I actually hesitated to write this post thinking future employers or insurance companies might read this and discriminate against me, but then I thought what the hell.
A yearly trip to my gynecologist proved to be rather stressful. Dr. Shuster is very thorough and very careful. She hadn’t seen me since diagnosis and treatment and she really wanted to pour over my chart, analyzing my family history, looking at things from every angle. I actually do appreciate how careful she is, if it were not for her practice, I probably would never have found my breast cancer so early, but I wasn’t expecting such a onslaught of concern. Not about breast cancer returning, it seems like I have probably taken care of that one, but because of the particular clusters of cancers in my family, she said she wanted to screen me for pancreatic, colon, ovarian and uterine cancers regularly. Eh, what? Not exactly what I wanted to hear. It also got me worrying about my brother, prostate cancer is in the “cluster” and I started to feel stressed out about a possible family plague. Dr. Shuster also raised some concern about the increased risk of uterine cancer while taking Tamoxifen (the anti-breast cancer drug I have to take for 5 years) so she ordered a baseline ultrasound and is going to be monitoring that too. I left her office feeling like a cancer time bomb.
A friend mentioned a theory she has about everyone having a unique “toxic bucket.” Some people have a shallow bucket and they can’t tolerate as much pollution, carcinogens, stress, lack of sleep etc… This kind of resonated with me. I think I need to be more careful not to fill up what might be a genetic shallow toxic bucket. I have fallen back into some bad habits; overworking, skipping meals, stress, lack of exercise. It’s hard for me to balance it all. I think I need a vacation.
