Living with Molly: Here We Go Again!

🎵 San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) – Scott McKenzie (https://youtu.be/7I0vkKy504U?si=cdRev90UIE1rec2l)

Well I’ll get straight to it as I know you’ve been waiting. The headline news is the cancer has not spread- it wasn’t in any of the removed lymph nodes 🥳

In fact, the bar-steward tumour has fooked off all the way to San Francisco. Honestly!!

Apparently it’s gone there for something called an Oncotype DX test which is used on certain hormone-positive breast cancers like mine, to analyse the tumour’s genes and estimate how likely it is to come back elsewhere in the body. It helps doctors decide whether chemotherapy is worth doing. The tumour sample is sent to a specialist lab where the testing is performed & the result is a recurrence score which helps guide treatment decisions.

Why San Francisco? No idea other than they must be experts in what they do and test. What I do know is that after everything it’s put me through over the last few months, I’m glad its as faraway as can be. 🤣

This afternoon was the appointment I’d been overthinking, the one I’d convinced myself was bad news because it was at 3.15pm. That overthinking was made worse as my appointment was over an hour late and there were only 3 of us left in the waiting room. Torture waiting. I was so convinced that obviously hospitals save the depressing news until after lunch and dish out the good news first thing in the morning but it turns out that’s not actually how hospitals work.

It also turns out that the operation was a success, the tumour has gone and as I said earlier, the best news was that there was no sign of cancer in my lymph nodes.

I can’t tell you how relieved I feel, hearing those words today felt like somebody had finally let me unclench every muscle in my body and let my head rest. I can celebrate a bit, but not fully yet as it’s not completely over, there is still more to come.

The tumour has gone off on its Californian adventure and the results from that will help determine whether chemotherapy would add any benefit. So there are still decisions to be made and more conversations to be had. I have been told that I’ll be taking hormone therapies for the next ten years to help reduce the risk of this little bar-steward ever attempting a comeback. I’m sure they’ll come with their own side effects and challenges, but given the alternative, I’ll happily take that deal.

One thing I do want to say is that while I’m so happy and relieved that this cancer hadn’t reached my lymph nodes, if you’re reading this and yours has, please don’t automatically assume the worst.

The first time I had breast cancer it had spread to more than 20 lymph nodes. More than 20. I assumed the worst after continually reading people say thank goodness it wasn’t in my lymph nodes. You can imagine the fear knowing mine was. It was still treatable.

That was 18 years ago and yet here I am still standing and still smiling and still writing blogs 🤣

So today isn’t an all-clear, it’s not the finish line yet.

But it is really, really good news after all these weeks of surgery, drains, healing, physio, overthinking and waiting, I’m going to allow myself to enjoy that.

Sam x

PS it’s ironic that this morning I was smiling at that sign telling me to “take time to smell the flowers.” Then only hours later I’ve discovered my tumour has now gone to California hence the song choice, & if I do end up needing chemotherapy after all this, there’ll be no hair to put flowers in anyway 🤣🤣🤣