We had 2 oncologist appointments - one with the doctor's mate Patrice and another made by the other doctor who had helped us whilst our dr was away. He called me the day after the results were given to me by my dr so he sounded a bit put out that he got to call me second! I guess he'd been preparing his speech and he'd gone to the trouble of making an appointment at the leading cancer hospital in France, Gustave Roussy so I thanked him v much in any case and kept the 2nd appointment for Monday, today.
Dropped the kids off - they were excited to see their friends. Picked up the blood tests and sped to the hospital. On the way to the hospital I took a peek at the test results - all the levels in the blood tests were in the normal range which I supposed was a good thing.
We waited for the oncologist and eventually out came a really old man and his wife with grim faces. I think of cancer as an old person's disease, not a 'young' person like me. I hoped I wouldn't be around old people too much during this journey, I think it would be depressing.
Patrice was quite simply very nice to me. He seemed a bit 'bumbling' and slow with the computer and didn't talk about cancer for ages, instead he got me to talk about myself and my Englishness was interesting to him. He asked all sorts of personal questions, filling in his form and gradually we got down to the nitty gritty with the results as he entered them in his system, culminating in an examination where he examined me for any lymph node swelling around my neck and shoulders and under my arms.
He noted that the invasive cancer seemed to be just a smaller part of the whole thing and that of the samples, not a large proportion were cancerous. Another good thing. The scores are low which is good and it did not seem so awful as I had been thinking. There is a 'however' however - IF more cancer is found in my body in the scan and IF the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes then things will get serious.
Finally he gave me options - masectomy, lumpdectomy or chemo (maybe ending in one of these two in any case). Then 2 months of radiation 5 days a week. (I gasped, this seemed like a lot and very long) My cancer is hormone sensitive so I can take a hormone treatment afterwards in an attempt to ward off the cancer again. This will give me a menopause. My breasts are large enough to take the removal of the tumor and still have a sort of 'normal' appearance whereas the masectomy would not have the same results.
He looked me in the eye when he said all of this and I felt he was being straight with me.
I had a chance to ask questions. At last, after 3 weeks of not being able to. I had a list prepared (from the American Cancer society which was, again, useful). dh was with me and he was taking in more than me. I didn't cry or get upset, it didn't seem like the time as I needed the information and needed to be clearheaded here and he dealt with it in such a matter of fact way, like he must do all the time, that it seemed less scary.
He also said 'your life in not currently in peril with this disease Madame', words which gave me an enormous amount of relief. He also encouraged me to continue working as far as I could. The fact that he thought I'd be capable cheered me up. I don't want to stay in the house for months at a time and I need to keep my professional activity going if I can. Money will be in short supply and I need to keep the contacts I've been making recently open and active.
I had a prescription to pass in a scanner and I forgot to ask why so that it now stressing me. He also gave me an information leaflet about radiation and all the dos and don'ts and a document organiser with blank leaves in which to put my results in choronological order and a lot of very useful information sheets - some a bit scary about breast prothesis and so on, some less, like taxis that are reimbursed by the social security, useful numbers etc etc. I felt like I'd been taken in hand and felt myself relax slightly.
We decided to go with this guy, despite that fact that he's not attached to Roussy or Maire Curie hospitals because he'd gone to a lot of trouble and spent 2 hours with us and then when we saw his card, we found out is is attached, in fact, to Gustave Roussy, so my case will be discussed with the oncologists there.
Dad phoned me later (this happens once in a blue moon) and he said he was proud to hear me speaking positively and that I was managing to stay upbeat. It meant a lot to me to hear that, but he doesn't really know how I feel inside I was thinking to myself.......
Anyway, this was a better day all in all.
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