Sounding the All Clear

Its been a while since I posted here, and although I got good news over a week ago.. I have only just had the mental energy to write again.

After all of the trauma and turmoil of diagnosis and radical surgery, I wasn’t thinking much about the lymph node and tissue margin biopsy results, because they were a week away……. When all of a sudden , I got a call from the hospital to go in the next day to see the consultant.

The day came and husband took the day off…trying to keep me busy with online shopping and list making for our new house.   The journey in the car was full of useless chatter between us and we arrived at the unit on time.

What went through my head was ‘they are only going to tell me today what they would have told me next week’  and ‘in 20 minutes it will be all over’  but it didn’t make me feel any less nauseous and dizzy.

Clinic was running late and we were finally ushered into a room… not the sitting room with the big box of tissues on the low coffee table from DFS that will always stick in my mind, but the consulting room next door.  I was greeted by a very smiling and upbeat senior registrar and not the consultant….. 2 things in my favour I thought.

It was like a slow motion film, as we were both invited to sit down, with the breast care nurse hovering at the curtains, then a stop of silence as visual contact with the doctor made me feel like I was awaiting some kind of sentence… and the decision was in that pile of pink paper she was steadying on the desk

Silence broke..

“I am not going to ask you how you are Marion, because I can see in your eyes that you just want the verdict.    Its good news…  7 Lymph nodes clear, Tissue Margins clear, Tissue from right breast clear.  We want you to take Tamoxifen to suppress any oestrogen production and to make doubly sure, we want to give you a few weeks of radiotherapy when you are healed”  Its amazing how I remember and savour every word she said.

The reason I was called in early was because they were inundated with new cases, and there was a gap, where the consultant thought I would like to hear the good news earlier.

I know that there is a chance that it can return.. but for now, I am no longer a sufferer ..but a survivor