Out of town for course

I'm out of town for a week to attend a course. Some are amazed that I could still go away for course and not starting my chemo right away. Well, a week late won't kill; who knows how long I have been having it...

Breast cancer is actually unique and very individualised. What I have would not be the same as what other patients may have. It depends on the type of cancer, the stage and the grade of the cancer. The type of cancer that I have is the regular lump one, and can be seen clearly on the mammogram although I haven't seen mine on the screen just as yet.

When I told my friends that I have it, almost everyone has been asking "what stage is it?". To tell you the truth, I myself don't know what stage it is and when I asked the doctor about it, they also don't know until the tumour is removed and sent for biopsy. I guess they also would not want to speculate as it might scare the patient. Had I told everyone that I'm at stage 4, I'm sure everyone will come and hug me, cook for me, do chores for me, thinking that I might be dead in a few month time :-) No worries, I presume I'm still at stage 1 as a friend of mine who is doing her research on elderly breast cancer patients, said that a lump below 5 cm is still in stage 1.

The grade of the cancer is another factor to be considered. Grade 1 is the low grade, grade 2 is the intermediate, and grade 3 is the high grade. Grade 1 grows the most slowly while grade 3 grows the fastest and with the highest risk of it coming back. Mine is the intermediate and that is why the doctor is quite happy to let me go to attend course out of town.

The course that I'm attending is the series of courses that I have attended before and I'm seeing almost the same faces that attended the courses before. When I told them that I'll be going for chemo soon, they just could not believe how relax I'm. Of course they are speechless and felt like crying and again, amazed to see me taking it easily. Some of them ask whether I'm scared or not. Well, it doesn't matter if I'm scared or not, I need to be brave enough to fight this...