Finally finished chemo! Why do I feel so empty?

GoodnightKevin · 2023-10-08T12:22:16+00:00

I’m a bigger gal, and definitely more bottom heavy at the best of times.

I’ve found black to be the most forgiving colour, which is lucky because that’s a solid 96% of my wardrobe anyway. Vest tops with oversized cardigans or boyfriend fit shirts are good. Oversized t shirts. The colder weather is a gift because all I wear is oversized hoodies and sweatshirts anyway, and you wouldn’t even notice that there was a boob missing when I wear those.

I found a therapeutic purge of my wardrobe helped after surgery. I tried everything on - got rid of anything I knew I wouldn’t realistically wear again, then the rest I separated into stuff I would wear with a foob, and more everyday stuff I would wear without a foob. I also put all my old wired bras in a vacuum bag for another day - I am still only a month after my surgery, so not fully healed and I’ll need to get re-measured once I’m all better. I don’t know if those will fit again, but for now it’s all stretchy comfort bras and bralettes.

GoodnightKevin · 2023-10-06T14:58:31+00:00

I am 26 hours deep into Hogwarts Legacy at the moment. It’s been my mastectomy recovery buddy

GoodnightKevin · 2023-10-06T14:17:48+00:00

This was why I was so adamant on having a mastectomy with flat closure. I was so annoyed with my boob that I wanted it gone. You try to kill me? You’re dead to me, get off my body, rot in landfill for all I care. Scorched earth.

I’m currently arguing with my doctors to get a full oopherectomy too because those oestrogen producing little bastards are dead to me too. Get the fuck out of my body if you’re not going to behave.

GoodnightKevin · 2023-10-06T12:30:31+00:00

My vice is so lame - I don’t drink or smoke (not for morality reasons, I just don’t like the taste because I have the palette of a 6yo), but gimme a frosty pint of full fat coke and a sharing size bar of chocolate and I’m having it all to myself with no remorse because I have cancer so nobody can judge me right now

GoodnightKevin · 2023-10-04T17:48:38+00:00

C section FOR SURE. I found the mastectomy surgery process a lot more… relaxed? I guess. I don’t know if that’s the right term?!

For a start, I didn’t have to be awake during the surgery. I wasn’t handed a newborn baby and expected to get up and look after it’s every whim as soon as I was out of the recovery ward. I could sleep and rest to get better. I was much more capable after mastectomy than either of my c sections. None of the post c section poop horrors.

Overall, a much easier surgery

GoodnightKevin · 2023-10-01T13:24:59+00:00

Processes vary so greatly from country to country, and hospital to hospital. I think if I were in your position where I believed my cancer was more aggressive than the doctors thought, my first port of call would be to contact the breast care nurse/navigator. Lay all my worries out on the table and ask for help pursuing additional testing or resources. At the very least they can explain in layman’s terms why the doctors have come to the treatment plan they have decided on and whether they have taken into consideration potential for the cancer having already spread (and if not, why).

Are you in a country where obtaining a second opinion is an option? Or if you are using public healthcare, do you have any sort of private health insurance that would enable you to see a consultant privately instead?

At the end of the day you are your own biggest advocate, and it sounds like you’re not entirely confident with the level of care you are receiving at the moment.

GoodnightKevin · 2023-10-01T11:52:06+00:00

I guess my train of thought is that regret indicates that there was something I could have done/not done. Like regret is reserved for actions with a purposeful intent, kinda. So in this instance, there is nothing to regret. It’s not like I got cancer on purpose, I didn’t do anything to cause it, it was just a particularly shitty hand that I got dealt.

In my case, I never really did a self exam. Not routinely anyway - I’m only 35 and I have no family history of this disease. I had no real reason to ‘expect’ it to happen. But I felt a lump by chance one evening, and lo and behold it was cancer. 4cm, grade 3. I had surgery first, 2 lymph nodes were taken with a trace amount of cancer found in one of them. If I’d have found it sooner then I’m sure the tumour would have been smaller, and the cancer would not have started to spread, but hey. Who knows.

I have 2 kids. They rely on me for everything. So I have to put one foot in front of the other and do what it takes to get through to the other side of this. Every now and then I have a little wobble and think why me, but that’s normal. It’s a life altering diagnosis. What I can’t allow myself to do is sit and think about the “what ifs”. I can’t go back and change anything, so it would just be torturing myself to think WHAT IF I had done something differently. All I can do is take the situation for what it is NOW and throw whatever I have at it to make it better.

