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

I currently have what is known in the trade as moon face caused by the steroids I have been taking. I’ve just stopped taking them so I should deflate slowly but luckily I have sam to prod my cheeks and update me on my progress on that front! I’m just keeping an eye out for the wrinkles coming back.  I’ll be honest December was hard, my blood had become too toxic and I was on my knees. I had a blood transfusion and a platelet transfusion and was pretty much in every day for blood tests.  BUT I got out of hospital Christmas Eve at 5pm and managed to spend Christmas Day with my babies! AND 2022 is going to be a great one. It’s started very well! 9 out of 10 tumours in my head are not visible currently! That’s significant. I’m a big believer in not asking things you don’t need to know and I am glad I didn’t ask anything about the size of the tumours at the start. Of the 10, 7 were small and 3 were large apparently. Of the 3 large ones the two that are not visible were 2 cm each wh...

 I’m currently lying in a hospital bed in the critical dependency unit at Clatterbridge relieved to be here and reflectively amused. Dropping off to sleep last night my phone rang late. Both kids in house, tick. I checked phone and it was a call from Clatterbridge at 10.30pm at night. What on earth was going on? Pretty sure my consultant wasn’t calling with his bedtime cocoa in hand. ‘Hi Mrs Miln, I’m a registrar from Clatterbridge. Can I ask you have you got pains in your chest or are you struggling to breathe?’ ‘Well up until 10 seconds ago no! Now I feel like you’ve just sat on my chest and have your hands round my throat. Why?’ ‘We’ve picked up from your scan Thursday you have a blood clot on your lung and we need to treat it urgently to get rid of it. 3 months of injections.’ A discussion around avoiding Chester A&E ensued and I said it’s fine we’ll come straight to Clatterbridge now. On reflection and only on reflection as I’ve had a sleepless night thinking about the lit...

As you all know I’m a pretty positive person but the last 4 weeks have been horrendous. Staying on treatment and not missing one is such a psychological roller coaster. Unfortunately I turned up for my day 8 second chemo, bloods were good but I had a temperature. I say a temperature, just 0.3 over! Temperatures on chemo are a no no so within 10 minutes I’m sat on a ward with IV antibiotics pumping into me. So after taking bloods etc they couldn’t find an infection and I was so frustrated but they still wouldn’t give it to me. The next two weeks we’re a bit of a haze. I struggled with the effects of day 1 chemo, I was down in the dumps, I had gastritis, thrush, loads of tablets to take and I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere. In the middle of it all I ended up for an evening in A&E after my vision started blurring and I was struggling to keep on my feet. After another drip of antibiotics and fluids they established I was dehydrated so easily remedied. In amongst all this the p...

Fate played its hand immediately and before I knew it I was under a new consultant at Clatterbridge through a contact of ours. Why? Because he’s the world leading expert in metastatic cancer that has spread to the brain! I was give. 5 days of radiotherapy to the head immediately. Ok so as the picture shows it’s not the nicest experience nailed to the bed in a mask which is moulded to your face! But when I was lying there all that went  through my head was that I was doing it for the family and the light from the machine felt a bit like a light from heaven. One week off after radiotherapy and chemotherapy started. So the initial palliative drug I was going to be out on by the other consultant was scrapped and I started carbo gemocide which is a harder and more effective treatment.Both the radiotherapy and chemotherapy shrink the tumours and I’ve managed to reduce the twelve steroids I was on to 1!which is a sure sign things are working! So I’ve got 18 weeks of this drug and then as ...

Elated by the news of the lung but now battling another what if scenario, I had been with my vertigo for a good week or so by now and my GP had already referred me for an MRI on my head which I was still waiting for. Apparently the other scans I’d had were just full body which is only to neck so head had not been done before, aaarrrgghh. More excruciating waiting but not as long as I thought. On the way back from the lung hospital I had to go for bloods at the countess, not even sure what these were for. Getting blood out of me took them 6 attempts and the day had caught up with me. I was now in the countess throwing up in the corridors and I decided enough was enough and went straight to A&E where they admitted me immediately. I knew what was happening deep down you just do. There was no escaping what I thought was about to unfold. But nonetheless I was given anti sickness and felt so much better. Then left for hours while unfortunately the whole of A&E bar one nurse dealt wit...

  Well I had a fabulous two weeks in Italy and then it was back to a very different reality. On return I was told that the lung team had seen my scans and they were far from happy with the lump. Really! Were we here again, could I really do this again. First up lung tests to check my capacity’s. All good of course, normal unsurprisingly. All that walking had made up for the fact my lung was actually hiding s tumour in it. Next up a biopsy. 6th September Just a day case and another procedure involving a scanner and needles. I’m used to this now, people coming at me with instruments under scanners.  I’ve completely normalised appointments like this which I appreciate would be completely daunting for others but my body has literally become a vessel and I’m losing parts by the minute! So the options for results of this scan were spread of breast cancer, new primary lung cancer or TB. Gosh how I clung to TB for a week, more than likely I had it, dad had carried it and I hadn’t requ...

The last six weeks have been the worst of my entire life. I have been a VOMIT an acronym used in the medical profession, Victim Of Medical Imaging Technologies. It pushed me to my psychological limits and without counselling I would not have got through it.  Riding on a high when I finished my breast cancer treatment I didn’t have a clue what was round the corner. On the 21st June at 6.30pm I got a call from my oncology consultant to say that my planning scan which I had had prior to my radiotherapy had shown 3 lumps on my lungs and that they needed to follow it up with a diagnostic CT scan. For anyone that hasn’t had cancer I can tell you your first and only conclusion is the cancer has spread. 24 hours later I was sobbing in the arms of my breast surgeon (sshhh very un covid) with her telling me she wasn’t worried about them but they had to follow them up. Conversations like this need recording because no matter how hard you try to keep the positive voices the negative ones creep...