Fear

[Guest guest]

Hi All -

I'm just wondering, does the fear lessen with time?

When I was first diagnosed, I guess I didn't take the situation too

seriously. My surgeon was very confident that I could just have a lumpetomy

and radiation and I would be fine. It didn't turn out that way, but I still

wasn't very concerned about the fact that I had the big C. I was more

afraid of the pain of a mastectomy. I didn't even really think that I would

need chemo.

It was going to the onc that started the fear. When I sat down with him and

started talking about percentages of reoccurence, it finally struck me how

serious this was. I hadn't even thought that I would ever have to go

through this again. Now, every time I look in the mirror and see my bald

head, I'm struck by fear. I found my lump...it didn't show up in a

mammogram. Now that I have my reconstruction - things feel different and

I'm afraid that I won't be able to identify a lump if I needed to (if

mammograms fail me in the future).

I don't know if there is an answer to this. I'm glad that I have this place

to come to and share my feelings. Only my friend that had breast cancer

last year has any understanding of what I'm going through and she doesn't

fully understand this. She is very calm in her survivorship.

Thank you for being here.

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