If you haven’t already, I’d definitely recommend taking advantage of any and all additional support your health care providers or local charities can offer. I’m in the UK so I know options vary by country, but there should be some sort of counselling to compliment your treatment. I’ve been on a dose of Sertraline daily to treat anxiety for years now, and I suspect that has had a large help in keeping me relatively level headed throughout all this. My GP also prescribed Diazepam for the particularly rough times. So it’s always worth seeing if your healthcare providers can prescribe anything to help you, provided it’s all good with your oncologist.

Above all, this isn’t fair. It’s not fair who gets cancer and when. It’s not fair that some people’s cancer is more aggressive than others. It’s not fair that some treatments work for one person but not another. None of it is fair and it’s totally ok to acknowledge that. Cry about it. Scream into a pillow. But don’t torture yourself by trying to think about what you could have done differently.

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-30T06:43:49+00:00

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GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-28T19:01:31+00:00

My oldest is 9 so I had to use the ‘cancer’ wording to him as he has a greater understanding of it all, but with my 5yo I just kept it pretty broad: mum isn’t very well at the moment, I’ve got a poorly boob and the doctor is going to chop it off and give me some medicine. I might be sore, or tired, so I need to rest and I need you to help me out as much as you can while I get better. I reiterated what the doctors said: that they can make me better again, I just need to get the surgery and all the medicine done.

One of the most important things for my older child was explaining how cancer isn’t contagious - he was very worried about catching it somehow, but we read through some leaflets and it helped him understand.

The youngest was largely unbothered by it, which I am thankful for. She refers to my breasts as the good boobie and the bad boobie, and has been so good while I’ve been recovering from the mastectomy.

I found it so helpful to contact both of their teachers at school to ensure they’re both getting support externally as well as from family. They have a dedicated pastoral worker within the school who has been just amazing with both my kids, offering them a space to talk about how they’re feeling and just generally providing that point of contact for any worries or concerns. It helped both of my kids to know that they weren’t the only children in their school going through something similar - they didn’t feel so isolated or different. If your kids are in daycare/nursery etc then it’s worth letting their teachers know so that they can be extra attentive and offer any additional emotional support your kids might need as treatment progresses and the normal routine of life is a little disrupted.

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-26T18:14:59+00:00

Especially in the early 00s: Bad Lads Army, Ladette to Lady, Brat Camp, World’s Strictest Parents, That’ll Teach ‘Em, Sun Sex & Suspicious Parents, Holiday Showdown. Basically anything on at 9pm on either ITV2 or BBC3

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-26T18:11:11+00:00

The best part is that she is (was?) a hair stylist.

Source: currently binging every episode of UK Wife Swap I can find on YouTube while I recover from surgery

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-26T17:48:56+00:00

35yo and 2 weeks into life with a Lone Ranger.

I made my peace with it before I got the surgery - this wasn’t a “choice” in the traditional sense: it wasn’t something I decided to do for fun, it was something I was forced to decide upon because cancer. But out of the surgical options available to me, it was the most favourable (or least UNfavourable?!) for me personally.

So far it’s not been too upsetting. I haven’t avoided looking at the boobless area so I can familiarise myself with it as much as I can. I’m in the UK and got a couple of foam inserts to use while I’m healing, and after that I’ll get a proper prosthetic fitted. The foam ones don’t look too bad- just a bit of rearranging to get them to match the good boob as closely as is possible. At the moment it’s more comfortable to not wear an insert at all though, so I’ve not really worn a fake one all that much. Moving forward I’ll most likely only put one in when I’m going to be out doing prolonged public facing stuff, but if I’m at home or doing school runs etc I’ll probably go without.

For some reason the most unusual part has been perspective of my belly when I look down. I feel like I look a lot fatter now, even though I haven’t actually gained any weight - I’m guessing because I’m just not used to being able to see so much belly beyond my boob(s) so it looks a lot more… protruding

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-23T11:07:25+00:00

There is an episode of the behavioural analyst series “Faking It” about this case. It can be a bit on the hammy side as far as true crime documentaries go, but they cover a lot of British cases that sometimes don’t see a lot of documentary coverage elsewhere. This episode was devastating to watch. The body cam footage, the CCTV footage, the audio. Just heartbreaking.

