Support from health professionals and being responsive to her own needs has allowed Julie to manage her situation.
Transcript
When I was informed that my cancer had spread to my bones, I was scared. I was really scared. I thought about death. During many months, I had to get use to the idea that death could come sooner for me than for others. That was haunting me a lot at the same time, because the pain was there, it was always there. So this… It intensifies the thoughts when you are in pain. So… It was difficult but I had… And since then, during the past two years, I was followed closely by my medical team. They were really able to give me good psychological, psychosocial and medical support to help me go through this. One day you feel anxious and another day you feel angry. Another day, well you don’t think about it. Another day you are tired. You know it is changing. It is changing.
When I am tired, I rest. I do not try to overdo it. There is no pleasant feeling of fatigue for me, but I am still trying to keep busy, but when I am too tired, I rest. And after that I go to bed for half an hour, an hour, and after I am able to continue. When I am in pain, I can also rest or take medication to numb the pain. Yeah, this is the way that I… And of course I talk about it with my doctors, with my medical team. When I have my appointments because “Is it all the time? Or sometimes?” The level and the frequency of the symptoms are also important. So yes, of course I do…
We are now in 2015 and it has been 5 years since my first diagnosis. I know that I will… There is no cure for metastatic breast cancer. I hope that one day there will be one, but I learned to live with it. It was often… It is often difficult. It is also difficult for the people around me because there is uncertainty. I am presently undergoing a treatment, it has been a year and a half, and combined with the hormonotherapy, the fact that I am menopaused, with the type of cancer that I have, which was oestrogen positive, but it helps me. And it has more or less stabilized the lesions, the bone cancerous tumours. Having a child also. My daughter is now 7 ½ years old. It forces me to still have a more or less daily routine, to do things for my family, my child and my home. But all this requires energy. So it is living with this today, it is taming a new daily living.
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