Pauline

Age at interview: 52

Age at diagnosis: 51

Brief Outline:

Pauline had three excisions, radiotherapy and tamoxifen. She had DCIS as well as invasive breast cancer.

Background:

Pauline is a teacher and single. Ethnic background/nationality' White British

More about me...

Pauline was recalled after her first routine mammogram and was shocked that she would need more tests. She found having a biopsy painful and upsetting and had to go back to the hospital for another biopsy because the results had been inconclusive. Pauline was told that she could have DCIS but would need to have surgery for doctors to find out. 

 

Pauline worried about going into hospital because she had never been before. She had a wide local excision and the results showed that she did not have DCIS. The calcifications on the mammogram had been benign but her doctor told her that she would need to have a check-up three months later, including another mammogram. This mammogram found DCIS and Pauline had a second excision. The results of this surgery showed that Pauline had also had some invasive breast cancer, but this was removed during the operation. However, another area of concern had also been found and Pauline had to have a third excision. She was also prescribed tamoxifen and, shortly after her third operation, had radiotherapy.

 

Pauline said she felt lucky that her cancer had been found and treated early and that she did not need to have a mastectomy. She found a lot of useful information on the internet and, and said joining a support group was helpful for both information and support.

 

Pauline was interviewed for the Healthtalkonline website in 2004.

Pauline had three operations and, by the last one, felt calm beforehand and was very well afterwards.

The 18th of January came and I went in for the operation. And this time I was much, much more calmer. I realised how lucky I was because I had been meeting only people with mastectomies. And even though it was my third operation I was much, much calmer and the fact I met some of the nurses who were there before, that made me feel better.

 

But when I went into the ward in fact there was a lady who was very, very ill opposite- not opposite me, on the other side and slightly down a bit, there were only four beds in fact. And she was dying in fact, and her family were coming in and that was quite traumatic, you know seeing her in the ward. I felt it wasn’t fair. She didn’t have breast cancer, she came in for something else. And there was a lovely old lady there, she was 83 and had breast cancer. And I thought to myself it’s good in a way that they’re doing operations for older people, so at least when you get it when you’re older, you can still go in to get it done. And another lady had come down from Derry to have her operation, which is a long journey. But it wasn’t breast cancer. I happened to be the only one in that small ward with breast cancer and needed only a wide local excision.

 

But I was in good form. And the doctor didn’t come in the night before. Usually she did and I missed that and I thought “Oh it’s usually nice to see the doctor, the surgeon.” She didn’t come in, the nurse told me that I would be having surgery on the Monday morning but she said there will be no localisation. I was so delighted, I was so delighted because I knew that was the worst part of the whole day.

 

So I went down for the operation and I saw the anaesthetist the day before and I told him about feeling really drugged the last time. And he said “I can’t really change it”, I said “Could you not give me less?” and he said “No I can’t really change it”.

 

But anyway this time before the operation they weighed me, and they’d never weighed me before and somebody said to me later that they weighed me because of the amount of anaesthetic to give me.

 

So anyway I went into the operation and came out of it. I felt great. I had no drowsiness, no sickness, I felt really good and in fact I was walking round the ward talking to all the patients. And then they were saying to me “Gosh, you look great”, I really did feel good.

Pauline wanted relevant information at each different stage of treatment. She got it from various different sources.

Well all through the time I just wanted to know about breast cancer. Anything about breast cancer. And I asked Google, which is one of the search engines, to send me a news alert on the breast cancer. So daily they would send me information from November, when I started doing it. And that was very interesting because there it tells me all the latest research on Arimidex and tamoxifen and all the latest ways of finding breast cancers without having to operate. This one thing was talking about electricity, some kind of electricity beams going through and they’re not having to operate with people because they’re able to find out. And another thing is kind of like a pap smear that they do for people with cervical cancer, something similar they’re doing in America and it seems brilliant what’s happening, it’s all so new.

 

So they don’t need to operate?

 

Oh they mightn’t have to operate, yeah, yeah. Or some other needle thing that goes in and takes these cells out and examines them and tells people that they’re abnormal or they could be cancer instead of having to operate, instead of having to do all that, you know, biopsies and all, which would be great.

 

Yes. So was there information you wanted that you felt just wasn’t there or you had questions which never were really answered?

 

I was amazed how much I could get on the internet I was getting far too much in fact, I was quite happy with it, I found out a lot about radiotherapy and would have liked to have had more talking from patients about radiotherapy. I didn’t find much on people who had been through it, so I was searching, searching and I was looking for the side effects of radiotherapy. I wasn’t finding an awful lot from ordinary people. I was finding it from, you know, hospital reports on the effects of radiotherapy. I would have loved to have somebody say “this is the way it affected me” you know, I’d like that.

 

Did you see any of the videos on the DIPEx website?

 

Yes, I did find some there, yes.

 

So did you ever feel there were questions that you had that weren’t answered or what were your, you know, what were your questions on your mind?

 

The main thing at the beginning was that I wanted to find as much as I can about DCIS and they gave me a leaflet, which was great. And then when I was put on the tamoxifen I wanted to find out as much as I could about tamoxifen and they did give me a leaflet. And my sister’s a pharmacist so she was able to give me some more, which was great. And every procedure I wanted to go through, I wanted to find out more about. I wanted to find out about anaesthetics, well I didn’t really find out an awful lot about that. I wanted to find out more about what food I should eat before or after operations you know, things like that.