Fernanda Picón noticed punctures in the chest and went to the emergency room. She told him she had a lump, but it looked like it wasn’t bad because she wasn’t attached. “I did it for social security. In parallel, to speed up the process, I went to private health care when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, “she recalls.
It was April 2018 and when “Social Security sent me the letter to take the tests, I already had an intervention date in Private Health”. They did a radical mastectomy. “They removed my left breast and lymph nodes from the same arm. I also underwent radiation and hormone therapy, ”explains Picón.
In initial tests they found that he had a spot on his right humerus, but it wasn’t clear. “And they asked me if I had fallen. And yes, I had an accident when I was young, I am a little embarrassed, I was sleepwalking and I fell off a second floor.
In explaining what had happened when she was 15, she no longer paid attention to the bush, as this mother tells us who, after consulting, was able to draw strength from where she could to explain to her children, now 18 and 14, that she had cancer. . .
Naturally, she waited for her little son to take communion. “I didn’t want to take away the importance,” she acknowledges. “I explained to them that I had to tell them something, since they would have an operation in 10 days. I told them about the lump in the chest and my daughter told me: you have breast cancer, I saw that you went to communion with patches and bruises. The kid said, what, cancer? It was then that her older sister began to cry and the little one who was drinking the chocolate went to clean and stain it. I remember we started laughing. “
After two years, and after rebuilding his chest, the worst forecast has arrived. “He had bone metastases: a spot on the humerus, on a vertebra and on the coccyx. It was then that in the private health care they transferred me to the public one because they could not treat me there. The treatment was too expensive.
Once in the Social Security «they gave me a chemical castration because mine is hormonal. Then they emptied me. They removed my ovaries … It was the third operation, “she says.
Picón was then started with a drug: ribociclib. “I was lucky because I was patient number 14 who entered Social Security with this treatment. And since then they see me every month, they do an electro, the oncologist checks me … ».
With this treatment, the spots first faded and then disappeared. “But in January of this year the disease awakened. The stain on the coccyx is back and in June the one on the humerus, ”he explains.
Fernanda is clear that in her case “there was a failure. They should have checked that spot more on me. There was something, because there was a suspicion, only that they concentrated on the breast and no longer controlled that arm. ‘
And not only. During the two-year interval they made several tests, but the stain still did not show her face. ” Of course, the tumor indices were always on the edge. And after three or four months of growth, not a month, they started doing PET-CT scans, “she recalls.
In fact now, “after having undergone radiotherapy in both areas where the spots occurred, I am waiting to do a PET-CT, which will be done in a month to see if it worked”.
Her reaction when she was diagnosed with breast cancer was guilt: “I realized I was nowhere in that Excel sheet of priorities, always putting everything before my care (work, kids, home) and then you realize the mistake, because if you fail you can no longer help them, support them, be with them however you want. “She also felt guilty because” I couldn’t remember when my last review was. I don’t know if it had been two years or so. “
Then came the fear, the sadness … and, after being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, this feeling was that ‘all of the above hadn’t been a big deal and that now I was about to find out what it was really like to have cancer. It was a total meltdown, just like when the spots came back. What happens is that since everything worked out so well in the beginning, I really thought I was healed. So when they told me the spots had awakened, I wanted to die, “she admits.
Today she has been socially involved in the fight against breast cancer at the hands of the Spanish Cancer Association (AECC). And she is asking for further research from governments. “I’d ask them to put a third X on the income statement for the investigation. It is also necessary to put more staff in Social Security to speed up the diagnosis because they are totally overwhelmed. As for companies, I would ask them to have a protocol of action and give more support to their employees with cancer, it cannot be that they lose their jobs because they are sick. Mine is chronic, am I not worth it anymore?