Cancer Support Thread 89 - the best thread that no one wants to be on.

[LemonDrizzle10]

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Yes I had a Little Lifts one last year. DD took 90% of it but it was nice she had something.

Very funny and apt Graduation posts x

@FairyWren7 I had precancerous cells in my fallopian tube, although unfortunately, they had spread to my ovary, they called the fallopian tube thing STIC and it’s linked with BRCA in a minority of cases, though my genetic test was negative. Or at least I assume it was as I wasn’t told it was positive. The oncologist thought it was negative but he couldn’t find it and then I never thought to ask again.

I think I’m okay and life come back to normal, and then something happens and I burst into tears. Today I phoned up to book a mammogram, and the woman on the other end told me I wasn’t due one yet but the GP surgery at sent out too many invitations, they were only doing people who had missed them, so I said I haven’t had one yet and I’m 54 years old and I felt she was very judgmental mental and told me it was because I had turned one down in 2021. Which is sort of true, i did her a letter and didn’t get round to booking it, but at the time I was waiting for scan results to see if I was going to have to have brain surgery (I didn’t!), started to get the cancer symptoms, my daughter had a lump in her breast, and my mum had a number of emergency hospital appointments for TIAs and other things. Then the cancer circus started properly and I couldn’t cope with one more thing. So I burst into tears and then she was nice to me, but it just seemed another example of just being treated as a body part and not a whole person.

At my graduation you turn up in line with the timetable and get up on the stage to be told they didn’t sign your certificate and you have to come back in three hours. When you come back there’s a long queue of people who have also been told to come back and you have to sit front of a loud tv playing Loose Women.

I think maybe I shall drop out of Cancer School and become a hippie. I just spent the day on Dartmoor with a lovely friend who is a sculptor and very alternative. I may go and help with his Open Studio next week. He makes some amazing clay animals and shrunken heads.

So I have been presented with my graduation certificate. But I am one of my oncologist’s ‘1 or 2 patients a year’ whose liver doesn’t recover from chemo in the expected timeframe. Fuck! So I’m off to a liver specialist in a couple of weeks. I’ll have to take a sick day in my second week back at work, excellent.

Everyone around me is celebrating but I’m a bit subdued. I have a genetic mutation so it’s never going to be ‘over’. I already have a hysterectomy planned in a few months as I’m at risk of gynaecological cancer.

@lucysmam

thanks for your kind words x

@Silkierabbit

Are you at the same campus of Cancerland Uni hospital as me? It sounds like it from the additional rules and guidelines in your posts 😂

Actually there is a poster here who's at the same one as me. We've exchanged PMs. We know all the same chemo nurses etc. We're about 4 miles from each other.

@SierraSapphire

Thank goodness she was finally nice to you. Mammogram bookings are so weird. I keep getting texts saying I missed my appt, it's even all over my GP NHS app saying I didn't turn up. I phoned and wrote ages ago to let them know I was under treatment for BC, but they won't stop posting how I missed my non-existent appointments (at a different location).

Shit, a loud tv with Loose Women on. Thank goodness for small mercies, our place doesn't have a TV. Or a bell, thank goodness twice.

@TopOfTheCliff

Clay animals in Dartmoor, that sounds lovely. But shrunken heads? 🤔

Thanks for telling us about the £7m picture. That's an awful lot of money and I think he should have given you some too, but I couldn't agree more that money can't make you happy, as long as you are already financially secure.

@Remaker

Congrats on your graduation. I hope things go well long term, despite the mutation. I also hope the liver issue is something that they can treat and/or will gradually recover.

I will graduate very soon, but still have some extracurricular units left covering the side effects I got from the BSc cancer patient studies.

Omfg can you imagine that one person who watches tik-tik really loudly WITHOUT earphones at graduation, and has to show EVERYONE what they're watching 🙈🤣 I kind of want to go now, for the laugh!

Or...the adventure camel who dives into the brews in quiet bits...ffs

@SierraSapphire so mine was genetic. BRAC1
Your story really resonates with mine, you get swept up with one serious issue and then other issues crop up.

At my graduation I’ll arrive an hour and a half late after being rear ended. Presenting the certificate they will tell me how much my removed breasts weighed and will congratulate me. Then the day after I will drown when the ferry to Tasmania sinks… like the Titanic.

(Sorry it’s very dark but it’s my graduation!) 🤣

@TopOfTheCliff that sounds really fun. Being a hippie is the way forward.

I really hope I’m able to get myself to Tasmania as at the moment I don’t want to leave the house due to anxiety.

@doublec Love that idea - happy Friday!

When I worked as a young grad at a publishing company in Teddington we had a chap on the door who used to say goodnight by saying ‘be lucky’ in a real cockney accent!

So ‘be lucky!’

