puti

Made it!

2011-07-13T05:09:45Z

Today I had my final Chemo - on my terms, i.e.no deviation in the full Fec75 dosage in spite of reacting harder than had been hoped for. my hb is 10.9, my wbc 11.2, plts 253 and nuetrophils are 6.9 but Ihave reached my target and although I am already moaning about the recognised reactions I thank heaven for aids such as portacaths and my staple Dom Peridone and the fact that this continues to work for me in spite of my fears regarding overuse - the nausea and at this stage the retching is quite horrendous for me and yet there is also a sense of rejoicing that from now on things will improve - 6 weeks of 5 days a week radiotherapy has to be a 'sort of' walk in the park in comparison to having cytotoxins pumped into me - and if not, I know I am positive and strong enough to cope with this next stage! I stated in my first blog that this unexpected rollercoaster ride has been quite an eye opener to put it mildly - I keep my fingers and toes crossed that my already loose lower front teeth will remain in place as I have been dental phobic for well over 30 years and always have IV sedation before any treatment - until now when I have regular cleaning sessions - thanks to a wonderful dentist and a precsious youngest daughter whose response to also being phobic has been to become a dental nurse! - I love tattoos so a few more dots will be fine and I am assuming that my brains - such as it was - will eventually return as I am currently experience total chemo brain which is sooooooo frustrating although I presume probably more frustrating for those around me! I also trust that my eyes, which have been quite badly affected, will also eventually recover and boy, do I look forward again to being able to get in my car and be able to drive! It has been a hard lesson to accept the help of family and dear friends which has been so freely and sincerely offered at a time when truly needed.

Acknowledging fear and accepting that it would be abnormal not to have this at times as I face an unknown future is also challenging - I am realistic whilst being optimistic - as previously stated, my amazing eldest daughter who has suffered from mental health problems from the age of 10 (she is now almost 31) has quite literally saved my life in that there was only a 3 week gap between feeling a hardness in my left breast that I would not have bothered about until my 6 monthly blood test was due during the latter part of January of this year - had she not already made a GP appointment for something totally unrelated.

How can I forget that day - or date, namely 26 November 2010 and again, as already previously stated - the unexpected rollercoaster ride started. By the time of my first op on 1 December - the cancer had already spread to the sentinel lymph node and, if left as I would have, being grade 3, there is little dount that I would be palliative instead of curative as I am - I am so thankful to the prompt referral from my GP,to the amazing team at Charing Cross - and, of course, to my wonderful children amongst others and, I have the added excitement and knowledge that my eldest will be blessing me with a beautiful grandaughter who I can't wait to meet in early November..

A couple of years ago my cousin and daughters took part in Race For Life because we wished to support this - this year I have found it humbling and somewhat surreal to accept that I am now one of those such events support - ironically somehow I never made it to the event in time although I was represented by my amazing cousin - but I did do Best Paw Forward on 8 May of this year with my cousin, her bearnease mountain dog and my beloved rescue greyhound, Simba errrrrrr we were the last because I don't know how we managed the last 2 miles - but we did and my cousin's husband came to collect us from Barnes because I don't think either Simba or I were capable of walking one more step! Melinda and my amazing niece and god-daughter definitely have the 'bug' as they will be participating in this year's London Shine half marathon on the eve of Melinda's 29th birthday - Tams and I will be there to support but ummmmmm not to participate in this year! Oh - and on 6 August this year, Tams will be celebrating her 31st birthday and the end of my chemo at a fabulous venue we all enjoyed last august - at a sit down booth at the Loop Bar - delicious non-alcoholic 'cocktails', cupcakes, chocolate fountain, fresh fruit etc together with those family and friends who truly mean the world to us...so much to look forward to:-).

