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Just diagnosed with DCIS 5.5 weeks postpartum

Breast Cancer | Last Active: Aug 2 6:08pm | Replies (9)

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Profile picture for Chris, Volunteer Mentor @auntieoakley

I can tell you in almost all of the hundreds of the women I have been a patient advocate for locally, this is the scariest time. You have a diagnosis and nothing else, except what you can find on line.
I know this is really hard, I am a 20 year survivor. Try to breathe, during times of extreme stress I like to take a deep breath and blow it out, a few of these breaths can induce focus and relax your diaphragm. Then I can remind myself that now is not my worry time, I save that for the 30 minutes that I set aside for it. This allows me to hack my brain and say I can only worry during that 30 minutes, allowing myself to refocus on what I was doing.
Once you have met with your doctor, they will advise you on when to think about weaning your baby, you have time! You can enjoy your new baby and let the breast cancer sit on the back burner until you see the doctor. DCIS is a kind of encapsulated pre cancer so it isn’t growing bigger by the hour. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take it seriously, but you can take that panic feeling out of it.
Do you have ways to help you keep that stress down so you can cherish this time with your new baby?

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Replies to "I can tell you in almost all of the hundreds of the women I have been..."

You’re right. It WAS the scariest time. I tend to catastrophize, so it was hard for me not to play out worst-case scenarios. Now that I’ve had my surgery with a fantastic outcome, it’s a lot easier to mentally process. Though I’m still very nervous about secondary cancers from radiation. Thankfully I’m in counseling at the cancer center and that is proving helpful.