After I got the results of my preliminary testing of the lump in my breast, time passed by so fast and so blur that I don’t know what had happened!

I was tasked by the Doctor from Hospital ‘H’ to go for CT and Bone scans on the next two days. I cried when I was waiting for my turn to take the CT scan. People who know me will tell you, “Wendy is not someone who will cry non stop”. I was like a tap that cannot be switch off after the initial period of my diagnoses.

I don’t know how many cancer patients or survivors can relate with me that the initial period of the diagnoses, each time we had to go for any scans, in our head all we hope to hear from the Doctor’s mouth is “Sorry, we made a mistake.” But this sentence never seem to come.

I would always remember the day that I had to take the bone scan. I went to the counter to get the injection of radiation drugs so that later the machine can deduct any spreading of the cancer after the drugs travel through my veins (I think). #Don’t crucify me if I get medical facts wrong, I am not a doctor! One of the trainee doctors must have thought that I looked pretty harmless to be a guinea pig for him to try poking me with a needle on a vein in my hand that is hardly visible even to me and it hurt me so much that I wanted to punch his face. (FYI: The part on my hand swelled up and later it bruise quite badly so I am not bluffing!) I shouted: “It hurt!” He said to me “I am sorry. I will try on another vein.” I was like (mind my language) “WTF!” in my brain not out loud! An elderly nurse came and removed the needle and put a plaster. When the medicine had finally been injected into my veins, the trainee doctor said sorry to me again. In my heart I was thinking, can I punch his face and say sorry to him twice and it will be ‘all okay’? Anyways, I decided that it was not worth having cancer and getting charged because of a ‘Sxxxxx’ doctor and I dropped it.

I don’t know why but the places that I went to in Hospital ‘H’ , the rooms always seemed so gloomy. I found myself becoming more and more depressed after coming back from there.

I went back to the doctor on Friday after I had done all the tests. This time round, I asked my sister and aunt to go with me to the doctor’s for the review. When we went into the Doctor’s room, there were one nurse standing by the door, one intern behind the doctor and one more nurse standing behind my sister. I felt surrounded! The doctor told me there is no spreading of the cancer in my body but he kept trying to scare me by mentioning that there is a black dot on my upper thigh where I knocked myself when I was in bali one month plus ago which had not heal yet. Then he said ‘I MUST DO MASTECTOMY BECAUSE I HAVE NO CHOICE!’ But I still need to go through 6 months of chemotherapy. After he had finished telling me my “doom and gloom” results, my sister asked him, if chemotherapy is to reduce the size of the tumor then why need to do mastectomy? Why she cannot do lumpectomy? He was stumped and did not answer. He then quickly sent me to the breast care nurse for “counselling”.

Again at the office of the breast care nurse, she said the exact same thing as the doctor: I HAVE NO CHOICE AND I NEED TO DO MASTECTOMY! My sister asked her, “What do you mean she has no choice?? Its her body.” The breast care nurse who was supposed to “counsel” me was stumped for an answer. Later before we left her office, she wrote on the form for me that “PATIENT DID NOT WANT TO LISTEN TO THE OPTIONS.” Okay, the counselling session went “fabulous”. I was pushed further into my depressive mode after these two incidents.

After we came out of the hospital, my aunt asked me: Do you have insurance? I said,”Yes”. She said, Okay we go to private hospital. And she made an appointment with Dr Mona Tan from Mount Elizabeth Hospital (Her clinic is called MammoCare). If my aunt did not suggest going for private or making the appointment for me, I think I probably kill myself while undergoing treatments at Hospital ‘H’ as the staff there including the doctor and oncologist have no empathy. I was so depressed then.

I read in an article, fighting cancer, you need to stay positive. You can be strong physically but mentally you are so negative, your brain will slowly send signals to your body and they will slowly shut down and in the end, it will be “RIP” for me…

I must say this, there will be people who are alright with mastectomy but I cannot. I cannot fathom looking at that scar EVERYDAY OF MY LIFE when I change or after shower. I know we can do reconstruction surgery but if your doctor told you that “Oh as your nipple has started contracting, we cannot be sure if we can save your nipple.” A reconstructed breast with no nipple, the news from the doctor just got better. #itssarcasm:)

* I must say during this period the friends who are REALLY there for me, accompanying me to doctors when my aunt was busy, taking time out to go for walks with me, bring me out for food, come to my place to have dinner with me, clean up my room for me, ordering food for me when my parents were away and many more things that they have done and continue to do for me this period of time and of course my family ESPECIALLY MY SISTER AND AUNT. Every step I take to recovery both of them are there. My sister will check on me everyday and my aunt take time off every week when I have chemo treatments. My brother in law is also very supportive, he would get me stress ball to exercise my hand as I was having so much pain after each chemo due to the drawing of blood and the nurses unable to find my veins because they were so thin.

I then remembered when I first become a Christian, one of my prayers was “Dear Father, please give me a family who loves me.” And he gave lots of them! My friends mentioned above plus my family are my family, this journey I am taking is a long journey which without them I will not be able to come so far.

I learnt one thing: God never forgets on your prayers. Everything will come in his timing.