Hi, my name is Sarah Crimmins. At age 28, when my daughter was only 11 months old (in December 2008), I was diagnosed with Grade 3 Invasive Breast Cancer.

Since then I have had a mastectomy of my left breast, gone through IVF, 4 months of Chemotherapy, 5 weeks of radiotherapy, hospitalised with meningitis and just recently in December 2009, I underwent a prophylactic mastectomy of my right breast with immediate reconstruction and a reconstruction of my left breast using the latissimus dorsi.

At the start of my cancer journey I spent hours on the internet searching for similar stories to my own and in particular, photographs of those women so I could gain an understanding of what I was about to go through and although I found some, I didn't find many.

This is the main reason for my blog. I wanted to be able to share my experience and photographs of my journey in the hope that it will help someone else with the decisions that they are about to face.

This is the story of the worst year of my life, from finding the lump all the way to my reconstruction surgery and beyond.........

Please feel free to post some comments, actually i would absolutely love it if you would xo

Here we go again.....

I can't believe I'm back to feeling like this.

In 2 weeks it will be my 2 year anniversary from when i was first diagnosed and i am meant to be starting 6 monthly check up's instead of every 3 months and really getting back to normal life.
But instead I'm about to have a chest x-ray and pelvic CT scan because i have something going on with my ovaries now. I'm crying while i'm writing this because i really can't believe that i'm here again having to go through more tests. I feel sick in the stomach and want to throw up because it's like it was 2 years ago .......... the unknown, the fear that there's something more sinister going on inside of me that i can't see but i know is going to cause me more pain. I hate this feeling but there's nothing i can do about it except be a good patient and go and get the tests that i'm told to and just wait for the results.

For a few weeks now i've felt really bloated and uncomfortable and i could tell that i've put on a little bit of weight (i'm blaming it on tamoxifen, not the fact that i haven't been eating the best or excerising of course!) but this is ridiculous. I can't even suck in my stomach anymore to try and hide my belly. A few family members even asked amongst themselves if i was pregnant but of course I'm not because 1. i did a test and 2. that would be a bloody miracle if i was!

I've learnt that nothing is straightforward when it comes to my body and my symptoms so when i started to get some shooting pains down there i knew that something wasn't right and it wasn't just that i had put on weight. So i went to my wonderful GP and she could tell my left ovary was enlarged so she sent me for a pelvic ultrasound. How wrong it is though that regarless of whether you're pregnant or going through IVF or have something else going on in there, you all have to go to the same place for the ultrasound. It sucks! You're sitting there in the waiting room with all of these pregnant women seeing how happy they are, but yet i have to sit there amongst them thinking about how much i would love to be pregnant at the moment but no, instead i'm there because of something that is obvioulsy bad and certainly not a baby in there. It sucks, there should be a seperate place for pregnant women and for those that need an ultrasound for something else because it just sort of rubs it in our faces. Anyway, that's just me.

On with my story.......the ultrasound found 3 large cysts on my left side and one smaller one on my right. The ones on my left are the size of a tennis ball (your ovary should be 6mm but at the moment mine is 60mm) and the one on my right is 12mm. So it wasn't what they wanted to see but in normal circumstances it's not that bad either because normally functional cycts take care of themselves but because i seem to be the exception in every single situation they have sent me for some more scans.

I've had a blood test this morning which brought me to tears because since the meningitis my veins have gotten even worse then they were before so they ended up having to pin prick two of my fingers and slowly get the blood that way. In about half an hour i have to go and get a chest x-ray and a pelvic ct and then on wednesday i'll go back and see my GP and on thursday go and see a gyno. Like i don't see enough specialists, now i have to go and add gynocologist to the growing list! He'll probably arrange for laproscopic surgery to be performed so he can go in and see exactly what's going on but i'll find out more on thursday.

I'm tired of all of this. My fatigue syndrome is really starting to ease up and it doesn't have such a hold on me, i've had enough energy to do some small renovations to our house and i just feel like my body has let me down again. Seriously, who did i kill in a past life to deserve this - somebody important obviously!

I am surrounded by pregnant friends at the moment (8 in total!) and if that wasn't enough to upset me, knowing how much i would love to have another baby, now this. I would rather be told that i have mets on my spine or something like that then have something going on with my ovaries. Even the thought of losing them is making me cry again.

Anyway, I just had to have a vent and get it all out and hope that for once, things go normally and all of the tests are clear and nothing more needs to be done - fingers, toes, arms, legs and everything else that i can are crossed xxxxxxx
Posted by Sarah Crimmins 0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)