Wednesday 3rd July 2007

I had my routine appointment yesterday at the hospital....After a wait of 50mins (that is actually not too bad) I went in and saw a very handsome young Dr indeed, my Consultant was in London in a meeting so his registrars were doing the clinic.

I think I had the most informative appointment to date, he answered all my questions with a straight forward answer, my actual consultant is a bit vague and skirts around certain questions – like prognosis etc.

He asked if I was still having periods and I said yes, he did say that I could have them stopped with Zoladax injections as it would stop the Oestrogen flying around my body but the down side is I may get menopausal symptoms and he said seeing as I am having no side effects from the Tamoxifen I might be wise to think on it as we don’t really want to upset my body if we don’t have to.

The advantage of having the Zoladax is that it may and only may keep the liver and lung tumours at bay for a short time more than if I didn’t have it…so we decided that he’d write to my GP and advise her of our conversation and if I feel it’s something I want then I can have it done at the surgery.

He examined my stomach and breathing and all appears to be ok so far. I will be having another CT scan at the beginning of October, just to keep an eye on the liver and lungs. I did have the option to wait until April but thought that if they have started to grow then it’s better to start treatment as soon as possible.

He was very thorough, as sometimes you feel a bit rushed and forget to ask things, but I got all my questions in I was even asked how I was feeling physically and mentally, something that they tend not to ask as they are not really concerned with how you are feeling mentally as they’d be there all day listening to everyone.

I said I was gutted that the cancer had spread as the tumours are so small it must have only just spread but he said on all the pathology reports it suggests that the breast tumour had been there for some time and the 10 weeks that I lost wouldn’t have made any difference at all.

He also confirmed that they type of cancer that I have/had would not have been caused by my pregnancy, just that my body was in a state of providing a perfect breeding ground for it.

I felt I need to know what type of cancer I had and he wrote it all down, even the measurements before and after and the grading etc. Not sure why but I had to know this for my own peace of mind.

I came away feeling as if I understood things a bit more. So until October, I hopefully won’t be spending any time at the hospital. Nearly had a fatality, I parked on the road with a 2 hour limit and very nearly caused heart failure by 'running' (I use the term 'running' loosly) back up the road to beat getting a ticket

love Clare xx