Stress and the recurrence of TNBC

I don't know Pudding....I too had alot of stress 6 months before my diagnosis...my son totaled his suv...he was fine..but getting the phone call and going to the accident site was enough for my DH and I to say that if we were going to have a heart attack it would have been then....then a few weeks later my DH thought he was having a heart attack...plus it was my son's senior year in HS..plus the guy that my son hit with his suv turned into a nut...he called our house with threats and we had to call the police on him.

I'm trying to live relatively stress free now...I have my DH handle the stressful situations for me...poor guy but that is the way it's going to be for now...everytime I feel that stress starting to build I just try to talk myself out it and relax...I think that is what we have to do. 

Puddin- there's just no damn rhyme nor reason to any of it.  It's all just a roll of the dice.  I am not saying that we can't improve how we live, or that we shouldn't try to change things, just that I do not think that your cancer came back from stress caused by these two selfish characters.  I have had stress ALL my life and because of that, have also learned to deal with whatever comes my way (and it's been a lot!), as well as continuing to function well through it all.  Now, while I cannot say with certainty that isn't part of what has caused my triple negative cancer, I also cannot say for certain that it was.  On the other hand, two gals I have met since being diagnosed, also triple negs, have had lives that seem to have run as smooth as glass (and that is their feeling, not mine), and yet were diagnosed the same. Who can figure?

I have seen gals with my early "diagnose", (small nodule, clean nodes and margins, no LVI - having done chemo as agressive as I, along with 33 days of rads) - march steadfastly and quickly into Stage 4, while others, with larger tumors, several nodes, etc, are fine several years out.

All I guess any of us can do is to tell ourselves we did the best we could with the tools we had at our disposal, and just hope for the best.  It is what it is, and really out of our hands.  What we do with our life from this point on IS within our molding.  If I can learn to live each day with a little less fear than the day prior - and thinking today a little bit less of having cancer than I did yesterday  - then I will feel that I have accomplished a lot!  I am working hard on it (um, not always successfully, I might add, but still trying).

I wish you all the best, Puddin - I hate it that it's hit you twice - just not fair at all. 

I have wondered about this question many times myself. The year before I was dx, I went through a contract dispute with my employer (as did all my colleagues) and we ended up all resigning together. it was incredibly stressful, lots of hush hush calls to lawyers and secret meetings. The stress level was very high for months on end. Finally, we made the break and things began to settle down, as it became clear that there would be no legal action taken against us. And then, just as life was looking up, wham! The diagnosis.
Is there a connection? Who knows. My colleagues that went through it with me had the same stress, but no one else got cancer. Also, I have read on here somewhere that some cancers have been in our bodies growing slowly for YEARS and that it wasn't a reaction to anything recent.

I don't know. But what I DO know is that we can't change yesterday, only tomorrow. Please don't add MORE stress by beating yourself up about the past.  This is hard enough as it is. Just focus on getting better and taking care of YOU!

puddingirl84

is your dx this time a new primary? It looks like a new primary though not a recurrence. Did you have a mast., the first or second time? Did you do a gene test?

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