Season's Greetings !

Not much time to write a real post with me currently awaiting a lift from my cousin to see my folks in Bristol and all... but just wanted to wish each and everyone of you a very Merry Xmas. Thanks for stopping by my blog this year whether it's your first time or you're a regular reader. Writing during treatment has been extremely therapeutic for me and I hope that some of the information and opinions that I throw out there have helped in some way. My big tips for 2013 are Vitamin D, Vitamin D and even more Vitamin D - but more about that later on. If you've been newly diagnosed with cancer, after your friends and family, the second most important thing to have in your life is Hope. And lots of yummy dark chocolate...

2013 is a brand new year and I hope that it will be a better one for all of us.

Peace and Love,

Cx

Not Waving, But Drowning...

Apologies for being away for so long. Remembering to update this blog has most certainly been on my mind. But, like my desire for time travel and tele-transportation, I have not yet found a way of extending a 24 hour day into a 48 one.  I'm learning that 'having it all' (which I secretly think is just another way of society making women feel as though they can actually juggle work and childcare without heading for a nervous breakdown) really is possible - just as long as you don't mind missing a substantial chunk of that precious commodity called sleep every now and again.

So where do I start ?  Well, the good news (and I'm pleased to report that at this very moment in time I'm able to use this word generously) is that my last scan result showed 'no significant change', which I'm told is not just a good thing, but a great one. OK, so things might still be a little complicated between Ned and I but the radiotherapy that I reluctantly signed up for a few months back seems to have worked, there are no other areas of concern so, at least for another three months, I really should be throwing backflips and enjoying the result while I still can. And I guess I did in a less physical way which involved copious amounts of red wine and cake with lots of sugary icing on the top. But the problem is, even though my body hasn't found a way of transporting my good self into the future, my mind certainly has. Even though I really should be 'living in the moment' and rejoicing in my good fortune, however long it may last, I find myself instead feeling more concerned about when it might end. So even though I haven't quite made it back to my meditation classes just yet, a dose of the old mindfulness might just be what the Yogi ordered.

But there's also another reason for me being strangely absent for so long. Unfortunately I have heard in the last two months two lots of bad news. Two deaths have happened since I last booked in, two deaths of two women; two mothers who had the same disease as me. I knew neither that well but enough to feel a wave of sadness, anxiety and guilt all at the same time. Both women looked 'so well' when I last saw them. So well that I had no idea that it would be the last conversation that we'd ever have when I spoke to them. And for this I feel guilty that I've spent so long feeling pre-occupied with my own thoughts and fears that I missed the chance to help someone else. I also learned how easy it is to simultaneously feel sadness and selfishness (will I be next ?). Yes I may have grieved for both women on those days but if I dig deep within that grief, I'm sure that I'll find myself somewhere, hoping and praying that I won't be next.

A few posts back, I talked about the experience of metastatic breast cancer feeling more like hurdles than a marathon. Only what I failed to realise is that the bar keeps getting higher. Just as you've cleared one hurdle and you're running on solid ground once more, enjoying the wind in your air, the feeling of freedom, seeing your friends and family smiling at you in the audience, you're faced with another hurdle, a higher one this time, and once again you wonder how you might ever clear the bar without touching it, or falling over. But you can't stop because they won't let you. You must keep running, even though you may be tired and angry and bored of having to stay on that track and clear that next bar. Because the funny thing is, even though you might look like the finest endurance athlete while you're out there running and jumping for your life, you know that the reality is, you really have no other choice.

The C-Factor...

After my last post I kind of promised myself that the next time I dropped by, I would write an entry that didn't contain the word [hushed whisper] 'cancer'. I guess it might seem strange that I would choose to do this given my current diagnosis, but in the real world it's not like I spend my days waxing lyrical about cannulas and chemo. In fact, to see me going about my day-to-day life - which involves rushing from home-to-work-to-playgroup-to-john lewis (there's nowhere like John Lewis for a bit of toddler retail therapy), you'd never think that I'm juggling all this with treatment for a life-threatening disease. At work, the only time I ever mention the word is when we're running a feature about someone else who has it; and then you can't shut me up. Call me arrogant, but I figure that since the last two years have seen me pore over the internet for hopeful news about metastatic breast cancer (which has also enabled me to pick up snippets of news about other types of cancer) when it comes to the C-word, I'm fast turning into an amateur pro. Such is my knowledge of the disease that if they ever invent a cancer trivia version of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire', like the protagonist in Slum Dog Millionaire, I'll be that person in the hot seat, feverishly using up my 'dial-a-friend' options to sneakily call my oncologist. 

