Storm in a tit cup

Ok so hello Volder-tit. It's not nice to meet you, you wanker.

Dr Boob goes onto explain that although I have a very nasty type of boob rot, that it is survivable if it is contained within boob and surrounding lymph nodes but there are no guarantees and the survival rates are a lot lower than with standard breast rot. 

My first thoughts are my baby that is now at 14 weeks gestation and how on earth this will affect it. He puts his hands up as if at the end of the firing range and says that although he isn't suggesting it, that many women in my boat would consider a termination to allow for certain treatments and tests. Oh balls. I know that's what you dear reader are thinking....how on earth does she make that decision. Well dear person , for me it was bloody easy. No. No thanks. Let's move on.

So the next few weeks are a blur of scans and tests. Heart scenes, baby-avoiding x-Ray's, blood tests, full body MRI to avoid damage to baby. Now this was an interesting one. Have any of you been cremated in a passed life? Well a time that you can actually remember? Well I think I've come close to the experience. The room was bloody boiling and your slid onto a tray and fed into the tightest tunnel ever, head first and told not to move at all. The ceiling is so close that if you were that way inclined you could lick it. Now I'm told that a full body MRI is incredibly rare but I was having one as I'm pregnant and can't have full body x-Ray's. So I was slid up and down a few times as a sausage on a grill is regularly slid in and out from under a grill pan. I feel like I could now map every inch of that bloody chamber (FYI Southmead, your scanner has a little scratch about 4 inches in from the top of the tunnel which if you squint looks like a little rabbit) and that will be fixed in my mind. 

The tit MRI scan was an interesting one too. I led on my tummy and had to flop each of my norks into a little bucket and leave them swinging there for 30 mins. All the while being forced to listen to Terry pissing Wogan. Now that was horrifying to a 32 year old I must say.

Now in all honesty I can say that until I met my Medical Oncologist (for us plebs, that is a chemotherapy Dr) I don't think I truly appreciated the gravity of the situation. 

She has turned out to be the most blunt and a little doom and gloom but actually this works for me. So these are the following things that I learnt from her:

- you are keeping baby which is brave. As a result we can't guarantee from the tests that the cancer hasn't spread to lungs when we get the results

- there are risks of miscarriage and abnormalities to the baby if you have chemo whilst pregnant

- if you postpone chemo until after the baby is born you will die

- there are no guarantees that chemo will work 

- your baby will need to be born early so you can start more aggressive treatment. If you postpone this, you might die

- this will all be extremely hard work and a long process

- you will have 4 rounds of chemo, then a premature baby born around 30 weeks who will need neonatal care for 3 months, you will then have weekly aggressive chemo every week for 3 months, then a mastectomy, then radiotherapy and hormone treatments. You will need to take steroids!!!!!

Bollocks! I'm going to be a bald, fat dribbling mess who may grow a beard!!! This sucks.

- oh and actually if the tests results do show the cancer has spread you will be terminal . Any questions?