Feeling Scared (by Venita)

I was going to put this into an email to a friend who wrote to offer support.

I decided this was not something with which to burden a single person, so I decided to put it here. I'm not asking for sympathy. I'm just asking that you understand that all my "I'm so fine" talk is sometimes a smokescreen that hides my fear.

It was hard when I recently found out that my cancer was staged as advanced. I have no self-image problem with having both of my breasts removed. I am troubled that the surgery to remove my right breast and some axillary (armpit) lymph nodes has left me with a reduced range of motion in my right arm, which is my primary arm. I am troubled that something (maybe the pneumonia or maybe the chemo) has left me with a reduced breathing capacity.

I wonder what kind of disruption (lifestyle and side effect) the upcoming seven weeks of radiation will bring.

I want all this treatment crap to be over, and I am fearful of metastatic disease showing up during or soon after treatment. Breast cancer is known to move to the bone, liver, lungs, and brain, and there is no “cure” for that; just more slash/poison/burn treatments. I don’t want to go there.