But if I'm not talking about cancer I hear your subconscious mentally pondering, what's the point of my posting to this blog ?  Well, don't forget that I only started this blog because I couldn't find a decent wig and thought that by spreading the word that there was a shortage of realistic afro wigs in London, some kind soul might take pity on me and donate one. But since then, I've moved on. Firstly (and I never thought I'd reach the day when I would ever say this) I'm not that bothered about finding a wig any longer, not because I don't miss my 'I'll curl-any-which-way-I-feel-like curls, but I guess after a year and a half of having a closely cropped barely there hairstyle, I realise that I actually prefer it. It fits perfectly with my new post-baby life; the one where I never have more than five minutes to myself on a daily basis. It also looks like I chose it rather than 'it' chose me, which was obviously not the case. In a nutshell, it's low maintenance even when I'm close to having a high maintenance moment (usually induced by work, toddler, cancer treatment or a combination of all three) and judging by the comments I've received from friends, colleagues and even complete strangers - it suits me. So while for the second time I'm uttering something that I never ever thought I'd say - thank you chemo chemicals, for giving me a hairstyle that works without me having to 'work it'. If I hadn't had to sample your deadly cocktail of toxicity, I never would have had the courage to shave my head. I also would never have realised how cheap it is to get my head shaved - £7 at my local barber's !!! So for that, and for that only - I salute you. But this is where the accolade ends. Let's not forget what havoc you wreaked on my nails, skin and tastebuds. Because I certainly never will. 

But before I go, not wanting to disappoint the cancer crowd out there, here's a quick catch-up of my bout with the big C. At this moment in time, after three weeks of radiotherapy (and a lovely break in Mallorca), I've just started my three monthly injections of zoladex; a hormone treatment that acts by shutting down my ovaries with the hope of starving the cancer cells of oestrogen. In a month's time I'll add the oral tablet letrozole which does a similar thing, but in a different way (told you I was only an amateur pro, if you need a more detailed description, I'll give you the number of my onc). Psychologically speaking, I feel ok. Apart from a bit of a meltdown which involved a slightly aggressive cross-examination of a young doctor I spoke to at my last appointment (I've not quite managed to get over the fact that a more belt-and-braces approach to my cancer the first time around, might well have avoided my current incurable diagnosis), I'm actually doing alright. Since there are only so many hours in the day, the meditation classes have unfortunately been put on hold. But if there's one lesson that I've taken from my brief flirtation with mindfulness it's this; every night before I enter that impenetrable world of slumber, I think of all the beautiful moments that I've experienced that day. It could be a brief spell of sunshine, a funny or interesting conversation, a lovely walk through an area that I rarely visit, or a delicious meal that I've had the pleasure of eating. It's called gratitude - feeling grateful for the little things that happen instead of worrying about the big things that might. Easier said than done I admit, and for an old cynic like me, it often involves me ignoring the more rational part of my mind. But so far I'm pleasantly surprised to say, I fall asleep much easier than I used to. So far it seems to be working. 

Toxic Shock Syndrome...

As usual I'm slacking. I'm writing this while trying extremely hard not to look at the calendar on my laptop which might reveal just how many months it has been since I last visited this blog. Excuses ?  I have many. Three weeks of radiotherapy before a super swift jaunt to not just one, but two European countries to recover, I think might explain the reason why I've been so incommunicado throughout most of September.

