How hard does it have to be? ... the hidden costs of breast cancer ......

Sometimes it seems as if it will never end. You think it is all over and bang you get hit again by another aftershock from the earthquake that hit your life in the form of breast cancer.

How do you count the costs?

.....you think you have your life in order and breast cancer rears its ugly head. You have a great job – stressful but it’s yours and you earned it. You work hard and for the first time in years feel as if you are contributing and getting on top of things. The extra family income helps you add another dimension to the family planning for the future. Your husband is in a good job well respected and working hard. The children are doing well and you count your blessings that they have managed so far into adolescence and not gone off the rails.

Work would be fine you have issues you deal with but that is your job you learn and grow and make decisions and move on. In the middle of dealing with the issues you are landed with the diagnosis. So many things get left unfinished. There’s no tidy endings, no farewells, too many things unsaid.

How do you measure the cost of lost confidence?

.....my wonderful husband hangs in there. His life turned upside down. Confidence that he knew where he was going, what he could do, that he had control and could make decisions. How do you measure that when it gets shattered? How does he keep on going at work, keep focussed, keep up the priorities?

How do you protect yourself from those who would take advantage of your loss of confidence? How do you cope with your dismay that there are people who would take advantage of this situation?

There is no such thing as your “wife has breast cancer leave”. Maybe for the first even the second lot of surgery, by the fourth he’s changed jobs, by the seventh he’s not working, by the eighth he’s on a job interview interstate, and then by the ninth he’s working overseas. You have to do what you have to do to keep it all afloat.

How do you deal with a diagnosis that is beyond your control and sideswipes you from out of nowhere?

.....there’s an old saying the wonderful man in my life tells me:

How do you eat and elephant? A mouthful at a time.

.....and that’s what we did, one decision at a time and one day at a time. You sometimes get the decisions right and sometimes don’t.

Trying to move forward when we feel as if we are stuck in quicksand.

How do you measure the cost of having to move?

.....not something that is easy at the best of time but when you are in the middle of treatment what choices do you have. Distance and multiple surgeries and procedures are not the best of friends.

How do you measure the impact on a teenager?

.....moving, changing schools, a crucial period of his life, after working so hard to get where he was. How do you measure that? How do you measure his loss of confidence? His lack of trust and disappointment. How do you measure his lost opportunities and pathways for the future? How do you measure the loss of trust? The resentment, anger and the sadness.

How do you measure the cost?

.....having the surgery and treatment seems to be the easy part. It’s over and I can show off my perky new breasts.

.....still the reverberations come. Sometimes out of the haze when I least expect it.

How do you do it?

..... I wouldn’t know where to start to measure the cost. It is just too great and it still keeps coming. I do the best I can.

It would be easier if I was the sort of person that wore their emotions out there and became a falling heap on the ground but I just keep on soldiering on. Falling heaps are good at getting a lot of attention but they often don’t get the job done.

How do I measure the cost?

.....of my sadness at the impact of this on the ones I love all around me. That they have changed and our family has changed is something that I cannot control. Everyone reacts differently according to their own experience and sensibility. The relationships that have been battered and bruised and are still in shock and pain from all that has happened, how do you measure that? How do you try and put it all back together when you know that some of the pieces have changed forever and cannot go back no matter how hard you try to make them fit?

If only there was something that would stop the aftershocks coming. A quick easy fix that soothed the frustrated and broken hearted from the trauma. Some direction that would tell me how to reach out to my family who are suffering still and tell them it’s ok.

Of course we're grateful. I'm here and we have a future. It is just one piece of the ceramic that needs to fit back together.

Very slowly our grief and anger ebbs and flows sometimes it has subsided and sometimes it still can be a crashing tsunami affecting us all so differently.

Tomorrow will come, it’s just one day at a time...

The body .. where did it go?

Truth be told my body was never that fantastic. I've struggled with my weight. Been challenged by the back from hell (lots of surgery there just to keep me upright), had big droopy boobs - then no boobs, and now new boobs. It's been a dynamic experience my body - great variations of change.

The last two years have been pretty busy. The breast cancer thing (my present to myself for my 50th birthday) certainly diverted my attention from what was happening in other regions of the body geography. The dilemmas of multiple surgeries, infections, and the road to reconstruction was paved with a few diversions. It certainly was worthwhile though. Coming out the other side they're perky and for the first time in my life I don't have to wear a bra. I feel like a teenager again.

Two years later and I have just had the odd glass of bubbly to celebrate another birthday. It's amazing. What happened? Where did those 2 years go and what did the rest of my body get way with while I was preoccupied? I feel like I am in possession of this errant child that will do what it wants to do despite strict instructions to the contrary. It has bulged out in places that it never did. These granny arms have appeared and I long for longer sleeves.

