11-30-09 Update – Countdown to Surgery – T-3: Anger

When I began this blog, I promised myself I would never sugar-coat things in order to make myself look like the brave, noble, stalwart cancer patient. I determined to tell it like it is—glorious parts and sordid parts alike. And this is what it is, folks.

I have spoken with my new oncologist about doing three months of hormone therapy before I go to surgery. Unlike Dr. “I am the captain of this ship” H, my new oncologist is willing to do whatever I want. If I refuse surgery, then she’ll do what she feels is the next best thing, which would probably be hormones. That's the rub. The ball really is in my court. Sort of.

Of course, Dr. C warned me that I could lose ground taking hormones and if I do we won't know for three months, because that's how long it takes to see the effects of taking the hormones. And by then I could have lost so much ground that my breast will have become inoperable. I responded that we could monitor the treatment and if it looked like I was losing ground, we could go immediately to surgery.

She said that won’t work. If I do hormones, I will be monitored with a check-up in the clinic once a month. Not any more frequently. And no imaging. If I wake up in the middle of the night, a few weeks into this treatment, with a breast that is hard and swollen and redder than it’s ever been—meaning the cancer has progressed with a vengeance—I will still have to wait a few weeks until we can get me onto the surgery schedule. *IF* I am operable at all, at that point.

So I can take the chance, if I want to, she said. But, she wouldn’t recommend it....

She told me that there was another study done of using hormones before surgery, besides the one I found that was done in Europe. This was a study done at UNC-Duke. While 85% of the women in the study had no progression of their disease or got better...15% of the women had their disease get worse. This, to my new oncologist, is an unacceptable level of risk.

Interestingly enough, when I was all concerned about getting lymphedema, my old oncologist tried to dismiss my concerns on multiple occasions with the idea that there was only a 20-30% risk of my getting it. It was such a small risk, meaning so few women actually got it, that he wanted to reassure me that my fears were largely groundless.

So my medical professionals are talking out of both sides of their mouths. When it suits them, a 15% risk is too great to take. Then again, when it suits them, a 30% risk is nothing at all to worry about.

I have been made afraid. More afraid that I ever was before. As if having cancer were not fearful enough, I am now afraid of my own gut instincts. No matter which way I turn, I am beset by mountains of fear. I am afraid to do what my gut tells me to do, and I am afraid that what the medical professionals want me to do is wrong.

So what am I going to do? I am going forward with the surgery on Thursday this week.

However, I hate all of them. I hate them all. I hate what they are about to do to me. I hate the fact that they have made me afraid to trust my own gut instincts. I hate the fact that they are unable to offer me anything that makes me feel more secure about the surgery that they want me to have, at the time they want me to have it.

I hate them. I am beyond furious. They leave me with nothing but fear. Fear of the cancer and fear of them and, most importantly of all, fear of myself and my instincts. I am demolished at the most fundamental level of my being. And I hate them for it.