(Original title – The Vanishing Glass)

My particular cancer, Inflammatory Breast Cancer (“IBC”), is rare and it’s nasty. So I’m having four of the five options of treatment available to me:

• Chemo for 16 – 24 weeks (depending if I’m well enough to do a dose-dense treatment)
• Surgery (probs a double mastectomy – whoooo free reduction and tummy tuck to rebuild!)
• Radiation (and still no superpowers)
• Hormone Therapy (because a 33 year old needs to experience what menopause is like before she gets menopause for reals)

The fifth doesn’t apply because my cancer cells aren’t HER2 positive.

This big question everyone wants to know is how cancer is my boob. There’s not an easy answer. Generally, IBC starts at Stage 3, but after a conversation I had with my breast care nurse, I was told that mine is likely Stage 2 on the cusp of Stage 3, which is great news. Seems I really did see the symptoms the first day they appeared which meant I got to the doctor within 24 hours of symptoms appearing.

Stages of cancer (usually Stage I, II, III, IV) don’t really apply to breast cancer, she told me. They define it as Early or Advanced, and mine is early. That said, I still don’t have the full information yet – and I likely won’t until after surgery and they remove the weirdness and do more tests on it. So far all my bone, heart, CT and stuff has come up clear, with the exception of a small 1cm area on my liver which looks to be a cyst (which doesn’t surprise me, I have liver function issues and doctors are always asking me if I’m an alcoholic).

So, chemo is up first, beginning Tuesday. I’m not super nervous about it, I already have someone lined up to sit with me through it. Social workers and a psychologist may pop past to say hi, because my nurse and I are a little worried that sitting in the chair having poison pumped through me might be the moment that it really hits me that my life is going to be supremely shithouse for the next six months, and they’d like me to develop some relationships with people who can help me. I am not looking forward to treatment at all, except for the fact that it will let me not have cancer anymore.

I am pretty calm about all this, I am expecting a crash at some point, but the way I see it, fear and anxiety are all useless emotions and I will get me literally nowhere but feeling worse if I spend the next 24 weeks wallowing in a pool of my own tears. I’m not the only person in the world with cancer, I have a good outlook and I’m quite determined to not let this defeat me.

I’ve always known my body was plotting against me, and now I get to fight back.