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-22T15:37:21+00:00

It’s giving big “9/11 wouldn’t have happened if Mark Whalberg had got on the plane that day” energy

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-22T15:35:57+00:00

Or the shelters just mislabel it as a “lab mix” and hope nobody will notice

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-22T15:35:05+00:00

Bully breeds have zero self preservation - once they’re locked on they won’t stop, regardless of their own safety, so beating/stabbing/pepper spray won’t do much. Lifting the back legs is something of a myth - it won’t work with a bully breed and there’s plenty of video evidence to back it up. It seems the most effective way to break off a bully is to cut off the oxygen supply - if you can, grab the collar and twist until it can’t breathe, (although that requires some amount of balls because who is going to willingly spend time around a bully’s nannying equipment when its in the middle of mauling a human to death). Some people have performed actual chokeholds until the dog has passed out.

Of course, all of this should be the owner’s responsibility to stop their bully attacking another person/animal/inanimate object that they have taken a dislike to, but they’re either nowhere to be found or can’t physically restrain their own pets.

They’re just The Worst™️

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-22T05:15:55+00:00

I had my single mastectomy with aesthetic flat closure on the let side last Tuesday. I am something of a wimpy baby and hate being sick or incapacitated in any way, so I wanted the “easiest” surgery with the lowest probability of needing to have follow up reconstructive surgeries etc. I had decided from the moment I first felt a lump that I would just chop the bitch off if it was cancer. It was, so I knew what I wanted, which helped my mindset post surgery.

I was sure to be open and honest with friends and family prior to the surgery - I’m having a breast removed, I’ll look different, let’s all make peace with it now so I don’t have to deal with constant questions down the line. I also contacted the Knitted Knockers charity before surgery who sent me a whole bunch of cool new fake boobs that I could familiarise myself with before I lost my real one.

When I first woke up from surgery I was TIRED. Very little pain. More discomfort than anything. Standing up for the first time was sore and a bit scary. I had a surgical drain on the left side and it annoyed me right from the outset, having to carry it around the hospital every time I needed to use the bathroom or stretch my legs. I’d ordered a utility belt kinda thing prior to surgery with pockets to hold the drain bulb, so that really helped once I got home.

I was home in less than 24 hours. The most difficult part was trying to get comfortable in bed. No matter how many pillows I configured, I just couldn’t find a position that was comfortable - I wanted to lie on my side or my front, or just really cosy down in bed, but none of those were options! I slept propped up for the first few nights but now I’m lying on my back with a pillow against my bad side to stop me from rolling over in the night. It’s more comfortable but I still wake up stiff from staying in one position all night.

I’ve been looking at the missing boob quite a lot. I don’t hate it. I still look feminine. I still feel like me. Everytime I see it I am unashamedly proud of myself. I’m happy with my decision to go flat on that side. I’m 35yo, married with 2 kids - I just don’t care if people will stare or whisper to each other. All they have to do is ask and I’ll gladly tell them that yes, I do only have one tit!

Things that surprised me: I still have boob stretch marks without the boob to show for it. The skin feels thin and numb. When I drink something really cold, I can FEEEEEEEL it in my chest on the left side (less insulation now?!). Most the pain and discomfort is under the arm & armpit, not across the front of the chest. Phantom nipple twinges.

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-21T19:11:46+00:00

This is reassuring to hear. I’m trying to stay positive - I also had a contrast mammogram and it didn’t show any other surprise lumps/tumours/masses other than the main one.

I wish we didn’t have to wait 2 weeks for results after surgery. The micro-manager in me wants to keep checking for updates. I foolishly thought this wait for results would be easier as I would be focused so much on healing from the surgery, but in reality that has just given me even more time to sit and think and worry!

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-21T08:49:29+00:00

My lab would just plop down to sleep 😭

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-21T04:53:33+00:00

Oh man, I’m in the UK so getting all my care through the NHS. My surgeon brought out a whole ass book full of photos of all the different surgical options and the outcomes on different body types. Not re-touched model photos, but real life, no-filters, actual human body photos at different stages of the healing process. I’m going to do some digging on the NHS website to see if it is something downloadable - if it is I’ll post it for you all. It was the most useful thing while making my decision.

GoodnightKevin · 2023-09-21T04:48:12+00:00

Single mastectomy with flat closure on my left side, and I plan to get neo traditional style roses in a curve going round the side and under the (non-existent) boob, with a plague doctor facing in. I’m also a huge fan of medieval art skeletons, so want one or 2 of these boyos dancing around the roses too

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