What the FEC

    

 

So when I first got my diagnosis my fabulous friend Teens told me about the power of visualisation.

Teens has Dolly the Dolphin who swims around her veins eating up any infected cells helping her to feel better whenever she’s poorly.  She had heard of a boy with cancer who played a video game every morning shooting up the cancer cells who had great results alongside his treatment 🙂

Now I am a huge believer in the power of positive thought but not a lover of guns!  I gave it a little thought and decide upon a unicorn who would gallop around my veins bursting the cancer cells like bubbles with his horn.  I know this isn’t everyone’s thing but I’m not apologising for it because I really believe this is helping!

That night when I went to bed I began visualising my unicorn galloping around my body, frolicking around bursting any cells floating around in my blood stream with his horn after only a couple of minutes Dolly the Dolphin swam past on her way to my liver to munch on the tumours there, doing her bit to help out, amazing!  But it didn’t end there.  Our old white cat Ziggy who is sadly no-longer with us appeared next, she was lying on a bridge over the stream that is my blood in my visualisation.  When she was with us, she would lie on the sofa and if Dude (the dog) or Munch (the cat) walked past she would bat them on the head, just because she could.  If she wasn’t doing that, she was sunbathing.  So here she is, lying on the bridge in the sunshine and every time a cancer cell drifted by she would bat it just like she used to with the boys!

Remember, I only created the unicorn for my visualisation, the others just joined in!

The next time, my sprit guide (according to a FB quiz so it must be real) is a white wolf and he had joined in the party tearing chunks out of the tumour in my breast and then moving onto the tumours in my liver.  I told my little sister Bryony about this and she said that she could see Mrs Pac-Man munching her way around my body… next time, there she is minding her own business munching along.

Last weekend my gorgeous friend Gabs came to visit, I told her all about my visualisation and last week I received this beautiful charm bracelet to help with the fight!  Another unicorn, turns out, he’s a she and they are in love <3.

I had been asking a lot of my team, they were starting to look tired and I promised them reinforcements with the chemo yesterday but I could not have imagined how the visualisation was going to go last night…

As I said yesterday, they injected the chemicals one at a time.  In my visualisation, as the first drug went in a team of horses came galloping into my veins, with the second, their knights and with the third their lances.  The reinforcements have definitely arrived.  They do however behave just like chemo hunting down any fast moving object they can find… not just cancer cells.  Then the most amazing thing happened.  The unicorns herded the knights to my liver and breast to concentrate their battle where it was most needed… awesome!

Today I have felt pretty good, I’m still taking the anti-sickness drugs (prevention is easier than cure) just a little nap this afternoon….

I’m really looking forward to seeing my big sister Booie tomorrow 🙂 and Dad and Chris.  I am surrounded by love and all your kind messages of encouragement and support are what is making me cope so well – I know it – Thank You

Talk to you soon

Lots of love Mand xxx

 

 

 

 

This morning at 09:00 I had my first chemotherapy session.

I am deliriously happy to report that it was pain free 🙂

As I am having the FEC combination of drugs, it is also quite social, which of course pleases me!  This combination has to be manually injected into the cannula alongside the 1ltr saline drip.  Whilst others are set up, plugged into a pump and left to get on with it, I had the full time attention of my nurse for the session, Jackie.  She had to administer all 6 giant syringes of drugs (2 Fluorouracil, 2 Epirubicin and 2 Cyclophosphamide (that’s why they call it FEC!)) slowly so we sat and chatted the whole way through.

All that volume of fluid going in made my hand and my lower arm ache a bit.  When I touched it, it was very cold so Jackie got me a heat pad which she plugged in and wrapped it around my arm which felt lovely.

There is also an army of volunteers in the chemotherapy unit making tea and coffee and bringing biscuits – these people giving up their own time with a smile and all deserve a mention but I am still rubbish with names and don’t expect that to get better any time soon… on that note, I have to apologise to Daphne of the Big C for calling her Brenda in my earlier post  “Sugar Syrup” sorry Daphne!

As soon as it had finished, my face felt kind of fuzzy, a little bit numb, a bit like I’d had a couple of drinks.  I still feel a bit numb now (19:50) but it is lifting slowly.  I have had some waves of nausea.  They gave me an anti-sickness drug at the hospital but they gave me another to bring home in case that one didn’t work so I have taken that too – as they have all said, prevention is easier than cure and who am I to question their judgement.  It will be no surprise to most of you that it hasn’t stopped me eating 🙂

I am feeling tired now though so going to call it a day.  Thank you all for the love and support, I know it is powering me through this.

Talk to you soon

Lots of love Mand xxx

Right – here we are, one more sleep and it all begins.

I feel a bit as if I am about to take my healthy body and put it through hell so that it gets to the same place as my head has been for the past 6 weeks.  Just so that I can then bring them both out of the other end in a much better state!

