Closest I'll get to Brazil

The books said 10 to 14 days after the first session of chemo, and they were right, they just didn't say how... Like most, i was dreading the hair loss. I knew it was going to happen I just didn't know when. According to all the clever chaps, it was all coming off, no chemo cap was going to get in the way of this baby. And an extremely large baby is what I am going to look like.

All the books say you'll lose your hair but it will grow back, maybe curly...

I wanted to know how it falls out. Do you wake up one morning shivering and think 'oh that's right all my hairs gone?' Not in my case...  it doesn't come out in one go. It chooses a location.

Now unhairy legs would be good. Even though winter's here, no. Susie would prefer me with unhairy arms, sorry Sooz, not yet... Put it this way, I'll never have to wax my bikini line again (for folks who know me, they know how hysterically funny that idea really is.)
I was sometimes called Smithy, now it's Sniffy. And I haven't got a cold, the runny nose is cos there's no hair in my nostrils.


Maybe now I should be called Tin Tin.

11.11.11

thinking about my brilliant, grumpy old Dad today.

He was a Desert Rat, made Himler sweep the guard's room and a Major in the Black Watch. He and his troops relieved Fecamp and were thanked by the Monks who brewed the vile green stuff in the beautiful monastery who proceeded to get him and his division totally plastered on Benedictine. He said it was the worst hang over he ever had. Then he named me after D Day, I suppose it could have been Deirdre...

He survived all of this just to become an error in the system, the way old people are treated currently. The urine filled ward in Elm Grove Hospital, Brighton has since been closed. I'm afraid even the nurses there should have been ashamed of themselves. Nobody cared.

The family finally got him moved back to the General hospital where weeks later he died, but at least with a tiny bit of dignity. I loved him loads.

SuSpense is...

a bit of encouragement from Jamaica

chemo 'baby brain' and the bits no-one tell you about

nobody tells you about the 'baby brain'. Thanks.* I think like childbirth, everyone forgets the bad bits. I thought I was going mad. Currently I have No memory at all, then a few lucid moments when I think all this isn't really happening...

CONSTIPATION
anything with codeine in it is going to bung you up. Senna is best, or Ayrton as we call it.
MOUTH ULCERS
they creep up on you and then you can't eat a thing. Bonjela Complete plus
(another daft name) and the 'temporary discomfort sensation' is code for it hurts like hell.
COLD FINGERS
no idea why this happens but it does.
PARACETAMOL WITH CAFFEINE
not a good idea after lunchtime

*Thanks, lovely Lisa, the Macmillan nurse. Macmillan are brilliant and need any spare dosh you may have.

Slashed, poisoned but maybe not burned ...

I start chemo next week so i should be bald in time for halloween, just in time to be a real zombie. Check out the syrup!

sorry but swearing really does seem to help...

bonkologist was not George Clooney, but he gave me a CD of our cancer chat... apparently when they dug in, the grade one (small) was infact grade three (bigger) and encrusted with rubies and diamonds. I've been reading about crapotherapy and I haven't found the good bit yet. I cannot swim, travel, holiday or anything for five months. sh£$. f*&(, b@±!@£$.

funeral parlour?

All the flowers were beautiful, much appreciated and fortunately now it is only them which are dead.

How gray was your brocolli? horrid hospital

I would rather have been with Polly on the wings of a tiger moth. Watch the clip if you need help with your exercises, which YOU MUST DO. The nurses were totally wonderful. The NHS management were rubbish. I work in a brewery and I know for a fact that they couldn't. There was no continuity throughout my extended stay. First it was one night and I ended up being there for five days. My family were great and even managed a laugh when I offered to share the morphine.

The hospital was all a bit scary. All the docs and nurses seemed to know exactly what they were doing. They just never had the time to explain it to me. Alexa had helped me dye a bit of my hair pink, on the left, so they got the correct side to chop. A patient who was a nurse could remember only one occasion when the wrong side was chopped off...

Harry sent me a great get well card.
Oh how I hate Cameron.

The text messages from my friends were hilarious and much appreciated. lots of references to George Clooney and a rather handsome anaesthetist who I fell asleep on and never saw again. James and Bill were there when I came around and they did a good impression of not looking worried.

The surgeon did a 'great job' and while he was there he hacked out thirty six lymph nodes including three which were cancerous. I ended up with a 'drain' and no left tit. The next day I awoke thinking the tit had grown back. This was the fluid which would normally have travelled through the lymph nodes but it had nowhere to go.

If you are going to have this surgery just take all the drugs offered and drink loads of prune juice.

The irradiation was a waste of my time as they decided on 'belt and braces' chemotherapy. Hopefully the research will help someone else. Now I just glow in the dark.

...summer, 2011

just cos I know this is the silly season and you probably won't believe this, but I thought I had better update you on the latest events in the tit world.

The MRI scan detected two cancerous growths too far apart for a lumpectomy so I am having a mastectomy. The left breast is coming off on 05th September in Haywards Heath Hospital, oh and as a favour they've asked if I would mind being irradiated during the operation. I said well why not? Might give me that youthful glow. (I will find out why tomorrow). James thinks I should have them both off. Please vote now:

A one tit or B two tits.

I hope it will make you have a mammogram incase you haven't already. Pass it on to anyone who thinks it will never happen to them.

seems a long time ago now

Glaswegian bloody mindedness, that was my downfall. Just cos the nasty people at NICE said I couldn't have a mammogram for three years, even though my mother and my sister and my brother had all had breast cancer... I said they were being "irresponsible". The people at Guys told me my families cancers were 'not familial' so that was that. Fortunately I have a great GP who was on my side so I got an appointment at the imaginatively named 'breast' clinic.

There I was lectured on the amount of money mammograms cost and that I was only allowed a physical examination. Within seconds of the examination, the nurse said I should have a mammogram.

Oh bugger I thought, that wasn't in the plot...