Early stage sadness

I feel bad about what I went through because of BC...........but I don't blame it on the mammo. I never felt a lump - my small .9cm (possibly even smaller) was found through a routine screening mammo.........I opted for the mx knowing that invasive breast cancer is sneaky.......... I wanted to take the big guns because I did NOT want to deal with it again when I would be older - a recurrence or mets would be a nightmare. I'm sorry you are suffering from depression - all of us face a bit of PTSD after such life-changing disease and surgery. I often look back and think "if I knew then what I know now I wouldn't have had a mx?"..........but never do I think I would have skipped the mammo. I skipped 3 YEARS of mammo's..........and look what happened! If I skipped another year or two, would it have changed anything? Yes...........the tumor would have grown larger ........possibly infiltrated my lymph nodes.......possibly showing up in an organ or two (especially since the tumor was Her2+). Living with our heads-in-the-sand is not the answer. You did the best you could with the information you had at the time.....looking back doesn't change anything............can you look forward? Would you feel better if you discussed delayed recon with a PS? I hope other women will come along and give you more advice or just sympathy. Hang in there - I'll be praying you feel better soon.

I feel for what you are going through.

I don't blame you for wondering.

You may very well have been one of those women with a slow cancer who could have waited a few more years and had the same results. Or maybe not.

I procrastinated my first mammo for a year and a half.

I had a killer commute, and had to take a whole day off for any doctor appointments.

Now I have a positive node and have to face possible chemo. 

I went for the mammo because I had time off work. No lump. Now my whole life is changed. People say I should be happy I did it.

I am glad the cancer did not have more time to advance, but that's about all the enthusiasim I can muster. 

Could I have been stage one two years ago? I will never know.

Could I have had one more year of normal married non cancer life if I had waited one more year?

( I just got married last year, bc sure ends the honeymoon!)

Who knows?

My cancer could have been there for a decade.

I have to wonder if the recent media flurry is compounding your blues. There is no way to know if you were overtreated....it sounds like you were not, but who knows for sure?

Good luck, you are not alone, and I hope happy days are ahead for you.

Hi baywatcher,

i have something similar, a little lump in my breast (docs say it's very early stage) and another suspicious area close to the first one. I had to decide between lumpectomy and mastectomy. I was really stressed but i finally after a talk with my surgeon i prefered to have mastectomy. The reasons are:

1. I don't want to have radiation because it will make reconstuction more difficult.

2. I don't want to worry every year for reoccurance and in general i will feel more safe.

3. My doc told me that the aesthetic result will be better with mastectomy- reconstruction than with lumpectomy.

Some of my friends were thinking that my decision was very extreme. I knew that the lump is cancer (don't know yet if DCIS or Invasive) and the other suspicious area don't know yet if it's also cancer or not). My friends were thinking that it would be best to have lumpectomy and to save my breast and nipple. But when i met my BS he told me that my left breast is bad and has the tendency to cause trouble. Maybe in the future i will have more problems if i keep it.

I didn't want to go through this again.

I so think about the fact that cancer treatment made me ill for the better part of a year, when I had no outer signs of cancer. The cure was worse than the disease, I sometimes think. But I think, perhaps, you are in the denial stage of grief. A lack of symptoms is pretty meaningless with cancer. There often are no symptoms, sad to say. So, to us, it feels as though we were healthy one minute, and then all of a sudden everyone tells us we're sick. It's quite a disconnect.

What it all boils down to is that you can't undecide to have a mastectomy. For your sanity, you will have to find some way to accept what has happened to you. Perhaps a reconstruction would help you, if you haven't already. Perhaps some therapy. Perhaps attending a breast cancer support group and talking through your feelings.

Most of us go through denial at some stage, but it sounds like you're clinging to that denial. The what-ifs will really drive you crazy. I hope, for your sake, that you can accept and move on. Because, honey, none of us can go back.

Hugs!!!

I had a lumpectomy, but the cosmetic results were so poor that I wish now I had done the mastectomy.  The transformation of my perfectly symmetrical girls to something I'll never let anyone see again was probably the most devestating aspect of the entire experience, and I was in my late forties when you would think a woman could accept that more easily.  It took me a really long time to get through the unhappiness and depression and just accept it for what it is.  Bottom line is, it takes time to process all the negative emotions you go through from being diagnosed and then going through the surgery, etc.  Eventually I was able to move on with my life and I am just happy to be alive and well right now instead of suffering from advanced grade 3 cancer, but I didn't come to this mindset overnight.

Baywatcher,

You mention in your original post that four years after your first mastectomy, you found IDC in your other breast. So you had gone beyond the earliest-stage DCIS. Your second cancer was already invasive. You were not like those women in the study who were found after death to have DCIS. So, from my point of view you were fortunate to find your IDC very early, before it had spread to your lymph nodes or to other parts of your body. I know saying this won't alleviate your depression, but it's my belief that you may have saved your life by removing your breasts. For the second breast, perhaps a lumpectomy and radiation would have worked, but since you already had a unilateral mastectomy, I can see why you chose to have the second breast removed, too.

I had a very similar situation to yours, only reversed. I was first diagnosed with a small IDC, then three years later with extensive DCIS in the other breast, requiring a mastectomy. At that point, I chose to have both breasts removed. I also chose not to have reconstruction. That's been fine for me, but I'm wondering whether in your case, your feeling that you've had a disfiguring amputation may have caused the extreme psychological stress you're under. 

