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Out, damned squatter! Out, I say!
After a long day at the hospital for breast cancer surgery, I was eventually allowed home late in the evening. What a day! I had to rock up at the POCU (Pre-Operative Care Unit) for 7am, before being whisked off to the Nuclear Medicine department to have a radioactive isotope injected to help identify which…
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Some good news, at last
Well, this is exciting! I’ve just taken a call from the hospital and I am booked in for surgery on Friday 16th October, and I’m very pleased this has come around so quickly. After everything that’s happened over the last few weeks, having an actual date feels like a great leap forwards. There have been…
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Seriously ill, still me
The last couple of days have been a rather frightening reminder that I am, actually, seriously ill. I’ve just spent two days in hospital while they tried to get my magnesium levels back to something approaching normal. They had suddenly fallen to 0.34 mmol/L, against a normal range of 1.7–2.3. This was the fourth time…
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A Change of Plan
Well, it seems my body has finally lodged a formal complaint about chemotherapy. I saw the consultant earlier this week and, after everything that has been going on, they’ve decided that we’ve reached the point where enough is enough. The main chemotherapy is being stopped immediately and the plan is now to go straight to…
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Chemo day… with a little excitement
It was chemo day at the hospital yesterday, and things didn’t quite go to plan. My day started with a breakfast of a plate of various tablets, some fruit juice and cornflakes with ice-cold milk – about the only food that I’ve been able to tolerate all the way through. So far, so good… Treatment…
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Some very welcome news 🎉
I met with my oncologist today and he advised me that last week’s MRI shows the tumour has shrunk from 30mm to 17mm — this is such amazingly good news and, quite honestly, a very welcome morale booster. 🙌 Apparently, my case was even discussed at the weekly team meeting because I’ve been experiencing the…
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Cancer stole my identity
It is now over three months since my diagnosis of an aggressive form of breast cancer, and I had no idea how short a time it would take for this horrible disease to change my life and rob me of my identity. For over twenty years I have been Finance Director and part owner of…
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You couldn’t make it up…
Anyone who knows me will know how passionate I am about our NHS. I appreciate that it has its shortcomings, but overall, I believe it is something to value, cherish and be proud of. This week, however, once things started to unravel, it became an unstoppable tsunami of bureaucratic errors. It all started on Monday,…
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Pieces of a bigger picture
If you’ve followed my story so far from the beginning, you may have got the impression that I am a very independent person and – Â under normal circumstances – Â more than capable of looking after myself. However, I have recently learned the hard way that sometimes we need to call upon others, or ask for…
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Lots of words I sort of recognised
My appointment to see a breast surgeon duly arrived through the post a couple of days later. This time, my husband took me to the clinic on the Monday morning and we listened together as, the breast surgeon explained that my “poached quail’s egg” was in fact a 30mm grade 3 invasive ductal carcinoma that…