As you may remember from my post ‘How the FEC did we get here?‘, it was a tummy ache that triggered an ultrasound that found the lesions in my liver that turned out to be stage 4 breast cancer.  I have had 3 of those episodes, all lasting about 4 days.  That’s it.  I do get a heavy feeling in my upper abdomen, just under my rib cage but no pain.

Mentally, I have struggled with coming to terms with the diagnosis – the manifestation of which is a total lack of concentration and focus.  Phil recently described it as having the attention span of a gnat!

However, physically I feel fine.  Phil, who is my chief researcher (he does an excellent job of filtering out the scary bits) as well as my fabulous husband told me it’s important to keep exercising, to keep fit (obviously not as fit as an athlete!) so I have been walking with Dude every day and going to Zumba twice a week.  I feel good.

Despite that, tomorrow I am going to have poison injected into my bloodstream to kill the cancer.  The trouble is, the poison will also kill healthy cells in my body, primarily the fast growing ones that behave in a similar way to cancer.  The main ones are hair follicles, intestines and the mouth.  These cause the hair loss, nausea and ‘dry mouth’, the common side effects of chemotherapy.

A colleague of mine who has been through chemo said to me; “the good thing is cancer is much less likely to kill you these days, the bad thing is, you have to go through a really horrible time before you get better!”.

The thing is, some people do go through chemotherapy without having too horrible a time and I have therefore decided that I will be one of these people 🙂  I had a conversation with an old friend earlier and we decided that we should assume that I will be absolutely fine.

So we have a plan, I will sail through the treatment and if I do start to feel poorly, then we’ll deal with it and do what we have to do to get through it… but the money is on sailing through 🙂

I favour my odds!

Talk to you again soon

Lots of love Mand xxx

What a beautiful day…again!  We have had so much sunshine in the last few weeks we must be close to a sunshine record 🙂

Today has been a treasured day of normality.  No appointments, nothing in particular that had to be done or shopped for or prepared. Just like Saturdays should be.

We did a little in the veg garden, walked Dude (our gorgeous dog), had a bonfire and I even did a bit of ironing!

Talk to you soon

Lots of love Mand xxx

Today was exciting – it was wig day!

The fitting session was at ‘Big C‘ which is right next door to the Colney centre where the oncology and chemo appointments happen at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital where I’m being treated (hmmm, treated, that sounds like it should be something much more fun than the reality…)  Big C is Norfolk’s cancer charity since 1980.  They provide loads of support for cancer patients in a non-clinical environment.  They have a band of volunteers who welcome all-comers with tea, biscuits and a warm smile.  Complementary therapy sessions and various workshops and seminars are also held there. In short, they are amazing 🙂

Here’s who was there today!

Bear with me for a moment, I’m going to take you back a bit.

When the consultant first mentioned cancer, my natural reaction was, if we have to deal with this, how we could turn this into an adventure and find the positive experiences to take from it?…. whatever little bit of fun can be found in this has to be exploited.  If I’m going to lose my hair, I’ll get to try out some different styles and colours… I’m going to have a pink wig!

When I met the oncologist and she told me that they would organise a free wig for me I told her I’d like a pink one.  She said brilliant!  When I went into Big C to meet some of the team the response was a little different…

Me: Yes, I have my appointment for the wig fitting, I’d like to have a pink one.
Anne: Oh, I’m not sure if Jean does pink wigs; Bridget, does Jean do pink wigs?
Bridget: Oh, I’m not sure
Anne: She usually trys to match the wig to your current style
Me: Oh, I just thought it would be fun to try something different.

I began to think maybe I’d got this wrong.  Maybe you can’t ‘make the most of’ something like cancer.  Maybe this really is the point at which you have to stop trying to make this into something that could be fun in any way shape or form.

And then I thought; there is no way I can give up on this or give in to this or approach this any differently from the way I have ever approached anything before and I will have a PINK wig.

Right, back to today

I met with Jean from Frobishers in a private room to talk about wigs and get my head measured.  Phil and I had spent quite a lot of time surfing wig shops on line so we had an idea of what is available and he had come with me to help me choose.  However, while we were having our coffee he got a better offer which I’ll write about another day 🙂

Jean was great.  When I went in she looked at my hair and said “oh, I think we can do something like that” with a lovely warm smile.  I said “I’d really like a pink one” and braced myself for the response.
“Ooh that’s great! We have a lovely bob, I don’t have one with me but I do have a picture, let me find it!”
Oh my goodness – what a relief – I must have been smiling like a Cheshire cat!!

So here is Sugar!

Just to learn how to put a wig on I tried Shannon!

Sugar will be ready for me in a couple of weeks, hopefully before I need her but I did buy a head scarf just in case!!

Talk to you again soon

Lots of love Mand xxx

So, in February this year I had a tummy ache.  Just under my rib cage as if someone had their hand in there squeezing – really hard!

