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Breast Cancer in womenArrow
Women 50 - 69
Interview 42  

Interview 42

Age at Interview: 52
Sex: Female
Age at Diagnosis: 48
Background:

Brief outline:Diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in 1997. Was given chemotherapy, a mastectomy with reconstruction, followed by radiotherapy and Tamoxifen.


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Explains why she had to have two reconstructive operations.

 



It was, it was odd because they take the tissue from your tummy and then push it up inside and reconstruct the breast which means that you have to sit, lie on the bed with your feet up, your knees up for three days. So that was a bit constricting.

But once I got out of bed I was fine, it was good. And then I think I started realising that things were not maybe as good as they should be because the breast was, looked incredibly bruised and I now know it was necrosis, but at the time I didn't know. And I must admit they did absolutely everything in their power to save it but it was just, it was just useless.

The plastic surgeon who'd helped in the TRAM flap, he did the LD flap. And the breast side of it was fine but unfortunately my back split open and I had a huge hole in my back.

So I was actually in the ward for four weeks at that time which was actually longer than I'd been there having my mastectomy. So my back was sewn back up and that was the end of that stage of the surgery. I was working very full time and looking forward to my last surgery which was planned for about the September.

And this was to get the, I was going to have a Becker, which is again a concession to me not wanting the silicone. It's a prosthesis which is put in and they fill it with saline and it stays put.

You don't have to have another operation to take that out and put, so it's a tissue-expander-come-prosthesis.

And the doctor who had done the LD flap did this surgery. Unfortunately he put it in the wrong place. So when I was being expanded instead of coming out that way I was going out that way. And it was extremely painful, extremely painful.

So I eventually saw [name] and he, he decided that he would expand it some more and would try and improve things. So he expanded it as much as he possibly could but he eventually had to admit yes it was in the wrong position. It had to come out.

So he had to take that out, put in a conventional tissue expander, expand me again, take that out, and put a silicone prosthesis in. So I had gone completely full circle.

I don't know whether I would do it again. Knowing me, probably yes. I would probably go for the TRAM flap again because I think it's such a marvellous idea of using your own body tissue to reconstruct something that's been taken away.
Jenni Murray - Breast Cancer
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