Thread: Breast Cancer

Hey Specialist,

My Heart goes out to you mate, my wife has just finished a bout of Radiation and Chemo and I can understand where you are at the moment, I hope that all goes well for you and your wife,

Good Luck

HazzaB

I feel for you and especially your wife. My wife has been down that road, but thankfully has come out on the right side. The hardest thing is to sit back and watch and not be able to do anything to help. The up side is that successful outcomes are becoming more and more positive. For what it is worth we are on your side.
Jim

Thanks for the supportive comments fellas. It seems that I'm not the lone ranger in all this, just in Longreach alone, it seems that every second or third has had cancer of some kind or another.

I think that the hardest part of the whole thing is the sitting back and watching the suffering that the chemo causes, pain lethargy, hair loss and a depressive state, not depression, but a loss of vitality on the whole.

Still it's better than the alternative.

Robert

Hang in there mate. It sure does take its toll. Every journey is different. Many common threads but at the end of the day we just have to stay focused and +ve. We have to let the "experts" do their thing and hope that their very well educated guess works for the loved one that they are treating. That being said they can do some amazing things these days.
Feel free to PM me if you ever want to rant to someone who is going through some similar, but different, stuff.
All the best
Kevin

Not good specialist!!

Hang in there and I hope things go well with the treatment.

All the best to you both.

Best wishes for the missus' recovery specialist.

Yes, it is hard to sit by and watch someone you love suffer.

Course there's always cups of tea to make and plumping up the cushions. Also trying to share a joke and have a conversation. Just keeping on track, despite the uncertainty.

Best wishes for SWMBO.
My job entails seeing lots of people with cancer of various sorts. She is not alone but this doensn't make it easier. I hope the treatment goes well.

My wife has had it twice with episodes separated by five years or just short of a clearance from the first time. Like the OP my wife reported symptoms but the doctors refused to diagnose cancer as there was no lump etc. She insisted that they do a needle biopsy and they still reported no cancer and she then resorted to a new doctor. He took her more seriously and did a surgical biopsy and told her she was in the last stage before cancer but by the time she was admitted to hospital six weeks later it had turned to cancer, all without a lump to be seen. Doctors are like mechanics, there are good ones and better ones and bad ones.

Our experience was that the public system was fantastic in every way right through both episodes and we could not have had better treatment if we had been in private. My wife is continuing to walk this earth as proof of that BTW.

I wish you both the best in the future and given the treatment today early intervention generally sees a bright and long lived future.

I know your pain mate, my partner was diagnosed with breast cancer at only 35. It was caught early but she still had to do the surgery, chemo and radiotherapy (in Brisbane) and she's in her final year now of hormone therapy.

If you have any questions about her treatment please feel free to contact me, and I can give you the details of a really good oncologist in Brisbane who your missus can see while she's down there.

All the best to you and The Minister for War and Finance.

Hi Specialist,

My heart goes out to your wife and the rest of your family. (We went through it last year) The good thing is that there are excellent doctors out there (some not so good sadly) and the chances of overcoming it are much better now than they were some years ago.

None the less it really hurts to see a loved one go through it all and see how the treatment knocks the patient around. My good wife has a clear bill of health but is struggling to get her strength back (probably the hormone treatment)

Best advice I can give, is as a family be together and be there for each other. We could not have made it without the help and support of our adult children and some very caring friends.


Thinking of you all,

Graham (AKA Chipman)

Hi Just remembered a few things:

1. Make sure you register with medicare for the safety net (especially if you are going private)

2. See if you can get your doctor to "admit" your wife into hospital for the chemo and what ever you can eg 1/2 day. Your health fund can then pay for most of it. If not, you could be up for some large up front expenses and until you reach the safety net, you don't get all that much back. (My kids helped us out until we got the refunds back from medicare)

Someone on this forum gave me this advice and it was surely a great help so I am passing it on.

Cheers,

Chipman

Our hearts go out to your wife and you, we have also been down this path recently so understand where you are.
I endorse the comments above, and would add that its a good idea to connect with your local support group, the ladies here were so helpful to my wife, I am sure it helped tremendously.
With our particular private cover we found that insuring as two singles rather than as a couple halved the amount of excess payable on hospital admissions without an increase in premium. As a couple we had to pay 5 admission excesses before reaching the $1000 safety net but as a single the safety net applied at $500. This is calculated per annum so in our case when treatment carried over the end of the calendar year we had to pay the excess again. Something to think about.
Best wishes to your wife and you from Bill and Wendy.

I wish your wife, you and the family all the best on this journey and hope, that there are no detours from a happy ending in the future.

Keep positive thoughts through this journey.'

Thanks for all you kind words.

We have just been away for our fourth bout of chemo, thinking that there were just two to go, but it seems that the type that they were using isn't working properly, her blood count is going up, not down as expected, so they have changed the drug and we have another four treatments to go. This new drug isn't too good on the patient apparently, from all the information that I can glean from the pharmaceutical sites on the internet, it is much stronger than the first lot, with many more side effects. Still it seems that we have to put our trust in those doctors.

See if you can get your doctor to "admit" your wife into hospital for the chemo and what ever you can eg 1/2 day. Your health fund can then pay for most of it. If not, you could be up for some large up front expenses and until you reach the safety net, you don't get all that much back.

Thanks for the heads up, We are "lucky" that we live so far away in that all the treatments seem to have been done as admittances and so far have only cost our excess.

As a couple we had to pay 5 admission excesses before reaching the $1000 safety net

Our health fund, medibank private has changed the program and from the 1st of June, even as a couple, a single admission only incurs a $500 excess, we ended up paying $800. Still it has covered a whole lot of expenses while getting the job done.

Our experience was that the public system was fantastic in every way right through both episodes and we could not have had better treatment if we had been in private.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way bagging the public system, they do a fantastic job with the resources that they have. I think that they are hamstrung by red tape and funding. I just felt that given that my wifes mother had a double mastectomy with the pathology of precancerous cells, we couldn't wait for the public system to act.

I will keep in contact over the course the new treatment.
Robert