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    Coping with breast cancer
    Coping with breast cancer
    Coping with breast cancer
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Coping with breast cancer

    By Laura Pedrinelli Carrara

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    About this ebook

    From the moment you receive a diagnosis of cancer, life changes. At that moment, it is like a bolt from the blue. There are many states of mind that are lived, from fear to impotence, from anger to despair. Every woman, however, has a great vital force within herself that she brings out more than ever in critical moments and which helps her to overcome even such a hard and complex path.

    In this period of continuous checks, treatments and surgical procedures, women often find themselves having to make decisions, to make choices, exactly when they have to concentrate all their strength and thoughts on themselves.

    This book is based both on personal and professional experiences, which I had as a psychologist in the medical oncology, breast surgery and imaging breast diagnostic units. It has been conceived as a helping support for women who must undergo breast surgery or have already undergone it, to obtain some practical and psychological suggestions for dealing better with the surgical-medical path. Reading this text will be useful also to relatives and friends, who often do not know how to react and who feel much more powerless than the woman herself does.

    The covered topics concern:

    Packing the bag for the hospitalization, with the specific tricks foreseen for the breast surgical intervention.

    An overview on the main therapies and some useful precautions to reduce the symptoms of the therapies (chemo, radiotherapy, hormone therapy) or to better live with them (pieces of information about wigs and turbans, etc.; the targeted use of makeup). Psychological suggestion regarding the relationship with one's children, relatives and friends. Suggestions to relatives and friends on how to behave with a breast-operated woman. The basic rules to find psychological wellness. Effective communication techniques. Stress management. A mention of civil and work rights for cancer patients.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBadPress
    Release dateNov 5, 2018
    ISBN9781386970422
    Coping with breast cancer

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      Book preview

      Coping with breast cancer - Laura Pedrinelli Carrara

      INDEX

      PREAMBLE

      INTRODUCTION

      DEALING WITH THE IMAGE DIAGNOSTIC EXAMINATIONS

      The CAT scan

      The MRI scan

      Mammography

      Mammary ultrasound

      The needle biopsy and the needle aspiration

      THE BAG FOR THE HOSPITALIZATION

      DEALING WITH THE SIDE EFFECTS CAUSED BY THE ONCOLOGICAL THERAPIES

      Chemotherapy

      Alopecia from chemotherapy

      Wig, turban, scarf or hat?

      Other side effects induced by chemotherapy

      Hormone therapy

      The most common side effects

      How to deal with the side effects

      Radiotherapy

      The most common side effects

      How to deal with the side effects

      Aesthetic makeup utilization in oncology

      Elements of makeup to compensate the treatments’ effects on the visage

      Elements of makeup to cover scars

      THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPOINTMENT

      Practical psychological aspects

      Relatives and friends’ visits

      Communicate your illness to your own children

      Relatives and friends: what to say and what not to say

      The technique of reformulation

      Stress management

      Tips for dealing with breast cancer

      RIGHTS OF SICK PEOPLE

      Exemption from the payment of the health ticket

      The Italian law 104 dated 5th February 1992 for the assistance, social integration and the rights of disabled people

      Work placement

      Reimbursement of travel expenses

      THE VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS

      How voluntary associations work

      Why to contact the voluntary associations

      What are the voluntary associations

      REFUSING CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

      CONCLUSIONS

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      PREAMBLE

      Neoplastic disease is always a very tough experience, devastating both for the persons who lives it and for their family. Often the network of daily contacts - the closest friends, colleagues and acquaintances - is greatly affected. Indeed this condition inevitably puts us in front of our fragility and forces us, in some way, to come to terms with ourselves and with the precariousness of life.

      Among all the neoplastic diseases, breast cancer affects women in their most profound essence, in their being a person, a woman, a mother: it is not just an ordinary cancer. It is much more. It destroys the image that every woman has of herself, an image that is also associated with an aesthetic value that culture has always assigned to the breast.