Because you see, throughout most of August when most of you were enjoying the warm rays of summer sun, I have woken up at the crack of dawn, hauled my heavy, sleep saturated body into the shower and left the house at the speed of a doormouse. I have travelled to Harley Street, where I have got myself half-undressed, lain on an uncomfortable steel-framed bed and allowed radiation rays, better known as photons, to course their way through my body. I have then hauled myself up, still bleary-eyed to work, to sit in front of a computer all day and drink cappuccino. And to top it all, as much as I try to view radiation, you know that radioactive matter that people run away from during an atomic explosion or fall-out (see Japanese Tsunami in Wikipedia for more info) as curative, I am a child of the seventies. Radiation to me translates to CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for all you 20-somethings who missed this fine period of political history), it translates to Greenham Common women; long, flaxen-haired white women being forcibly carried out of fields by the Police, and lots and lots of t-shirts with that peace symbol. It never did, and certainly doesn't now, ever make me think of radiation as a 'treatment' as the doctors call it. But at the same time, I guess I should be grateful that there is still something to offer me.

But let's not get maudlin. After three swift ones (weeks I mean, not units of alcohol), I decided to treat myself and partner and toddler A to a trip to Mallorca, that most beautiful island in the Mediterranean. I had imagined myself for weeks sat in the sunshine with only a cocktail to distract me, watching the sun sparkle on the crystalline waters of the Mediterranean sea... I even brought along that book. Yes, that one. All fifty shades of it, as a way of raising two (or three depending on your sexual preferences) fingers to cancer as if to say, 'yes I still have a sex life you bastard, even if I'm a boob and sternum lighter as a result of your 'dropping in' on me'. Instead what I got was a trip with a toddler who suddenly learned how to throw the most hummungus of tantrums. Not just the odd cry and sniffle that I saw in his more well-behaved German counterparts. No, these ones demanded that we be in a public place, somewhere like a quiet, crowded restaurant was ideal. And they usually came around the time of  'la hora de comer' - or in plain english; lunchtime. Not the most relaxing way to enjoy your holiday but you know what they say, 'patience is a virtue'. And once you've spent the last two years on and off chemo, waiting desperately for the time when you won't have to take a medicine shelf full of drugs again, being able to wait patiently for your toddler to finish his excrutiatingly embarassing toddler tantrum so that you can carry on sipping red wine and eating olives on the terrace, suddenly begins to feel very tolerable indeed...

Waiting To Exhale...

Trying to update your blog after having been away for so long is a bit like bumping into an old school friend and not knowing quite what to say. It's not that I don't have much to tell you. The truth is, I have too much to say. I'm just not sure where to begin. Do I start with the episode at A & E (Accidents and Emergencies for all you non-UK folk who might have dropped in) a few months ago, just before I was due to fly out to Madrid, which ended up with me lying on a hospital bed at 4 in the morning connected to a drip of antibiotics ?  Or perhaps I could wax lyrical about my (joy of joys !) imminent holiday plans and the sartorial problems that face me finding a bikini that accommodates the tell-tale signs of both a mastectomy and a sternectomy ? (I'm sure there's a second career awaiting me somewhere as a swimwear designer...)

Maybe I need to begin with the here and now. Because right here and right now, my dear, dear reader,  I am currently taking a journey back into Cancerland once more. My destination is unknown but I'm hoping that it won't be a one-way ticket just yet. A recent scan showed a new tumour (or as one of my oncs likes to politely and eloquently put it, 'an increased uptake in one of the mammary nodes', so it's no more capecitabine and lapatinib - two low-key drugs that I thought I could be on for a very long time. It's hello radiation radiotherapy for the next two weeks. As I keep telling myself, things could be worse. Oh I know, they could be much worse. But sadly, it doesn't make things any easier. You see, although I've managed to catch every virus and bug that my 2 year old tot cares to carry home from nursery, I was somehow managing to kid myself that what I had was a chronic disease, not a terminal one which would eventually kill me. Call me naive, but I was hoping to be one of the metastatic chicks who proudly post about having been on one faithful treatment for the last ten years. I was hoping that my one-off love affair with NED would be more than a just a fling. I wasn't quite expecting another recurrence (my second in the space of a year) just yet.

But it is as it is. And after shedding a few tears and entering some very dark places over the last week where I contemplated not just my own demise but the effect that me not being around would have on my family, most of all my very young son, I picked myself up, brushed myself off, put the fighting gloves back on, and decided to enrol in... some meditation classes.

