To have it done, one had to go in and have a dye put in. And the dye was, I think, injected. I think it was injected during the operation which pinpointed the nodes. And amazing dye. I think the blue’s only just gone [laughs]. And it didn’t hurt at all.
Could you see it through your skin, you mean, the dye or?
Oh yes, I was completely blue for months afterwards [laughs].
[Laughs] I thought when you said that you meant blue as in bruised. I hadn’t realised you meant the dye?
No, no. The first time, sort of after the core biopsy, it was black and blue from awful bruising, and the dye just was remarkably good dye [laughs]. And it lasted for, I suppose, almost sixteen months, fourteen months.
They were doing it in order to save people later on who sort of had the same thing. Because I believe that the normal thing is to take out all the lymph nodes, and you’re going to get sort of horribly swollen arms and water retention and etcetera etcetera.
I think they were attempting to achieve a reduction in having to take out all the lymph nodes, with all the possible difficulties I gathered might happen. And that by taking out only four, it would make life a whole heap more comfortable and easier for patients… I think it’s good, and much, much better for people if it’s only the one, obviously.
And in your case it was an operation you were going to have anyway.
Yes, completely. There wasn’t any options at all. And luckily, I think, because
I suppose one would have gone on thinking, “Have I? Haven’t I? Has it got to a node?” And it was immensely reassuring to be told it hadn’t.
It didn’t in fact involve me in anything that was not going to happen, and if by having done it, basically, if I’ve helped other people in the future, and particularly with daughters, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, you know, if it benefits any of them it’s a good thing. And others of course [laughs].
And in your case it wasn’t, there wasn’t any question of it being of benefit to you personally.
Absolutely not. No.
If you’d been asked to be in a trial where they were comparing one group against another and you wouldn’t be able to say which group you’d be in, they’d just randomly put you in one, how would you have felt about that?
I think differently, in fact, because I suppose there’d always have been a sort of feeling at the back of one’s mind that, “I wonder which? And if I’d had the other it would have been better or--” Actually, I don’t think I’d have liked that.
