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I haven't blogged in ages, I haven't really spoken in ages, in real life or online. The old 'weird' became the new 'norm', life carries on, we simply adjust and adapt and that becomes the way of life.
Questions of mum's health or well-being have been met with an almost unbroken six month continual answer of...'Ok, not brilliant but, Ok.' This has been the genuine and only stock answer up until yesterday.
Yesterday my honest answer would have been, 'She needs...
Still at home… cross fingers touch wood on day 13 of my third 21 day cycle.
I did pack my bag for hospital late last week as I at last succumbed to the chesty cold my daughter had when at home. I’d held it at bay for a week but eventually I guess it whittled away my resistance and got me.
Of course my temperature jumped up a degree (one learns to be very attuned to temperature). Luckily that was the day the hospital rang me with my 7 day post chemo courtesy call and they suggested...
In January 2010 I had a hysterechtomy as cancer cells had been found in my womb, just two months after my initial concerns had been treated BRILLIANTLY by my GP. A few weeks later the tests showed that I didn't need further treatment as it had been detected so early. NEVER PUT OFF GOING TO YOUR DOCTOR is a lesson that should be learned by everyone. I took it as a wake up call and started to go to the gym, lost weight and improved my fitness considerably.
In August 2011 I was devastated to learn...
I havent been on here for some time to add a post. After our October 2011 diagnosis of my wonderful mum having 1 year to live with advanced stomach cancer, we enjoyed a really good 9 months of her health improving after a very heavy and intense chemo session from Oct-Jan 2012. We just got stronger and stronger and went on holiday, she returned on 1st October from Lanzarote looking well but her gall bladder (how they found the cancer and impossible to remove) was playing up and getting worse. She...
Hi,
Lots of tests going on this week, so a quick update.
MRI:
Test: MRI was at The Royal Marsden in Surrey on Wednesday. This was a special type of MRI to get a better view of the cervix. Best not to know too much about how that was done!
Result: Small tumor still remaining. Sort of expected, but there was always a chance the tumor has been destroyed by the healing process after the cone biopsy. Even if there was no tumor remaining, the surgery is still necessary if it's shown to be invasive...
I'm slightly hesitant to write this, as it feels like tempting fate, but on Friday there was what could be really good news from a second opinion.
My new doctor sent my biopsy report to a more senior pathologist, and he had a different opinion.
A diagram to help:
As mentioned, I have squamous cell cancer, but it was also determined that it had passed through the basal membrane (see above), and therefore it was no longer local, but was invasive cancer.
Once the cancer is invasive, the...
You may expect the answer to this is 'nobody knows', but actually in the case of Cervical cancer, the causes are known.
In the 1980's doctors noticed that cervical cancer seemed to spread like a STD. There was virtually none in communities of nuns, and a big increase after the 60's when women were, shall we say, given more freedom to do what they wanted!
They then started to review tumors, and found that in virtually all cases they found a particular virus. HPV.
Since then it has...