Why meditation ?  Well, I've tried everything else - the juices, the turmeric, the acupuncture, the aspirin, the fruit and veg, the chinese mushrooms. I've done my oncology homework and have read up on the treatments on offer. I've tried yoga, pilates and running. I've done the rational and the physical but not the spiritual. And the truth is, I'm stressed. So this week, after wisely booking a week off from work, I try out two classes at the local Buddhist centre. The location is a beautiful old church and once you're inside it feels like you're a million miles away from the busyness of London life. The classes are held by a buddhist couple and we are taught how to listen to our breathing and relax our bodies. It sounds like easy stuff but as everyone who's ever tried it knows, it's damn hard to empty your mind when you're constantly being bombarded with niggling thoughts and worries. I try and it works for a short time, but I find myself thinking of that lovely pair of shoes that I very nearly bought when I should be relaxing my toes and heels. When we're told to focus our minds on our stomachs, I start to think of the ingredients of the stir-fry that I'll be tucking into later that evening. Perhaps I'm just too practical to ever be a master of meditation but what I do discover, on returning home, is the effortlessness that I fall into a deep sleep once I'm in bed and my head hits the pillow. I continue concentrating on the breath and only thinking in the present. And do you know what ?  It actually works. I use the same approach when I'm lying on the radiotherapy bed waiting for the machine to zap me with photons. I'm told not to move and I almost fall asleep. So, even though unlimited amounts of meditation is very unlikely to cure me, I'm hoping that it will make my everyday life a bit easier to cope with. And it's a damn sight cheaper than a pair of Kurt Geiger shoes.

Back To Life, Back To Reality...

Wow. Has it really been that long ? Over two months since I last posted ? Time does indeed fly, even when you're not altogether having fun. Don't worry, I'm not about to launch into a one woman diatribe about the difficulties of being a cancer victim patient. I haven't been absent due to any said state of depression or debilitating illness. I have just been very, very busy. Busy trying to be a model employee, busy with looking after an active toddler and busy, busy, busy trying to remember and co-ordinate my very many hospital appointments in the midst of this. So what have I been up to while I've been away ? Well firstly, there was the interview with my oncologist for a newspaper piece about the general state of the NHS, where I discovered that oncology (that being the field of cancer medicine) is very well protected (in that it affects so many of us). Then there was a very recent trip to Madrid to attend a photo-festival where I spent the night before the flight in an A& E department having more and more tests to make sure that I didn't have a life-threatening infection. In between these times there were tablets, and more tablets, a few bouts of the runny ones and lots of sleep-interrupted nights while toddler A got to grips with the many coughs and colds that he forever seems to pick up at his day nursery. And swiftly pass on to me.

Back in the days when I was a full-time, fully paid-up member of Cancerland, time took on a different meaning. I would sit at home, planning my schedule around a very needy baby wondering how well the rest of the world was coping without my presence. Now that I'm a fully fledged member of that world that I so desperately missed, my time seems to be no longer my own. My regular cycles of capecitabine and lapatinib are squeezed into an already demanding diary of events which includes a constant organisation of photo-shoots and deadlines and the effort to rebuild a social life. In between these times I spend my time worrying whether Toddler A is wearing enough clothes to nursery, whether he's warm enough ?  is he too cold, is he too ill to be at nursery ? Should I be working when I have such a young child to look after ?  Should I be working when I have cancer ? And on and on it goes until some other distracting thought comes along and shoves these parasites out of the way...

Despite the uncertainty of this shitty disease, I find myself more often than not imagining the future. When I'm feeling okay (and not experiencing the waves of fatigue which often plague me towards the end of my capecitabine cycle) I like to imagine that I still do have a future. One where I'm fit and healthy and ready to take on the world. One where I've recovered and am now better, not a woman with a chronic illness. One where I can imagine standing at my son's wedding wondering whether he's married the right girl. One where I'm me again, before the cancer, before the operation, before the drugs, and before the uncertainty. I'm happy to be back in the real world. Although it no longer has the reality that it once did and I find myself caring much less about what people really think of me, which I guess can only be a good thing. Shame I didn't have this dose of cancer-induced confidence to see me through my teenage years and beyond, but hey. On that note, I'll bid you farewell and hope that this sudden surge of energy will bring me back to this blog again soon. And next time I promise I won't leave it so long...

