As far as I’m concerned, lumps are not good news.

When I had my scan back in January, it threw up two things. One was that I had Tendinitis and Trochanteric Bursitis in my hip. I’ve since seen a specialist who has suggested a steroid injection will alleviate the pain whilst walking. However, since seeing him the pain has diminished massively, so I’m hoping that after 2 months of suffering, it’s got better by itself, and that’ll be the end of it. Yay!

The second thing is that they’ve found an 8cm cyst in my abdomen. I’ve had a couple of scans on it now, and my Oncologist is keen to stress that he is not worried about it. I get that. However, I was told that my breast lumps were ‘only’ cysts, and we all know how that turned out!

Apparently, these cysts are quite common in women my age, it just seems to be the size of it that’s causing the headache. The doctors need to decide what to do about it. In most cases they would just wait and see if it sorted itself out, and if it didn’t they’d whip it out in a few months time. The complexity with me, is that I’ve got reconstructive surgery booked in at the end of March, which will be using tissue from my stomach. Once that’s been done, it makes getting into my belly that bit trickier.

Of course, in the back of my mind I am worried that it could be cancer again. From what I’ve read from reliable and reputable sources, it is difficult to tell if this type on cyst is cancer from a scan alone. There are blood tests that can be done to see if there is an elevated marker, but a benign cyst could cause that too. In my head, I am aware that it would be very unlikely to be cancer as I only just finished Herceptin last month. It would have to be a different kind of cancer (HER-) to get past that marvellous piece of modern medicine.

So, the plan is, I see a specialist this afternoon to get his take on it. Then I reconvene with my Oncologist next week to see what the plan will be. I sometimes feel like I’m a poor excuse for a human being. All these things seem to keep happening. I just want a quiet life. I want to work on getting my brain back, I want to feel less tired ALL THE TIME, I just want to stop getting these curve balls. I want to stop feeling so sorry for myself and as Mel off Bake Off would say “Get a ruddy grip!”. I’ve done the hard bit, but the end doesn’t seem to be in sight.

So, in the absence of anything else, I’ll just have to keep on, keeping on. Seems to be standard these days.

Jx