Metastatic Breast Cancer and My Life

(19) Don't be misled by the title of this post because this isn't the usual "if only", self pitying post that you might expect it to be.  It's me looking back and understanding what happened and why I now find myself with Stage IV breast cancer. This cancer was not caused by lifestyle.  I did absolutely nothing to cause it.  It wasn't caused by diet because the cancer cells were fed by oestrogen, over which I had absolutely no control.  It's a purely involuntary production of hormone that the body secretes more in some women than others.  It wasn't caused by a lack of exercise.  I've always loved exercise and been fit and active.  It wasn't caused by obesity because I've always been very slim, to the point that people have always told me I need to eat more.  It wasn't caused by negligence on my part.  I went for the two yearly mammograms that were recommended to me.  It wasn't caused by a lack of awareness of a lump because ...

(18) Twenty months after diagnosis and eighteen months since treatment began life is settling into a routine.  Pain and limitation of mobility, inability to go out and have fun and needing to be dependent on others have all become a way of life for me now.  Not a way of life I would choose - most definitely not, but it's what I've been reduced to, unfortunately. Notwithstanding the above, the biggest challenge to work on overcoming is the monotony of life and the lack of spontaneity as everything I do has to be planned carefully first.  This takes a toll on my mental resources and those of my wonderful husband and son as they try their hardest to keep me from sliding down the slippery slope into depression.  I'm not the sort of person who easily becomes depressed, no matter the circumstances, but when a person is reduced to a social life consisting solely of visits to the pathology lab and cancer centre, it takes a lot of strength and inner resources to constant...