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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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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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The hair-loss dolly
I’ve long believed that children learn through play and, perhaps even more importantly, through each other. But sometimes life throws up things that are rather difficult to explain to little people. Like why Nanna Nat suddenly has very little hair. Our granddaughter is only two-and-a-half, so “Nanna Nat is having cancer treatment and it’s making…
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Little wins and #LittleLifts
When people talk about “little wins”, they often mean the obvious things: getting through a difficult appointment, reaching a treatment milestone, or ticking something off the list that once seemed impossible. But sometimes a little win is much smaller than that. Sometimes it’s simply getting home. After my unexpected hospital stay, I was allowed home…
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Positivity vest
My positivity vest has worked!! 🎉 I can go home around 5pm… Honestly, I am so very grateful to be allowed home at last, and I got all teary when the oncologist said I could 🥹 She is reasonably positive that this was a one-off, and that things should be much better next time. To…
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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 – under normal circumstances – 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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Food for thought
British hospital food has long been the butt of jokes. I haven’t exactly helped, having rated the breakfasts here in earlier posts. On Saturday, based on the previous couple of days, I reduced my expectations slightly for the breakfast by omitting the Bucks Fizz. That was a good move on my part, because today’s breakfast…
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First chemo + 4: A very long day
NB: These posts are written from notes I made at the time. Some days they are reflections; some days they are simply a record of getting through the next hour. The honeymoon period seemed to be over. After feeling reasonably OK for the first few days, things really caught up with me overnight. The stomach…
