Pick yourself up.... Dust yourself off.... And go again

To picc or not to picc that is the question? A picc line for those who don’t know is a small tube that is inserted into a vein in your arm and fed up through the vein up to your shoulder and then down near your heart. It’s for administering chemo through and taking bloods and it stays in for your chemo journey. You have a choice to have one in or have cannulas put in at every visit for chemo. Both not ideal but my decision was made easy. Id seen my son Sam (who had kidney cancer when he was 4) have a picc line that we affectionately called ‘Tom’. Children are given them to make the process a lot easier and also so they aren’t jabbed with needles at every appointment. I’m about as brave as a kid when it comes to needles so I put my hand up for this straight away. Plus having seen my sister Becky go through cancer a lot of time without one and them struggling to find veins, this cemented my love for the picc line. And as if by magic and to reaffirm my decision the nurses had tried to get...

  Faced with a diagnosis of cancer I was determined to do as much as I could to support the medical interventions I’m about to receive. But be warned! The moment you start this you open up a can of worms and it’s stressful at a time when you don’t need stress. Firstly I was very frustrated that I had been wearing underwire bras and putting my dove deodorant (with aluminium in) on for years not realising they could potentially be part of the problem. I want to shout it from the roof tops. Cut those underwires out ladies and only wear 0% aluminium deodorants! So now having got the dreaded C the advice I felt in summary was that I could just eat organic greens and nuts. I felt destined for a life of foraging and tasteless food and to top it off I was only allowed to eat in a dedicated 6 hours a day. Exhausting! Plus I had to have positive mental thoughts every minute of the day, exercise and in covid times not see anyone and only leave the house for a walk. F*** me it’s stressful .......

 It’s taken me a few weeks to start this blog.... I’ve tousled with what’s the point, who will read it questions and then realised I needed to do it for me anyway. So here goes......  To bring you up to speed, I’ve been diagnosed with an invasive ductile carcinoma grade 3 breast cancer. How did I find it people ask? You can hear the dread in their voice at the end of the phone and know they will be straight off to check their Breast’s post phone call. The truth is I have large Breast’s and my Tumor was deep in my left one. No amount of prodding by myself or the doctor was going to feel a lump. I count myself lucky that I had pain from it. Not an ache because that comes with the territory with big boobs, but a real soreness, like you get with a bruise. The doctor said it was probably an infection and put me on antibiotics. It wasn’t, so after a couple of weeks I was having a mammogram. Boy did they move fast then, I was impressed. No sign of covid holding us up I was glad to se...