Interview 36

Age at interview: 48

Age at diagnosis: 45

Brief Outline: Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998. Under went a lumpectomy and was given radiotherapy and Zoladex.

Discusses why she switched from tamoxifen to Zoladex.

I was on tamoxifen for about four months. They didn't agree with me. So now I have a Zoladex injection every 28 days in my stomach. I get that off the nurse at my doctors'. And as far as that's, three years down the line there's been no return.

Yes.You said you'd had some side effects with the tamoxifen. What kind of side effects were these?

I put on a lot of weight. I was having these, well I still take them, the hot flushes but I call them hot sweats, where the sweat just pours out of you. I still take them a bit, I don't take them as bad.

And I was having stomach cramps. And so they took, took me off them and they gave me this injection, Zoladex.

I think it's just something similar, just a white ball is injected into your stomach. And that takes 28 days to go through your system.

Explains how joining a support group helped her to cope better with her illness and improved her...

After I had my operation I came home, and then I had that scare six months later. I was really so depressed and down. I felt as if the cancer was controlling me. Iended up with anti-depressant tablets because I was just sitting, and the next thing I was bursting out crying.

But as I say with the help of the support group and day centre it's just, it's changed my life.

You just need somebody to talk to because then you realise that you're not the only that's going through this, because there's thousands of women every day.

I was saying the other day I thought this is the best thing, it sounds stupid, but it's the best thing that's happened to me because I really meet people now. I have a social life.

My life has just completely changed from what it was and, I don't know it just is, my life is completely different to what it used to be before I had breast cancer.
 

Explains how relaxing through aromatherapy has benefited her generally.

So, do you have aromatherapy regularly?

Yes, every week.

How does it help?

It makes you, I can relax now. I must've spent 14 years of my life being all screwed up. I could not relax any part of my body. Now I can sit, I can relax. I know what it is to relax. I just, whereas before I didn't know the meaning of the word relax. So in a way that's done me good.

Did you have a very hectic lifestyle?

No. I wouldn't say that I had a hectic lifestyle, it was just, I think I was just one of these people that was just burned up all the time.

I lived on my nerves, but now I don't.
 

Explains how she made a choice between mastectomy and lumpectomy.

So the Friday the specialist came out to see me and she says' "We can either take you back into hospital, do another operation. "We will open it up again and remove more of the tissue, where the lump was and open up under your arms." It's what they call a wide local incision. 

And she explained it all to me. She said' "Then if we take some of your lymph glands away. If they come back the cancer has spread." She says' "It will be a course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and you'll go on tamoxifen for a good maybe five, ten years. "Or you can have a mastectomy. Whereas probably if you have a mastectomy it will just be a mastectomy. You probably won't need any further treatment."

And I thought' "Mastectomy. That's really drastic. To take my breast away for this little, this little lump?" It was only the size of a pea but it was getting bigger, it had been getting bigger but it still wasn't big. I thought that was a bit drastic.

And she said her advice was that, just to go back in and just take more tissue away and do the wide local incision. And I said' "Yeah, I think I'll go for that." I asked my daughter in Germany her advice as she saw it. She says to me as well' "Yeah mum go for that. I think a mastectomy is a bit drastic."

So I decided yeah, I'll go for that.