But yes, I’m not dwelling on it. Even if I’d have known about the BRAC1 gene I wouldn’t have rushed off to get a bilateral mastectomy within a 6-8 month time frame. Even if I could have got through the list in that time.

I’m sure we could all use more shrunken heads.
@TopOfTheCliff I’d love to meet up when you’re next in Dorsey and Poundbury garden centre does great cake!

@FairyWren7

Are you still in the Teddington area?

I love 'be lucky' I'll try to remember it.

@lucysmam

That'd be hilarious 😂

@SummerCycling no summer cycling. Nowadays I’m in Melbourne, Australia. But I really want to come back to the UK. My family live in Margate, Kent. I lived up in Kingston for a few years after uni. I feel very homesick for the UK. I came back last summer for a few months and then when I returned to Australia was diagnosed. So Australia is still basically pandemic and cancer at this point. I’ve got a couple of good mates here but it isn’t the same…However my husband is Australian and he doesn’t seem keen on the UK. See how we go if and when the dust from cancer land settles…

I work for a university and all this University of Cancerland is cracking me up 🤣

@TopOfTheCliff omg at the painting story!!!

@lucysmam what the heck is that in your cuppa 🤣

Each Peach pics please, I love that book. Congrats on 17/18, what a marathon.

@Remaker good luck with the liver specialist appt.

@FairyWren7 ugh endo is miserable. Lots of sympathy from me. If there was ANY justice, chemo would knock that out too, it would seem only fair to fix that as a side effect! Fingers crossed for you and hope you are okay and not too bumped and bruised following the car accident.

I am gearing up for chemo 3/6 next week. Kind of tired and depressed thinking about it tbh. Will try and shake myself into a positive attitude for the DC this weekend, but... ugh.

@AllotmentTime my adventure camel 🤣 usually they're used for counting/patterns or whatever you want, in school. This one escaped in my friend's pocket & has kind of become my mascot & accompanies me all over the place 🙈

This is the crossword book from the Little Lifts box if any of you fancy it. Our Post Office is shut today, but I can nip and post it on Monday 🙂

I was hoping had graduated from cancer school. Is post chemo depression a Post Graduate certificate? Been put on ADs and told ‘ surprised didn’t need them sooner’ Does the world just stand around and wait for you to break?

Sorry @Podgedodge that you have needed antidepressants. I have been warned so many times about the post treatment breakdown and how I am going to need counselling and will collapse. First time round I threw myself into weight loss and fitness and got really strong from doing weights. This time I have to get a hip replacement and do the same again but my plan is to start dressing in patchwork jumpsuits and have tattoos and piercings and take up Wicca and tarot. It sounds much more fun than antidepressants. My great aunt had a stroke at 80 and became a vegan and hugged trees afterwards. I rather think she is a role model.

@TopOfTheCliff have you read Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner?

More serious question: I have bruising where the port was inserted. The Macmillan website says this is normal but then says it may be a sign of infection. Do I need to do anything?

I'm not sure if I've graduated or not, am still hanging round here! I've got a full body CT scan on Mon and and MRI on Tues. Fun times. Have Oncologist on 25th to see where we are a year down the line.

Not sure if it ever leaves you really, currently playing menopause or cancer reoccurrence bingo.

@TopOfTheCliff , I really admire you, I cannot imagine where your strength comes from, you are an amazing person.
My reserves seem dry. I am still working, still looking after my family without their father but emotionally I seem spent.
I will be me again, weight training sounds good, hate my old lady arms!🙂

@TopOfTheCliff I've always fancied learning to read tarot! Maybe that's how I should spend the next 6 weeks (might be seven) before I go back to work 🤔 I recall reading somewhere that your first deck should be gifted though so have held off buying.

I've just noticed that my hand, where the cannula was inserted yesterday, seems to have reacted slightly to the adhesive from the sticker. My arm reacted slightly to the tape on Thurs too after I had bloods taken. That's a new thing! I've only reacted before when I had the ascitic fluid drained the first time & my skin went all peely like sunburn 🙄.

@Podgedodge Sorry you are needing anti-depressants but I think you are doing amazingly - still working, still looking after your children despite cancer, chemo etc and losing your husband and their Dad at a young age.

Sorry about the crash Fairywren

Summer I don't think we are at the same hospital, mine begins with an A as think you mentioned yours before.

@Florabritannica when was your port inserted?

The bit on my neck where the tube enters the vein wasn't too bad but the port site itself was bruised and sore for... struggling to remember exactly but at least a week, and longer after that I noticed it was still bruised if I tried to sleep on that side.

really took me by surprise because they hadn't said it would be sore!! And it really really was!

It's currently still an attractive yellow / green bruise after the last round of chemo 2 1/2 weeks ago. It does seem to bruise easily.

I'd guess (not a doctor disclaimer) that if you've no other infection symptoms then it's probably fine.

Thanks - that’s reassuring. It was inserted on Thursday so still early days.