Weight will just not disappear like it used to. Watching calories makes me feel as if I have to go on a hunger strike. I've had to resort to the gym. Serious exercise is helping to bring it into control. 5 kms a day on the treadmill (too hot and no footpath on the road) at 6kms per hour and then some weights to fix the granny arms is slowly bringing things under control. Even though I feel it is like eating brussels sprouts I get in there and do it.

At the start of this discovery I felt as if I'd woken up from a long sleep over the last 2 years and my body had been hijacked. Breast cancer had hit at the same time as menopause. I didn't have the time to do the book reading, Oprah and Dr Phil watching to know what the world was up to with these issues I just had to live them.

That self pity lasted about 5 minutes. Some time you just have to get on with it. Life is too short to be miserable. There is just too much to do, see and explore. Too many nice people to get to know and other people who you may choose not to have in your life (negative energy from them)!

My new body while it is a bit different is enjoying the new found freedom. A new range of bras I would never have worn, no drooping, a bit fitter - the middle is disappearing. I've discovered ten pin bowling a great activity to share with the man in my life and good for the granny arms.

And to celebrate the birthday I baked chocolate cake to share with friends. Why not!

Ginty's Foolproof Chocolate Cake

2 cups Self Raising flour

1 2/3 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup cocoa

2/3 cup soft butter

1 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 eggs

Sift dry ingredients

Add butter, water, vanilla and beat 2 minutes

Add eggs and beat another 2 minutes

Bake in 180C for 40-50 minutes.

I used gas, middle shelf for exactly 50 minutes. I don't have an electric mixer so just beat with a wooden spoon. I cooked in a 26cm round tin lined with baking paper. The mixture can be doubled and cooked in a large rectangular tin for hoardes of hungry adolescents.

Turned out wonderful with a chocolate ganache frosting and served with fresh cream:

Chocolate Ganache Frosting

200 grams dark cooking chocolate

150 mls cream

45 grams diced butter

Melt cool slightly (until thickens so it is not too runny and runs off the top of the cake) Pour over cake.

On adolescence and the boy child...

Living in the Middle East away from the the boy child has its advantages ... no smelly adolescent clothes to wash and no adolescent rooms to clean. I'm so glad adolescence is in the past. Who would volunteer for all those hormones again?

It's been tough. The BC thing threw a spanner in his growing up. Changing schools, mum in and out of hospital, dad having to change jobs and then thanks to the GFC having to move here because of no work there. He's had to learn to adapt and adjust and deal with all those feelings. He loves his dad and misses him a lot, is it any wonder he was a tad cross about such a big change when both mum and dad moved away.

The girl child had her own hurdles to jump but is more resilient and knew her strengths.

Having said that though I feel I could write a book (not) on parenting an 18 year old boy from afar. Boys are so concrete. Remember the vision thing. He's had to step up to the plate. It's been interesting. My typing skills are improving some of my creations include: a step by step guide to cleaning the bathroom (illustrated); a grocery shopping list for a growing teenage boy; a timetable to fit cleaning, study, sleep and eating - (I know, hopeful aren't I?). All copies are available for any other hopeful mother.

How do you explain multi-tasking? How hard is it to put a load of washing on while you cook/eat dinner? How hard is it to squirt some cleaner on the shower glass while you have a shower? Well we won't even talk about the toilet.

He's getting there - he cleans his clothes, doesn't starve, manages his studies, a gruelling training program, doesn't do wild parties, doesn't smoke or drink or do drugs. I can't complain.

He's created a new word - a floordrobe. Why put your clothes away when the floor is there - empty?

The girl child has a chairdrobe.

He's finally forgiven us and decided to come and visit - yes another list of what to bring and what not to bring. Not forgetting that his chief instrument of physical torture (bike)has to be packed and brought with him because really (mum), he still needs to keep training.

The father is in fear. His gentle twice weekly rides have to be ramped up to meet the demands of the boy child's training. He loves riding with his dad.

Life will change for a month. They will have great bonding time.

At least I won't experience what I did when I went home for a flying visit recently. The boy child was racing away for the weekend. We shared a room - 2 single beds, 3 nights. This is something no mother should ever have to do with her 18 year old son. Ever.

Copies of lists, guides for the adolescent boy growing up and being independent can be emailed on request.

That pink colour ...

I really don't like breast cancer pink - there I've said it. If anyone can have post traumatic stress disorder from a colour that would be me. I have this great Geoff Bade dress that I bought before (the C word came into my life) in that pink - I just loved it still do but if I could change the colour I would.

I really don't like the word 'journey' either. Oh brother if I had one more person talk to me about the breast cancer journey I think I would scream.

I am entitled to say these things I'm from a minority group of people who've been there done that and have no breasts to show for it.

Lots of people said to me write a book. Well no.

What have I done? Well I've run away with my husband and left the children at home. I'm over the worst two years of my life and now is the time for another chapter of the adventure and you'll notice I didn't use the 'j' word once.