Making the breast of a bad situation ...
On 4 October 2016, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This blog will chart my progress through treatment, and continued enjoyment of life, love and friendship.
Expect humour, irreverance, occasional sadness, and staunch defence of the National Health Service.
Btw, that picture is not me. :-)
Submitted by Janine on
Sorry?
Is
Jeremy Hunt
for real?
Up to 270 dead is
the toll of that 'glitch'
That is
Hundreds of women gone
unscanned, untreated
Hundreds of women gone
That is
the toll of that 'glitch'
Up to 270 dead is
for real.
Jeremy Hunt
is
sorry.
Submitted by Janine on
When they released me from A&E last week, they pressed into my hand a letter telling me to come back to the hospital this morning to visit the HAMU.
HAMU? Wtf? It turns out that this is the Homerton Ambulatory Medicine Unit. This means a clinic that you walk in to. Is it just me, or is this an excessively wordy name - with an accompanying weird acronym - for what could just as easily be called 'Outpatients' or 'Walk-in Clinic'?
Submitted by Janine on
I've just got home from hospital. There's no need to overly worry yourself: I'm OK, all things considered. Here's the story ...
Submitted by Janine on
by Donna How-I'm-Gonna-Cope-Come Summer
Sittin' here sweatin' my heart out waitin'
Waitin' for my temperature to fall
Tried about a thousand remedies lately
Want to bash my head on the wall
Submitted by Janine on
Today I received my test result, with the delightful news that my bone density is normal. It is a seasonal relief to know that I am not walking around on a skeleton that is on the point of snapping or dissolving. Phew. Hopefully, it is still OK for me to take the sensible precaution of eating lots of cheese. You know, just in case.
Submitted by Janine on
Yesterday, I had a bone density scan, to ascertain how dense I am. Or how dense my bones are, anyway.
This is because my new anti-cancer pill, Letrozole, has an annoying tendency (known as a 'side effect', I believe) ot thinning your bones. So they are checking to see whether it is doing that to me.
Submitted by Janine on
My body is a timeline
with every thick and fine line
marking a milestone
time-grown
Each tract and fracture
captured
and preserved
a chapter
in each roll and curve
Submitted by Janine on
It is most excellent weather for menopausal women. While others moan and bring phrases like 'brass monkeys' and 'stone jug' out of hibernation, I am enjoying blessed relief from the hot flushes and night sweats. I walked down the Euston Road the other day, surrounded by people in woolly hats, scarves, mittens and puffer jackets, wearing lightweight trousers and a T-shirt and yet strangely tempted to take even these off. I am beginning to envy my friend Satu, who had her menopause when it was minus-twenty degrees in her home country of Finland.
My faimly is playing dial tennis with the central heating thermostat. They turn it up, I turn it down. They say, 'But Mum, it's freezing!'. I say, 'Put a jumper on! Wear gloves! Drink some hot chocolate!' I reckon that heating and aircon systems could usefully be calibrated with settings of boiling, hot, warm, cool, cold, freezing, ice age, and menopausal woman.
Submitted by Janine on
The Pfizer guys are haggling with the NICE
And while they talk, the cancer spreads again
You’ll get your pills when they’ve agreed a price
You’ll get your answer when they’ve rolled their dice
And dealt your hand out in their counting den
The Pfizer guys are haggling with the NICE
Submitted by Janine on
Wednesday was the anniversary of my breast cancer surgery, and to celebrate, I had an appointment with the surgeon. Or, as it turned out, with the surgeon’s fellow surgeon, a little less senior. Shame: I would have liked to have seen Ms Parvanta to thank her for saving my life and sewing me up so beautifully.
So here is the great news. The mammogram carried out two weeks ago shows that everything is fine. The cancer has gone, departed, taken its leave, got a single ticket on the long train to nowhere. Hurrah.
I will have a yearly mammogram to check that it has not returned. It seems that cancer can come back even after several years. A close friend of mine has just had hers reappear seven years after it was removed, so now has to go through the whole caboodle again.
