I will not put my head in the sand

I don't want regular tests and scans.  I did get annual mammos and when the 'small lump' was finally seen it was followed up with US and assumed that we got it early.  Ha Ha.  When the eventually removed my breast (bad margins) they found it FULL of cancer.  So I don't put a lot of faith in scans.

My other reasons are:

1. I do believe that over testing can be harmful to our systems. Studies are starting to support this.

2. I have heard of too many women who get 'clean' scans just months before experiencing new symptoms. My close friend celebrated her clean tests done at Duke.  She came home to Canada and 2 months later was found to be stage IV. My lesson from that was...clean scans today only means the tests did not pick up anything today.  Tomorrow is a new day.

3. Scanxiety is stress.  Cancer feeds on stress. 

4. Stage IV is stage IV. Nothing good about that.  If I can live life a little freer with my head in the sand, then that is what I choose.

However, I do believe it is a personal choice. Our life experiences dictate our choices and mine have lead me to limit my tests to only check out suspicious changes or symptoms.  

Hmmmm, they let us decide to do chemo or not, rads or not, AI/Tamox or not, so why not let us continue to dictate our care. We should be pretty good at weighing  +'s & -'s. Just my thought reading these posts............I'm still in RADs so I might be speaking prematurely. I'm not sure I trust "anyone",  to make decisons  Actually, I hope I can move away from cancer as it's been suggested here.

Thank you Foxy- you said it all. I really freak when I read anything anywhere on here or anywhere saying DO THIS DO THAT.....not only is it irresponsible it could be so wrong.

I agree with Coolbreeze.  The best advice my onc ever gave me was, "Go live your life.  Get your checkups, but don't think of yourself as a cancer patient."  I had some really great, worry-free years. 

 The Mammography doctors were vigilant about checking my chest carefully.  They found my recurrences.   I don't regret forgetting about it as much as possible.  First chemo and rads did enough damage to my life at 42; sudden onset of menopause, damage to the "preserved breast".  Not that i blame anyone, its just enough loss of natural living.   The cliche is true: you could get hit by a truck, too.  

All of the above are valid anxieties, but I would offer two things:

1) Many of the women on this site are on this site for the support it offers as they are going through treatment, moving beyond treatment and picking up their lives again, or suffering a recurrence.  Many, many, many more woman come- and go because they successfully complete treatment, do not suffer a recurrence and feel no more need for the information/support that they needed while going through diagnosis and treatment of their original- and only breast cancer.  Yes, there are a lot of women here, but there are many, many more who have moved on.

2) Sometimes, when I read of women who were early-stage one minute and advanced/metastatic within months, I wonder... were they misdiagnosed in the first place?  Did the doctors miss something?  Did they downplay the seriousness of tumour biology just because it was "small" and "node negative" not check everything out thoroughly enough?  Breast cancer can spread in many ways, not just the nodes, so being "node negative" is not as "safe" as many people seem to think.  And some breast cancers, even when found "early" and "small", are great, big fat bullies and should never be underestimated just because they are "early" and "small".

And, finally, there are a number of people out there who - when they find out you have breast cancer - will let loose with their "horror stories".  Without fail.  Heard quite a few myself and got scared to pieces.  Sometimes it gets worse when they find out you are in treatment: I wish I had a dollar for every "chemotherapy-killed-my-[define relationship here]-he/she-may-have-lived-without-it-it-was-horrible" story I heard when I was having chemotherapy.

Yes.  Once you get breast cancer, it is possible to get it again.  You move into a higher risk group than you may have been in before.  And you will, always, need to be vigilent about your health moving forward.  You have no choice.  But... statistics are just numbers, in the end.  Sure, they give us ideas concerning trends and valuable information about who should possibly have more aggressive treatment, etc...  But statistics are not carved-in-stone and are, usually, compiled based on very structured- and diagnosis-specific groups.  The world is a big place peopled with all sorts of women with all sorts of breast cancers with all sorts of outcomes.  And, yes, sometimes the luck-of-the-draw is what helps you survive, but a lot women survive breast cancer nowadays; more women survive than not.  Grab it, run with it, have your annual screenings/checkups without fail ... and don't look back!!!