I hope someone can help me

Sorry you're going through this. I know that triple-negative patients have special concerns. There is a Triple-Negative forum further down the page. Maybe members there will have more specific advice? Good luck.

Hi Amanda, 

It truly sounds like a lot of the the bad stuff has happened already, and there is really not much you can do about it but go to your appointments.  

But you can try and move on.  I would suggest trying to concentrate on other things not BC related, you have a child and the holidays are approaching.  Stress is not a good thing for us BC folks.  It took me a long time to get over the shock of having cancer.  You will feel so much better if you put it on the back burner and not dwell on it. 

all my best to you and your family. 

AMANDA, I too have finished my treatments, but I had heard other women talk about the end of the whole breast cancer process, where they worry about what may come, and also being suddenly released into the real world with no more reassurance than they done what they could for you. 

So, perhaps I can tell you that I knew this was coming as rads came to an end, from the chatter of my forum sisters, so I set up a "decompress" time for end of rads and stopped all my chores, caught up bills, did last grocery shop, and stayed home for a couple weeks (I don't work anymore).  I am older and this is how I like to "stop the world and get off."  But you can give yourself a mini-"vacation," doing your very favorite thing for a long weekend.  Just any kind of break helps.  Secondly, on the reasoning to get you thru the idea that it might return and all that sort of scary stuff, I made up my mind that treatments today as compared to the old days are long, but boy are they effective.  The docs would not put us thru months of treatment if they were not for sure it would be the best thing to rid us of the cancer.  So, when I got done, I declared myself well.  I knew they did their very best, my odds were quite good, and so I just flipped a switch that goes from "running on steam" to "full throttle."

But probably the most important thing I can tell you to ease your mind is that chemotherapy is designed to do several things, and one of the most important is, because it goes thruout the bloodstream, it tracks down any cancer cells that MAY have escaped from our very good lymphatic system.  If the lymph nodes don't stop it, the chemo will.  It tracks it down like a bloodhound, in every crook and cranny of our bodies and drowns cancer cells.  This means that with chemo, the likelihood of cancer setting up shop anywhere else is small.  Sure, there's stories of recurrence, or spreading, all kinda crazy junk, and it is indeed real, but again, it is a relatively small chance when compared to the overall picture.  But fears are not all reality based. 

So, that is why I gave you a couple mental challenges to use, to help set aside the "what if" part of your thought processes, so you can in time lay it to rest.  At some point, the card game is over and the cards are put back in the deck.  At some point, we realize while we get in an automobile that has a better chance of killing us than any remnant cancer will, we drive right on off in it, kids in tow!  At some point, we CHOOSE to live. 

I agree with the others about seeing a counselor, every town has a county psychology clinic, you can go in for a few visits and just talk about it for a while.  Also, if you went to a cancer clinic in your community, they always have a social worker on hand to talk.  And I agree with the idea of distracting your mind with hobbies, normal activities with family, a good movie, TV programs, reading.  This helps you get farther and farther away from end of treatments, which will give your head time to wrap itself around the whole situation. 

As my treatment went on, I got ahead of the game, I put a lot of dark thoughts away for a rainy day, and let bits and pieces come out as I was ready, thought thru that bit, dismissed it, then went on until the next bit could be dealt with.  In this fashion, I was very fortunate, I left treatment and did not look back.  I've only been out one week and I'm telling you I have not felt this well in years.  And I do not fear the future... I'm looking forward to it.

Feel free to come back and talk some more, feel free to jump into any forum that relates to any particular concern that comes up, there is strength in numbers, we all have been where you are, we are familiar with these strange and unique surroundings known as breast cancer, and we'll try and help you in any way we can.  The more input you get, the more tidbits of advice, until one or two will catch your eye and help you.  Let us know how you're doing, we ain't going anywhere!  GG