Then, there is the fact that my daughter's husband has turned out to be anything but what he claimed to be - he has been arrested and will be prosecuted by our family for theft as more and more items turn up in pawn shops all over London - yes, we are one of those vulnerable families who have been successfully scammed by a Nigerian who is a bona-fide Dr, Pasteur and had been accepted into the British Army to train as a trauma surgeon - unbelievable but true - it breaks my heart when I look at the wedding photos held in February of this year in St Kitts and I see the total trust and love in Tams' eyes - knowing what only came to light in April of this year thanks to the vigilance of a credit card company who queried a taped telephone call from our house phone from a male - since then we have had to play a heartbreaking game in order to keep this man 'sweet' , including the fact that we knew that in spite of having taken him to heathrow ourselves and dropping him off, he had remained in this country as verified by Western Union whilst pretending to have flown to Nigeria to settle matters regarding the apparent demise of his father! The sense of violation to our family is immense - far greater than if burgled by outsiders - but as the police told Tams and I when she went down to report this, we are not the first and sadly, will not be the last - but we were the first on that particular day!!!

So Life is genuinely challenging to say the least but I have no doubts that we will face it head on as there is so much positive to look forward to in spite of our totally cock-eyed human rights policies - we have no doubts that our still son-in-law will find some way of fighting any deportation especially as he now has a child in this country - albeit not the boy he was hoping for ( we were always praying for a little girl because we are a female orientated family and Tams can now happily have pink hello kitty all over the place! Naturally, we would have welcomed a boy too - as long as all was healthy - but Tams' love of pink might have had to become 'blue' so as to avoid gender stress!

There, I think I rambled on enough and had better close!