I saw a nurse at the walk-in centre who thought it could be gall stones.  So I saw a doctor at my practice on Wednesday 18th February.  He was very thorough.  I was also experiencing some pain in my chest when I took a deep breath so he had a prod around my tummy and asked me if I check my breasts regularly.  I admitted that I do, but not every month so he also did a breast exam but didn’t feel anything.  So he recommended an ultrasound exam to check out my gallbladder and look for gall stones.  This pain lasted about 4 days and then was gone.

Monday 2nd March I went to the Spire Hospital Norwich (Luckily I have private medical insurance through work – the NHS appointment came through for the 27th) for the ultrasound.

• Good News! Gall bladder is not inflamed and there are no gall stones
• Bad News! There are lesions on your liver

I didn’t even know what a lesion was!  I googled it. It scared me.  I didn’t look again!

Thursday 5th March I went to the Spire Hospital Norwich for a CT scan to my chest, abdomen and pelvis… the results were inconclusive as to what the lesions were, but the good news was that the scan didn’t show anything else.  Let’s try with a MRI scan.

Tuesday 10th March I have an appointment with a consultant.  The insurance company won’t authorise an MRI unless I’ve seen a consultant…  He says I am young, fit (according to Phil, that depends if you are comparing me to a couch potato or an athlete…), healthy, not demonstrating any symptoms of anything sinister (especially rapid weight loss – if I had lost a pound every time a doctor has asked me if I have been losing weight, I would be slim!).  The lesions could be one of may different things and his gut said it’s not anything sinister but we need to go ahead with the MRI to find out what it is.

Tuesday 17th March MRI scan at the Spire Hospital Norwich… results inconclusive.  Only way to find out what’s going on is a biopsy.

In the mean-time I had a full set of blood tests.  Wednesday 25th March the consultant calls me to say that they showed my liver function is fine.  There is however one tumour marker that is slightly abnormal.  It is not a reliable test and not conclusive in any way… it is CA153 – which can indicate breast cancer.

I have to confess, I did freak out a bit at this point!  I was in Aberdeen at work (my normal work routine is to spend every other week in Aberdeen) my fabulous and incredibly grounded colleague and friend absorbed the shock and calmed me down in seconds (thanks Mo xx).

Tuesday 31st March Ultrasound Guided Biopsy at the Spire Hospital.  Who knew, poking around in your liver and close to the diaphragm delivers intense referred pain to the shoulder?  And although the local area of the skin was numbed, pushing the needle in to the correct spot to get the biopsy is what I imagine being stabbed to feel like!

Tuesday 7th April Meet with the consultant.  It’s breast cancer. In my liver. We’re in shock.  The CT scan showed nothing in the breast.  Appointment to see the breast consultant tomorrow.

Wednesday 8th April Meet the breast specialist.  He does an exam and can’t feel anything, the mammogram however picks it up, hiding in the centre of my left breast.  An ultrasound guided biopsy is taken just to be sure.

The insurance company also calls – I’m not covered for secondary cancer so it’s back to the good old NHS – the treatment options and level of care will be exactly the same.  The insurance company has been great, got me through the scans and diagnosis stages quickly.

Thursday 9th April We wait to see what’s next, and we wait… we sow vegetable seeds, tidy up the vegetable patch, do all sorts of things (luckily I work for a great company and have an awesome boss so I don’t have to do any actual work), in the sunshine and wait…

Tuesday 16th April Bone scan with the Nuclear Medicine Department (that’s really the name of a hospital department!!) to check that the cancer hasn’t spread to my bones.

Wednesday 17th April We wait to see what’s next, and we wait… I’m finding it easier to enjoy each day without thinking too much about what’s to come than Phil is but we’re doing our best!

Thursday 30th April We meet the oncologist.  She is lovely and makes us feel really comfortable, we also meet my oncology key worker, she is lovely too.  We have a plan of action.  the chemotherapy combination is FEC, I will have 6 sessions at three week intervals beginning Monday 18th May.  and an appointment for a wig fitting on Friday 15th May.

And so it begins.

 

 

 

Five weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer which has spread into my liver.  I have been overwhelmed by the amount of love and support I have received from my friends and family which is really awesome and I am incredibly humbled by it.

I am very aware that this support will be what gets me through this experience and keeps me smiling along the way, I am also aware that I am probably not going to want (or maybe even be able) to update everyone personally for every step along the way. Those of you who know me well may find this difficult to believe but I may find it difficult to keep repeating the same stories about myself and I know that I have thought I have shared information with people and I actually haven’t…

My attention span has never been great but my brain is even more unreliable than usual since my diagnosis and I don’t start the chemotherapy until Monday, I have read that ‘chemo brain’ is likely to have a similar impact so expect random updates at best but my intention is to keep you all updated via this blog so that when we do chat, we can talk about things much more interesting than cancer and all that comes along with it.

I will figure out how to post a bit of background of how I got to the diagnosis somewhere on this site.

The plan is to put this thing into remission and keep it there for a very long time.  FEC is the combination of chemotherapy drugs that we will be using, 6 sessions, 3 weeks apart starting Monday.  Let’s do this!

Talk to you soon

Lots of love Mand xxx