We're all so individual. Some of us do fine without reconstruction. Others find creating new breasts restores their body image and confidence. Maybe you should seriously consider reconstruction. You haven't had radiation, so you're probably a good candidate for implants. It might be worth a try.

Hugs,

Barbara

baywatcher, I know exactly what you mean about wishing you never had the mammogram. 

I was dx with high grade DCIS after having a mammo and a biopsy.  The treatment plan was a lumpectomy, snb to be followed by radiation.  I agreed with that as it is the standard of care and as the DCIS was high grade.  However, my surgeon felt a dimple in another area and performed an excisional biopsy when he did the lumpectomy.  That turned out to be a small IDC tumor.  I then had an MRI at the request of the radiation on.  Three biopsies later, a second IDC tumor was found.   After find out my bc was multi-centric, I decided to have a bilateral mastectomy.  The primary reason I decided on a bilateral mast was that I was quite busty and I would have been very unbalanced otherwise.  I also knew I would not have reconstruction and wanted to be symmetrical.

While I think I made the only descion I could have knowing the extent of my cancer, like you I still wonder what would have happened if I hadn't had the mammogram.  I told the PA who strongly recommended I get a mammogram I didn't know if I should thank him or slug him.  (He is also some one I know socially).  I was not ill before my dx.  I had no symptoms.  So I never felt like my breast cancer was potentially fatal.  I really wonder if my stage one, grade one tumors would have just advanced locally or if they would have become more aggressive.  I have no idea.

I think loosing your breasts is major and to pretend otherwise is wrong.   Your emotions are what they are.  My way of dealing with my grief is not to deny it but to accept it.  It is less raw now than it was it is still there.   I don't think of myself as weak or as a whiner and I don't think you should think of yourself in that way.   The idea that a woman gets her breasts amputated and  has to be happy or grateful is just wrong.  You did the best you could with the information you had at the time and that is all you (and all of us) can do.

After reading this thread, I wasn't going to post because I thought that all possible replies had been made concerning the benefits of regular mammograms to catch BC at the earliest possible stage.  Since we are all women who have lived through BC and it's various treatments and surgeries, we can most definitely sympathize with you.  We've all experienced the denial, shock, sadness, anger, etc. and it's miserable.

The one thing no one else has suggested is giving antidepressants a chance to help you.  They won't make your feelings go away or change what you've already been through, but they can help part the clouds enough so you can work your way through this.  I know from personal experience.  Severe depression and anxiety are serious health issues that shouldn't be ignored because they can be life threatening at worst and make life miserable at the very least.  I urge you to discuss this with your doctor.  If you give the meds a few weeks to work, I think you'll be surprised at how much better you'll start to feel.  Like I say, they won't make your feelings go away, but they'll turn down the intensity so you can better deal with everything.  I'm not one to take medication on a whim, but I was so miserable I finally decided that I had nothing to lose by giving it a try.  I'm so glad I did!  

Speaking of regrets, I am regretting not having a mastectomy.  You can't win with the "looking back" game.

It's possible that untreated depression has caused you to over-focus on the dangers of xrays/mammograms.  Ruminating about specific issues can often be a symptom of depression and/or anxiety.  It is absolutely not true that antidepressants cannot help you if your depression is related to a specific topic.  Depression is a real physical illness and can be successfully treated.  Depression and anxiety can rob you of the life you deserve!

Baywatcher - I had moments in time where I was so depressed and sad that I wished I never found my lump, never had a mammo and just wished could go back in time...I was perfectly healthy, happy and living life with complete blinders on.   I miss those days and I miss me, I miss my breasts and feeling comfortable in my own body.  I hate taking all these meds and supplements.  I HATE dealing with LE and, I hate, that except for this site I feel so alone and isolated.  We all make decisions based on information that we have at that time...as much as this reality can suck at times, I have made peace with my choices. I hope in time you will have peace as well.  

Glad for your baby steps, baywatcher....

I had no idea my breasts meant so much to me, either.  Before my BMX, I had my husband take pictures of my chest....he printed them, and then hid them.  I wish we had taken pictures before the very first biopsy, or at least before the lumpectomy which disfigured my left breast - but at least the pictures we have are good enough.

Anyway, last week when I was just at rock bottom, I found those pictures and just looked at them for the longest time.  I know it probably sounds really stupid.  But I took comfort in looking at them.  My 17 y.o. daughter was sitting by me, attempting to console me....as she and I talked, and I was trying to make sense out of it all, she made a comment that actually made a lot of sense.  She said, "mom, you know when pappaw died, it made you feel better to look at his picture, right?  Well, it would make sense for you to look at a picture of your breasts because they are like dead to you now, too"

And you know, what?  She was right.  I must've looked at those pictures for 30 minutes or more.  It really helped.  I'm not sure how, because it didn't put them back on my chest, of course.  But someone they werent' a dream or a figment of my imagination anymore.  They were more real somehow. 

I won't say I got better right away.  But a couple of days later, the fog of dispair did lift just a bit.  At least for now.  I'm sure I will fall again., but hopefully not as hard.  But I might.  But I have my pictures....and I also have pictures of when I came out of surgery with my 4 drains, and then with 2 drains....

Just saw those pictures tonight.....I sure look better now than then!  That was actually a comfort, too.  Even though I hate my flat chest, I look so much better than I did a month ago.  

I'm just glad I have my pictures....do I miss my breasts.  You bet.

Did I think I would?  nope, sure didn't. 

I'm trying to cope.  Praying about it everyday, and having others praying about it with me...you'll be in my thoughts and prayers, baywatcher......

blessings..robin