Rita

7th Chemo with 1 more to go

2011-06-22T04:10:44Z

I'm not sure why I feel the need to blog at this point - it is not something I find easy although I read other people's with interest. In some ways I still have not quite got my head around what seems to have been rather a 'whirlwind' of events since my not even dreamt about diagnosis - I thought I had another case of Mastitis when I mentioned to my GP that apart from the original reason of my daughter having made that appointment on 26 November for me - which was to ask whether he would support me in endeavouring to obtain an Injunction to get my still husband of 33 years out of the house by that Christmas - that I mentioned I had discovered a phsyical hardness in my left breast 3 weeks earlier - he simply said that he would refer me to Charing X for further investigation alongside investigation regarding atrial fibrillation also detected on that day - can't forget it because it happened to be the day of my father-in-law's funeral that afternoon who had died from a rare form of liver cancer which had metasized throughout his body- what a morning I had dashing with my eldest daughter to Charing Cross regarding the atrial fibrillation totally unaware of what was about to occur - Charing X hospital rang me the following day giving me an appointment to see a Mrs Katie Hogben, one of the Consultant Surgeons - neither my eldest nor I were sure of what she was saying when we met her - she was insistent that I have a biopsy - which is something I have avoided in the past preferring just to have any lumps out under a general ( have had 3 lumpectomies in right breast out over years - all benign) and her attitude was very much that you WILL have biopsy as this will dictate future treatment - or I cannot help you - which did leave us feeling that maybe things were not looking too good but still none the wiser - I had been referred NHS but when I mentioned that should she need to operate that I had private cover from my husband's leaving package from his former employer after his stroke until June of this year and could I use that for speed, she advised me to take advantage of that facility straight away because results would be available earlier than if on NHS, although she stressed she would be using her same team throughout so I took her advice although it incensed me at what I see as being somehow totally wrong - we all deserve to be given the best chance possible, we have all paid our contributions - but I did avail myself of the option - the result of which was that I learned I had a grade 3 invasive ductal carcinoma and on 1st December underwent the first of 2 operations which included a level 2 node clearance with 29 nodes removed - this did, to my perhaps rather 'black comedy' type sense of humour seem a very perverse way of getting the breast uplift I had been thinking of looking into under different circumstances - at least in my dreams - now I was getting this in reality as you may have gathered I am not small breasted - which also made life less traumatic for me since there was quite a bit to play with to start with - unfortunately the margins were not clear so on 16 December I underwent further surgery which appears to have sufficed as there is no more tissue to work with and a 3rd operation would have meant a mastectomy - so I now have an alien feeling breast without a nipple and rather large indent and a left arm that feels very alien and prone to lymphoedema - to be fair I was warned that as there was nothing left to 'play' with it was likely that my nipple would necrotise (not sure of terminology) - but that I was not to worry as this could be reconstructed - as could everything else - the next stage would be Chemotherapy - ideally 8 sessions of FEC75 or 6 if not physically strong enough as an adjuvant from which 8/100 with my aggressive form of cancer would benefit - not exactly great odds in realistic terms but odds still the same - to say that I have found the Chemotherapy to be disorientating and testing is an understatement but I cannot stress enough how wonderful the portacath I had inserted is since I only had my right arm and poor veins in it - I had thought there would be a pattern and was surprised to find that each ensuing treatment belied this - each time it has become more and more difficult for me - bearing in mind that I did not start out coming from a good emotional viewpoint - but I have been adamant all along that I intended to make the 8 at full 'blast' because I am 'blowed' if I am not going to meet this 'head-on'. Session 6 knocked me for 6 - I had diarrhoea that just poured out - bringing back memories of the horror of an enterrococcal bacteremia I suffered a couple of years back - thankfully my youngest was with me and got me home safely in a totally hysterical shocked state and my eldest was there to support once home - you may have gathered that we both are absolute wimps by nature - I can't tell you how long it took for me to actually look at my breast - I have total chemo brain - my eyesight has deteriorated and I have an infection which is obviously being treated but means that I cannot drive - not that I drove far - mostly to the hospital or taking my eldest to her psychiatrist and cpn appointments as she has mental health issues of long standing - which is local to us - but that 'independence' has been removed from me albeit temporarily and is frustrating. I am exhausted, unsteady, walk like an old woman - and at 61, whilst I recognise that for many that may indeed appear old, IT IS NOT!!!!! although I am equally aware and appreciative that I have lived a life as opposed to all the youngsters who are smitten by some form or another of this indiscriminate disease - ironically, my youngest at 28 may well be one them as I learned recently. Yesterday I had my bloods taken and did not even remember that my fantastic Oncologist, a Dr Charles Lowdell, would examine me thoroughly - that is the state of my chemo brain - it would appear that I am reacting more severely to treatment than hoped for but I was adament that I did not want a lowering of dosage and intended to continue as I have been all along - full dosage and no deviation to the original plan - today, as already stated - I underwent my penultimate session in a bed after being shown that I am indeed continuing as planned - the bed was wonderful since it seems I slept through the bulk of the treatment and only awoke once it was almost over!! and to eat the food that was waiting for me. One point of interest perhaps to others if they were not already aware - I asked what was recommended for ulcerated mouths and was told that I should try Manouka Honey either as a mouthwash type drink or directly onto affected areas which I did do tonight and will continue to do so to see whether that indeed helps - I wonder whether anyone else has tried this or had it recommended ? So this is where I currently am to-date which brings me back to not being certain why I have rambled on - just that I felt I needed to - perhaps to try and put matters into perspective , perhaps out of a desire to validate a sense of who I am - I apologise to anyone who may plough through this.

Depressed and tired

2011-04-17T22:25:53Z

I read other people's blogs with interest but have never created one of my own - until now. I will be having my 4th FEC75 this coming Tuesday and I guess all-in-all am not suffering that much and just feel very pathetic. The worst difficulty I have is this incredible 'heaviness' and exhaustion - I can quite happily rest for what is probably most of the day - I get up to do something then become so tired and unsteady that I rest - often waking up a few hours later! My head seems permanently 'muzzy'. I can cope with the nausea, sore throat, heartburn, sore mouth etc. but just do not seem to have days where I actually feel fine such as the week before my next cycle - just pockets. I know that we all have individual reactions but just wondered whether there were others who react or have reacted the same as I appear to be doing - the first cycle was the best for me. I am down to have between 6 - 8 cycles and so very much want to make the 8.