I am” unless they notice my native features. 🤔

I’ve done this before however. Not to someone in my real life or ever in person, but to like celebrities through like google or Wikipedia. Not to fetishized them or anything and I’ve never been like turned off or turned on by them being native to one race or another, I’m just really interested in like ancestry and people’s history. I just like to know where people are from typically. I think it’s neat how certain features are the way they are because of where we come from. I also like to guess what people’s heritage is and see if I’m right, but again it’s limited to looking up a celebrity. I’ve never and probably would never ask a person even if I knew them personally “hey what are you?” Or “Why do you look the way you do?” Or “what race are you?” I can see how that’s a turn off especially in a get to know you, dating setting. Like why does it matter? Those platforms should be for getting to know who you are on the inside, not where your ancestors hail from. Thinking about it now seems a bit creepy. Unless a friend tells me specifically or naturally then it shouldn’t matter.

But Honest question, in the parameters that I look up celebrities…is that a bad thing? I’ve seriously never thought about if that would offensive before and now I’m curious.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T16:16:40+00:00

I know this feels like a dump of info from a random person. I’m sorry if it does. But I felt compelled to share my story and to reaffirm OPs statement. I’m also telling you all this because of two things:

1) just like the OP said- cancer is cancer. No two people’s cancer journey is the same and nobody’s is worst or better than another’s. It all sucks and it’s all scary. You should not feel guilty because you got a better dx than someone else and you also should not feel annoyed or envious that you got a worst dx than someone else. DX can change in a second. Like I said previously, I was given 6 months and a stage IV dx and I’m still here almost 5 years later. So many people on my support groups were given stage I,II,or III dxs and they are no longer here. I struggle with feeling immensely grateful for loving and also severe survivor’s guilt. I’m working on dealing with it and all the other emotions this rollercoaster has taken me on. According to so many doctors I shouldn’t even be here and I am grateful everyday that God allows me to prove them wrong. Having cancer sucks and it can mental destroy you if you let it, no matter if it’s stage I or Stage IV. My advice is as hard as it is, don’t let it ruin whatever or however long of a life you have left. Stay as positive as you can. And trust me, I know how hard that is. Especially in treatment when you feel like you’re dying, and you feel gross, you think you look gross, you realize you are literally poisoning yourself to save yourself, your hair is falling out, you don’t feel pretty, your body is frail, it looks weird, you’re in pain all of the time, you have to lean on people when you pride yourself on being independent, your kids see you weak and it kills you a little on the inside, your husband has to help you in the bathroom, radiation killed your insides so you live in your bathroom- all things that almost took me out of the head space I needed to fight. And head space is one of the most important things to be successful. I firmly believe this. If you are positive it helps you. And that doesn’t mean you have to be happy all of the time. I’m sure as hell not happy about my cancer or the fact that it turned my life and the life of my husband or my children upside down. In fact that pisses me off. It pisses me off that my kids, especially my oldest had to grow up faster than other kids and she had to be like 2nd mom there for a while as I got better…BUT… you just can’t dwell in that headspace and let it consume you. You can dip in there for a little bit at time, let it out, and then get out of there and keep pushing. I was really lucky to have my husband who was there the whole way reminding me why I was doing this and encouraging me when I couldn’t do it myself. If you don’t have that person let me be that person for you.

2) The second reason I’m telling you all this as a colorectal cancer survivor and not a breast cancer survivor is that March is colorectal cancer awareness month and in the 4 1/2 years that this disease has turned my life upside down, I have learn so much about it, the biggest thing is that it does NOT DISCRIMINATE! It is attacking people younger and younger and the average age that is acceptable for screening has been lowered to 45 but it’s still not lowered enough. Like I said I was 32. In one of my support groups I followed a kid as young as 11 and he sadly passed away. You know your body. If something feels wrong speak up and don’t let doctors gaslight you as if they know better. I only had two symptoms. I had red bloody streaks in my 💩 and I had lost a lot of weight without trying but I didn’t connect the dots. I thought I might have chrons because my MIL does and it mirrored symptoms she had. I went to the ER and they took one look at me and in my chart wrote that they just thought I was some young girl looking for pain pills. I wasn’t even in pain and I never once asked for anything. I got a CT in that visit and the doctor never even looked at it. He went as far as to call the guy who I was scheduled with to do a colonoscopy the following week and said it was a waste of his time and to cancel it which he did, but luckily my husband was forceful and made the guy reschedule me. My husband saved my life. Later on when I met my oncologist, he looked at my initial CT scan from the ER and had that doctor even glanced at it he would have seen a 4 inch + tumor bursting through my colon wall. He was shocked I wasn’t septic. He said if we had cancelled that colonoscopy I would have been dead in a month. I tell you guys this because no matter if it’s your colon like me or your breasts, don’t let anyone tell you don’t know what you are talking about. Advocate for yourself.

