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Cancer Helped Me Find Myself

Writer's picture: Surviving Breast CancerSurviving Breast Cancer

By Kristen Carter


The medical part of my story

My first brush with breast cancer was in 2008, when my annual mammogram spotted something suspicious in my right breast. A needle biopsy showed it to be ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS); what my radiologist called Stage 0 breast cancer.


I soon found myself in the office of the city’s (Johannesburg, South Africa) preeminent breast specialist, who told me from the beginning that her approach was aggressive. For someone with “busy breasts” like mine, she recommended a double mastectomy, with or without reconstruction; my choice.


But I couldn’t get myself to have something so radical done to my body. It was only Stage 0 after all! There was no spread to my lymph nodes and no other signs of cancer in either breast. Instead, I opted for a lumpectomy, followed by an oral estrogen blocker. Because there had been no history of breast cancer in my family, I thought this was a fluke; I was confident that with careful monitoring, I could prevent a recurrence, or at least catch it early.


I was diligent about follow-up mammograms and ultrasounds, but in 2018, I got the shock of my life: not only had cancer come back, it had spread throughout my body, mostly to my liver and bones.


I didn’t even find out from a mammogram; I went to my primary care doctor after my skin started itching all over and the whites of my eyes had turned yellowish; I thought I’d picked up hepatitis! The truth was so much worse: tumors were blocking the bile ducts that drain from my liver into my digestive tract, and the bilirubin was flooding my bloodstream.


My new oncologist said that Step One was to try and open those bile ducts; until then, my body wouldn’t even be able to handle chemotherapy. The first surgical procedure to try and do that was unsuccessful, and things were looking bleak. My bilirubin levels were soaring. Fortunately, a new surgeon was brought in and the second surgery was successful. Within a couple of days, I was on a massive dose of carboplatin; an old-school chemotherapy they hoped would begin shrinking my tumors, particularly the ones in my liver. Once my liver was functioning, they could put me on the hormone-targeted therapies appropriate for my estrogen-receptive cancer.


I got better. My cancer responded and by late that year, my cancer had receded throughout my body. But the joy was short-lived: by Spring 2019 it was back again, spreading even further through my spine, ribs, and pelvis. Further hormonal treatments weren’t making a dent in it.


My oncologist wanted to try one more hormonal treatment, but his outlook was pessimistic. He even told me once that, with the average life expectance of someone with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) being between two and five years, some people had to be on the low end.


I left that doctor.


I found someone at our region’s number-one hospital who would take me on as a patient, and she immediately put me on a drug (capecitabine, or Xeloda), that is not specifically for breast cancer but for a variety of metastatic cancers. The side effects were known to be severe, but she thought it was my best bet at the time.


Thank