Worries.......

Now, I try not to get too heavy on this old blog. But, what I am hoping to achieve with this is to help others understand what it is like to live with a diagnosis of breast cancer, so there will be times when I just tell it how it is (there’s also the sheer therapeutic side of voicing all of my woes of course).

So, what changes when you are diagnosed with breast cancer. Your worries change (well obviously…. who got booted off celebrity-big-brother-love-island doesn’t have quite the same importance anymore). But, your worries about general aches and pains change. I don’t think anyone diagnosed with cancer doesn’t dread the idea of secondaries (i.e the cancer has gone and set up home somewhere else and is intent on staying there rent free). And from this day on, I will always view an ache and pain with a mind to this. It isn’t rational…but it happens. I know it is probably way too early for any reccurrence, but I guess secretly I worry my body is riddled with it. The sensible side of me knows that most likely a new ache is just that; a bit of an ache that will subside, however the cancer patient in me can’t help but have a thought flit across my mind “what-if”.

This week my arm aches (not the one from my breast cancer side… that aches anyway ;-D), but my other arm…. A dull ache.. kind of like a bruise growing but not happening inside my forearm… now, I know it is nothing – I would have thought nothing of it before this cancer… and you should bet on chemo there’s gonna be some aches and pains in your body… but, despite this, I think about it… a tiny thought just momentarily flits across my mind.. Is it bone secondaries? So, sensible Dawn imposes the “2 week-rule” that we breast cancer sufferers have assigned to deal with this scenario. If a pain lasts longer than 2 weeks – then you tell, you get it checked. Until then, it’s just your normal every-day ache and pain, nothing more, nothing less. And I reckon after 2 weeks it will have been forgotten… and most probably replaced by another pain on your mind.

So, this process happens… and will probably go on happening forever…even when this diagnosis of breast cancer is far behind me… my mind will never be totally at ease… I hope that it becomes less and I am sure that it will. And even though I know that I am over-reacting, I know that I am being a bit of a hyperchondriac, I just can’t help it. It is just another one of the things that changes in you life after having been diagnosed with breast cancer. So, next time I start complaining about a headache … or bone ache… or some other thing, remember this and tell me to go and take a painkiller (cos I am terrible at taking painkillers and if I took them I wouldn’t have half the aches and pains I end up with, ask my husband he despairs of me on this!). Oh, and this arm ache isn’t anything to actually worry about…. I actually think it is repetitive strain injury from the knitting ;-D