When it turned out after the operation that the breast cancer tumor was larger and more aggressive, I was still offered chemotherapy. If they had known in advance that the tumor was that large, I would have had chemo before the operation to shrink the tumor.
Now that the tumor was gone, it was not possible to find out whether it had responded to the chemo at all. My surgeon told me that chemo works for three out of every hundred women; a small chance, but ‘every life counts’.
I jokingly asked my surgeon if she couldn’t put a piece of tumor in a petri dish with some chemo added. But science isn’t there yet.
After the intense message that I would still have to undergo chemo, I immediately thought about my intestines, which I have been having problems with since my gallbladder surgery at the end of 2016. I was very healthy, I thought, but out of nowhere I was admitted in the hospital urgently three times in two weeks time. I was deathly ill. Liver inflammation and pancreatitis and ultimately a half-dead gallbladder that had to be removed. Cause unknown. I went home with a pile of antibiotics.
It appears that ten to twenty percent of people who undergo such an operation experience or develop intestinal problems. Doctors don’t know what causes this. An aunt who also had her galbladder removed a long time ago cheerfully said that after two weeks she could eat and do everything she wanted again. Just like an uncle of mine.
The condition of my intestines is much more decisive for my daily life than my breast cancer. I have never been sick with breast cancer; only from the treatments. But those intestinal problems do hinder recovery from breast cancer. It was the reason for not doing chemotherapy. Instead, I started hormone therapy.
I had to stop hormone therapy after three months because of the side effects; especially on – you guessed it – my intestines. The oncologist gave me a break. Because the medication continues to work for a long time, I would not be ‘unprotected’. That break came right at the end of two long months of rain. The sun started shining again, I got my energy back and I went outside.
In the backyard I went wild on the interior of our garden house. It was completed on the day I discovered the lump and after that I hadn’t had the time nor the energy to finish it. I made lounge sofas from the old children’s beds. I had to take them apart for this because they were too wide. I had so much fun with the carpentry, sawing, drilling, screwing and painting. And the result is impressive, if I say so myself, and we enjoy it immensely.
After seven weeks I resumed hormone therapy, this time with so-called aromatase inhibitors. These normally cause fewer side effects. It started very well, but over time side effects started to appear again. Fatigue and poor sleep, for example, but also those intestines. I was allowed to stop temporarily again and have now had a break of four weeks. I have almost completed a year of hormone therapy, still four years to go.
My body is completely out of balance and I am struggling to find that balance again.