Because October is breast cancer month, mediator and life coach Jacobien has written a blog about her own experiences about the consequences of breast cancer treatment.
Of course, it's just her. Of course, all for a good cause. Of course, it could always be worse.
In addition to all investigations, where you always have to undress.
Read also Jacobien's previous blog: ‘Angels‘
Stellages, where you have to hang with your breasts in front of nurses with the shame on your jaws. Which they then pull to hang them in the right place.
Claustrophobia-inducing scanning devices that spray you with radioactive junk until you almost glow. Equipment that has the mission to crush your breasts to a centimeter and thereby make it half a meter longer.
The liters of blood that you left behind in the hospital at the end of the process with a lot of pain and effort, because of the too fine and hard to find veins.
Suffering a collapsed lung when placing a port-a-cath while there is a 1 percent chance of this.
The nerve-wracking wait between exams and results. The sleepless nights. The side effects of the chemo; nauseous, tired, sad, short fuse, metallic taste, nosebleeds, neuropathy, painful joints, dry skin, painful nails peeling off, bleeding gums, gain weight, skin that can no longer stand sunlight, red head and bald. Losing your chest. The drains.
The star-wars-like entourage of the radiation, lying with all crosses and stripes on your body, wearing strange glasses, looking with a snorkel hose in your mouth, clamped on your nose, to a monitor and then quietly having to take your breath for 21 seconds as the Republic Gunship circles around you, shooting its rays at you. That you forget almost everything because of the haze that the chemo pulls through your brain and that makes reading no longer possible. Everything for a good cause.
In addition to all this, you have to stay positive and not let your head hang. Don't make it bigger than it is and just let it go. Don't get caught up in it and kids are flexible. Well, and your hair is just hair, you know that yourself. But it is only one container that the large freighter “Cancer” carries with it. Everything for a good cause!
2017 was not really a year for mediator and life coach Jacobien to look back on with a good feeling, or so it seemed at first. She was in a labor dispute and was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now that the fog clears after the treatments, she writes about living with cancer, motherhood and what else comes her way from here to there.
Read more? Take a look at By-bien.nl and her Instagram account Biencoacht.
