Boobs Behaving Badly – Episode 18

If you’re new here or missed an episode you can check them all out here –

Pilot Episode ~ Episode 1 ~ Episode 2 ~ Episode 3 ~ Episode 4 ~ Episode 5 ~ Episode 6 ~ Episode 7 ~ Episode 8 ~ Episode 9 ~ Episode 10 ~ Episode 11 ~ Episode 12 ~ Episode 13 ~ Episode 14 ~ Episode 15 ~ Episode 16 ~ Episode 17

This week has been a crazy emotional roller coaster for me BUT I have good news! So let’s hit play on this sucker.

Panic and being over cautious. This is my life now.

Soooo…. as you can imagine having your body turn against you is a real mindf*ck. For me it flipped some switch in my head that makes every little thing turn into a possible attack. Which means I’m over cautious about things that I would normally just shrug off.

Let me go back. Last November we had our yearly medical and in that we do more blood work than a coven of vampires. (Did I mention at the time that I’d had to put the tests off because they injected me with contrast for a MRI before taking my blood?) No lie, it’s at least 8 vials of the stuff.

Anyway, those tests discovered some anomalies in my liver and pancreas. Toss in an abdominal ultrasound that showed a few questionable spots and I’m thinking my boobs have called in reinforcements.

Why wouldn’t I?

Seriously. WHY WOULDN’T I ????

You can only image what I was thinking when the doctor said I should consult with my surgeon about the results.

Surgeon? You mean the guy who operated on me for breast cancer??

Well f*ck me sideways!

Really? We’re going there again?

There I was, less than a month from “possibly” catching a plane to Oz and I’m heading back to my surgeon with something not breast related.

It made for a crazy few weeks but then I saw my guy (and I feel as though I can call him that now with everything we’ve been through together) and he looks at what I have and suggests a CT scan. No rush. He’s pretty sure it’s all fine because some other blood work would be abnormal if it wasn’t.

Forgive me if I seem less than confident in his review of these results because let me remind you (or maybe I didn’t tell you this before) that he didn’t think I had anything to worry about when he sent me for my breast biopsies.

In order to enjoy my trip to visit tribe Cahill I had to take his word as true and push any worries about it to the back of my mind until Jan 24 when my CT scan was booked to be done.

It’s probably a good thing I was distracted by all those Gbabies, then after we returned to Singapore by the sinus infection from hell or I would have been a little more freaked out. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t.

I can never tell what’s going to set me off and I’ve had ridiculous reactions to a lot of things these last few months. (Remember the elevator incident?)

Jan 24 arrives and I fast (is there any test that doesn’t require starving myself??!!) and head off at my appointment time.

Oh, and no one, and I mean NO ONE!!! mentioned there would be needles again!!!!

WTF?!

Why?!  😡

I go though my spiel – don’t let me see the needle….oh, f*ck – cue the sweats and light-headedness and shortness of breath and a little swaying for good measure.

Ever seen medical professionals scramble?

But that’s neither here nor there because I didn’t pass out! Yay me!

That’s right, I stayed upright (with the help of a couple of people) and then I was in the scan room laying on the CT machine.

After that it was surprisingly uneventful and only took about 15mins.

A few hours later I’m armed with the scan results and back at my surgeon’s office. We start by talking about what issues I had while away (fluid retention due to lymphatic system disruption post surgery) and how I’m feeling in general.

Then we move on to the real reason I was there. He hums. I kid you not. He’s looking at the report on his computer and humming. And it’s a happy tune.

I’m thinking this is a good sign, yes?

And it was!

I have several (because why just have one 🙄 ) cysts in my liver and one on the edge of my pancreas. None of them are concerning but we’ll monitor them like everything else (that’s a damn long list right now) and hope they remain unconcerning.

If that all wasn’t enough of a roller coaster I finally got to the point where I was ready to send out a newsletter to my subscribers (who are now called Rhian’s Royal Readers. If you want to be a Royal there are multiple places to sign up on my website but here’s a handy-dandy link – JOIN THE ROYALS).

In that newsletter I apologized for the lack of updates over the last few months and explained (briefly) why.

Oh dear lord, my inbox exploded!!!

I had so many lovely reader emails that I’ve spent a lot of the last few days teary-eyed and truly feeling humble. I cannot express how much those messages meant to me! They may have made me cry but it was a good cry and I feel so blessed to have readers who (in spite of my lack of contact) have stuck with me.

Then I happened to pop on to social media (Facebook in particular) after I’d posted a pic of the CT scan waiting room on Monday.

Holy hell people!!

The outpouring of love and well wishes totally made my day. Or week. Possibly year. 😀

I’ve kept pretty quite (except for the Boobs Behaving Badly series) about my journey on social media. One, I just haven’t had the energy and two, I’m not the biggest fan of social media to begin with. But to see all those messages was truly wonderful.

It has me feeling a lot more ‘socially minded’ than I have been that’s for sure.

Maybe I’m finally ready to get back into ‘normal’ life.

Maybe I’m ready to refocus and combine this journey with what my life was before diagnosis.

Up until now I’ve been pretty much solely focused on my breast cancer.

I feel as though I might be at a point where I can give other things my attention.

Like writing!

I really, really want to be writing again.

Hopefully next week I’ll have some progress to report on that front. 🙂

** Episode 19 **