Another delay

The surgeon called me when I was grocery shopping today regarding the lipomodelling.  He said the Commission okayed the decision but only after 2 years after treatment, when he'd always said it was after one year so he was adding a year.  I was stunned and my heart fell to the floor in disappointment.  I asked if I could call him back later.  During that call I understood better.

His 'expert' at the conference in Lyon told him 2 years and the Commission told him 2 years after treatment.  I didn't understand why he'd led me on by saying one year all this time.  I'd been waiting waiting waiting.

He said that lipomodelling was so relatively new (for post BC patients) that at first he'd warned me that the commission might not even ok it (this I remember).  And because it's so 'new', the guidelines are evolving all the time.  In fact, one of my BC FB lady friends told me she was told one year and then it changed to 2 years.

Because the rate of recividism is so much higher in the first two years following treatment, and because lipomodelling can impede mammograms and tests to detect cancer, the guidelines are now 2 years so that the highest risk period is over.

He said, rightly, that he could not go against the Commission and I understood that.

But what a fucking blow.  I am SO angry and SO disappointed.  I have to live in this shitty body for another year looking (or not looking) at those ugly breast mounds, hiding on the beach and at the pool (in fact I just don't go now and that's a shame as I really enjoyed those times with the children).  And I was looking forward to not being embarrassed about getting undressed in front of my husband and turning my back.

I don't think our marital relationship can survive another year like this, with me feeling as I do.

I was so looking forward to saying goodbye and squaring that circle, coming to some sort of end to this whole process but there's always something there to remind me

I KNOW I should be glad to be alive, practice gratefullness, yes I'm lucky to have survived.........etc.  I AM grateful for all those things (although you might not think so sometimes in reading my posts, but they are always of the moment like this one to reflect the roller coaster that is cancer) but I just want it to go away now and get on with my life which I'm trying very hard to reconstruct.  But unfortunately I'm not allowed to reconstruct the thing that is causing me so much pain - my breast.

Interestingly, if I had had a mastectomy I could have had reconstruction 6 months afterwards but I figured I could live with crappy breasts for a year rather than 6 months with no breast and a really really big op to reconstruct.  That taught me, didn't it?

I am really really pissed off and sad.  I have a sentence of yet another year.