From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…
I confess that
from the moment my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, life whirled out of
our control. Following the initial biopsy, tears, surgery, chemotherapy, and
checkups – all of which were high drama – things calmed down considerably as
time blurred the clear recollection of that drama. During that time, my wife
jammed her hand against a wall, and we set off on a second, albeit much less
exciting journey called Lymphedema.
Six years later,
the adventure has become more of a “plodding slog” than anything else and has
been, to put it mildly, a pain in the…well, let me explain a teeny bit of it.
MONTHS ago, my
wife ordered a new “overnight sleeve” to help control lymphedema.
She has ordered
compression sleeves, gloves, and other materials from them in the past and
aside from being ridiculously difficult to get to (the place is literally
buried in a poorly marked warren of industrial park businesses), she’s often
been able to get what she needed.
I say often
because there have been problems with the garments being incorrectly sewn, too
tight, cut wrong, and other, less critical problems.
This past time,
this company has created NOTHING buy hassle for her/us. From claims that “insurance
doesn’t pay for this” to, “yes, yes, we ordered it but it hasn’t gotten here
yet”, the sleeve was so mired down in what I can only think of in the most
polite of terms as office confusion, that we ordered a “non-custom-made” sleeve
from an online company.
It arrived
promptly and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, it’s a sort of “one-size-fits-these-measurements”
kind of thing. It’s also uncomfortable (in its defense, NO compression sleeve
can ever be said to be comfortable!) and while it’s currently the tail-end of
winter and sweltering isn’t a problem (it’s 8°F (-16°C) this morning), it will
become a problem in August. It’s also huge.
I don’t exactly
recall how big the first one was, but it didn’t seem to be this big!
At any rate, this
entire journey into the hideous world of post-breast cancer lymphedema might
have been prevented half-a-decade ago if my wife’s doctor had begun immediate
treatment after she jammed her hand against a wall on Thanksgiving day in 2011.
THAT doctor didn’t “believe in” lymphedema treatment and so did nothing. What
were WE to do? We knew less about breast cancer and lymphedema than he did, so
we had no idea we should advocate for more aggressive treatment. (See: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-friend-scare-minnesota-state-fair-one.html)
No one had
bothered to mention lymphedema and the possibility of the “cure becoming worse
than the disease”. Because at THIS point, there’s nothing anyone can do…
Whoops, did I say
nothing they CAN do? I meant to say that NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING FOR
POST-MASTECTOMY/NODE-REMOVAL BREAST CANCER PATIENTS WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED LYMPHEDEMA!!!!
(http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2012/11/lymphedema-treatment-past-presentis.html)
They have new
surgical techniques to PREVENT it, which I reported on here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2016/08/breast-cancer-research-right-now-48.html,
but is there anything that can TREAT it?
That will be my
next BC Research RIGHT NOW!!! post.
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