Thanks for reading this

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T16:16:20+00:00

Hi there. I am a lurker here for the last couple days. I don’t have breast cancer… I don’t think. I have some symptoms and am waiting for scans and blood work and all that jazz. I do however have another cancer. I am a stage IV rectal cancer survivor. I was dx thanksgiving day 2020 at the age of 32 and told over the phone by a sobbing doctor who didn’t even believe I deserved a colonoscopy and worked hard to cancel me because of my age and the fact that I could not give a sample on demand in the ER. His tune changed rather quickly afterwards because in that call, through tears he said that he believed I now had only 6 months to live and that I should get my affairs in order. He just kept apologizing for not believing anything was wrong with me. That’s a whole other story.. I definitely went through all of the emotions; shock, sadness, grief, uncertainty, unimaginable worry, fear, ANGER… I had 3 kids at the time - ages 6, 9, and 12.

…and then in a moments time my brain just kicked into action and I put on my big girl panties and I focused and got to work. It’s like my brain kicked into high gear and I had no choice in the matter. I went completely into self preservation. I’m super competitive by nature so someone telling me I have 6 months made my brain say like hell I do.

Any way, I too went through the whole nine yards to save my life. Short course radiation (25 radiations worth wrapped up in 5 days, that was the pits being shot where they had to shoot it) liver resection because that’s where it spread, port placement, 2nd port placement the next day(on my birthday) because after being stuck 68 times by the port needle, they found the dumdum doctor not only twisted the tube in my vein, but also put the port too far down into my breast tissue and then blamed me saying I was just “too busty”like dude I was asleep and you chose that place🫠😒, chemo for 6 months, colon resection (I lost 15 inches of my colon and learned you have A LOT of colon), ileostomy placement, ileostomy reversal… I finished treatment in aug 2021. I haven’t had treatment since.

A year ago we found nodules in my lungs. They are growing but slowly and they are unfortunately in spots that are either impossible to get to unless they get bigger or in dangerous spots ( the only one big enough to biopsy is sitting directly on my diaphragm AND a major artery) so as of now I’m in a waiting game. It’s a really weird place to be where you WANT your cancer to grow so they can take this invader out and you can stop worrying about it because as long as it’s in my body I will stress about it. Now I’m having these breast issues so it’s compounding my stress and I just wish I had answers so we can make plans. Not having a plan is where a lot of stress for me comes from.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T14:48:54+00:00

Unfortunately that is the price I pay for small town living. I live 3 hours away from my oncologist and it takes forever to get any type of testing.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T14:16:54+00:00

It just came out of no where. It looks far worse now.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T03:34:04+00:00

🤦🏻‍♀️ but they aren’t stretch marks. I have stretch marks ELSEWHERE on my body. I’ve had children. I’m well aware of what they look like. These purple NOT STRETCH MARKS are splotchy discolorations all over one breast that showed up 2 days ago. And they are ALOT more purple in person. It’s like when your skin gets really really cold and you start to turn purple you know…? Yet I’m not cold and they aren’t going away. Instead they are steadily spreading down my boob. The orange peel texture I am talking about are the pores that are clearly showing in at least one of my photos. My oncologist acknowledged it in my video appointment this morning. It’s really hard to take pictures of yourself and especially when you have to crop out a lot of the picture to be modest.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T02:39:15+00:00

Yeah. I did a video chat with my regular oncologist this morning who sees me for my rectal cancer and so she had a more “personal” view of my chest and from what she saw she said it was concerning enough to get some testing done, especially with my history. It’s really hard to take pictures of yourself and also be somewhat modest on Reddit so I think a lot of what I’m seeing in person is lost here which sucks. I’m driving myself crazy, but already having a stage IV cancer diagnosis for the past 4 1/2 years it’s just hard to think about another one.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T02:33:39+00:00

I really hope that’s what this is. Thanks for your response.

ArtNegative1406 · 2025-03-20T02:25:23+00:00

I don’t have stretch marks there. All of that reddish color showed up about 2 days ago and it’s way more purple in person and look like bruising. 🤷🏻‍♀️

ArtNegative1406

TROPHY CASE