      It is therefore important that the woman who is facing this adventure, that will anyway leave an indelible mark on her body and soul, can count on the society support, in its various components. Of course, first of all I mean the health component – to which she must rely for a correct diagnosis, for the therapy (often itself a source of further problems) and any support of assistance. Then I also mean the voluntary associations, which are present in almost all the local realities, and play an irreplaceable role by filling, sometimes, the deficiencies of the health system. In them, sick women find motivated professionals and traveling companions who, like them, have lived this experience and can help them return to everyday life.

      In the most difficult moments, however, even a book can help to not feel alone and lost in front of the many small and big difficulties that the disease reserves. I am sure that this little handbook will be a precious ally for those women who experience in everyday life the loneliness that immediately follows the diagnosis and even the suspicion of breast cancer. With special care and attention, the various moments of the days following the diagnosis are illustrated. The author examines with skill and accuracy the practical aspects but also the psychological difficulties, offering valid ideas and advice. Even the technical aspects concerning diagnostic tests, surgical maneuvers and bureaucratic procedures are deepen with competence, using a comprehensible language.

      Inviting them to read this book, I wish all women the will to overcome this difficult moment that will surely change and strengthen them.

      Dr. Valeria Benigni

      Medical Director at the Medical Directorate of the Hospital of Senigallia (Single Regional Health Company of the Marche Italian region – VAST AREA nr. 2), specialist in Oncology and Hygiene and Preventive Medicine.

      From 2004 to 2013 she was a volunteer physician and health director (2009 - 2013) of the ANDOS (National Association of Breast Operated Women) of Senigallia.

      INTRODUCTION

      In many cases, discovering having an oncological disease is compared to a bolt from the blue. We all know this disease, which has become social since it is widespread, but it always seems that it must happen to others and never to us. We hardly can expect this to happen.

      Some women even avoid preventive controls (breast screening, self-examination, breast examinations) believing that they are healthy or perhaps, most likely, they avoid them to dispel the possibility of being sick in a magical way. Some people, and not just for breast cancer, delude themselves that if they do not do the checks they do not find anything and therefore they are fine.

      In reality, if there is something, it is good to find it as soon as possible, because the later you notice it the worst the situation will become. The sooner you manage to intervene, the greater the chances of survival, which in the case of breast cancer are really high. On the contrary, by waiting too much, one can develop a situation that becomes too complex to solve.

      Checks ups are like photographs taken inside our body: they only display what is there. Not doing them means not seeing the disease and not seeing it doesn’t mean it is not there.

      In the event that the investigations are inclined for the possibility of having developed the disease, a specific medical alert is created: a diagnostic procedure begins, focused on understanding the real nature of that nodule that was found with self-examination or maybe while washing in the shower or during screening. Some women notice that after they fall they have pain in the breast area and the medical checks find that small mass. Probably fall and pain have nothing to do with the cancer she has, but the woman connects them spontaneously.

      If the investigations reveal the presence of a malignant tumor without any doubt or in percentage of probability (C3, C4, C5) a surgical-medical procedure begins, during which the person has to face new and sometimes harsh experiences. Such experiences follow one another during an intense and difficult period, but then, in most cases, they go towards an increasing disengagement until the moment when the person is able to fully return to normal life.

      Undergoing surgery, chemotherapy and / or radiation therapy means submitting to situations that, in many cases, were previously not directly known and starting a path made of doubts.

      • Doubts about how one’s body will react to surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

      • Doubts about how tumour markers will be at each control.

      • Doubts about the effectiveness of therapies.

      • Doubts about the outcome of the CT and other control tests.

      • Doubts about the possibility of recidivism.

      • Doubts about one’s survival.

      • Doubts about one's own psychic strength or those of the beloved ones.

      • Doubts about the possibility of keeping one's job.

      • Doubts about the quality and quantity of symptoms that may occur as a result of therapies (nausea, weight gain, constipation, etc.) or that are being (understand if they are caused by the therapies, by the tumour, by a flu, for example).

      • Doubts about the choice of the oncologist or other reference doctors.

      Nobody knows before, with precision, how and when the symptoms will occur or what will be the result in the future of that therapy; one

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