Scanxiety II - Getting Back Into The Game

The other day, on the eve of going into hospital to get the results of my long-awaited scan, I watched a programme about cancer. This might suggest that when most of you are spreadeagled on the sofa watching a re-run of Britain's Got Talent, I am desperately channel surfing in search of anything I might have missed about the big C.  Well, it's true. I had missed the original programme, and buoyed by the glowing reviews which talked about the leaps and strides being made in cancer research, I decided to investigate further. And the programme wasn't bad. It was upbeat, and positive and showed patients who had originally felt they'd had no hope but to get their affairs in order being given new treatments that did indeed seem to be working. Selfishly speaking though, I was disappointed to find out that most of the developments they chose to herald as 'breakthough', like Cyberknife (high dose radiotherapy dished out by a sci-fi looking robotic arm), I had already partaken of.  I also had no idea that little 'ole me was at the forefront of cancer research and that the pink pills that I swallow so religiously each day are seen as on the cutting edge of cancer technology. Wow, who knew eh ? Next time, maybe I might even volunteer my own toxin filled body for the benefit of increased TV ratings...

But I digress. Despite the overly simplistic 'I was sick and now I'm cured' tone, the good thing about the programme was the attitude of the patients at the Marsden Hospital. Some looked so relaxed that you'd have thought they were waiting for cough mixture. Even though everyone talked about how nerve-racking it was to await scan results, most of them seem to accept their condition with grace. None of them looked like me. They didn't have the anxious, drained, paranoid expression that seems to accompany me before, during and after each Pet/CT scan. They didn't look as if they experienced the nightmare 'what if' scenarios that assemble in my mind in the early hours of the morn when most of you are still sleeping. Instead of making me feel inadequate, I felt inspired by their dignity and vowed that on the day when I arrived at the hospital to hear news of my fate, that I too would have the courage to keep my composure.

But hey, this is real life and this is me that we're talking about. Unfortunately, I don't do dignified. Unfortunately, I just don't have the patience. As soon as I saw one of my team of doctors appear after only 5 minutes of me waiting (why did she appear so quickly ?) after the very brief how do you do's, I began to cross-examine her. 'Had she received my results ? what were they like ?  why not ?' I have to admit that I barely gave the woman time to return to her consulting room before I began firing questions at her like a prosecutor in court. She actually had no idea and went off to investigate further. Returning with a piece of paper, we went through the results. As she read out the findings to me, I realised that she may as well have been speaking a foreign language. There were lots of references to uptakes and FDAs ??? and non-Fdas and suchlike. So much so, that by the end, I was no wiser. Had my cancer returned ? was there no change or had my body improved ? She told me that it was a good result. My own consultant had just confirmed this, she said. I guess I was expecting to see a piece of paper with just four words written in the middle:  'NO EVIDENCE OF DISEASE'.

But, she reassured me that the scan was good. And while I sat outside waiting for a blood test, I was relieved to see my consultant walking down the corridor who also confirmed that the results were indeed good. There had been no significant changes, and as she was grinning from ear to ear while she said this which I can only take to interpret that to mean that it must be good news. So it seems as though  once again I live to fight another day. To be honest, I'm still not sure whether there is cancer in my body or not after reading those results, but if they're good enough for my doc, then they're good enough for me too. As I left the hospital, both smiling and shaken at the same time, I thought about a quote that I'd seen in a newspaper article about metastatic breast cancer. One woman described her primary diagnosis as a 'sprint' and her secondaries as a 'marathon'. But I disagree. To me, it's like hurdles. You jump over one, freestyle your way through life again and no sooner do things get back into rhythm, there's another hurdle waiting for you once more. But on that day - the day of my scan results, I made a toast to Life in all its weird, wonderful, worrisome, scary and surprising guises. I bought some red wine, coffee and teacakes to celebrate (bang goes my caffeine-free, sugar-free, alcohol-free diet again...) my leaping over another hurdle in my never-ending race to stay ahead of the game.