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I believe in Magic
I’ve been in the hospice about two weeks now. As a result, most of the staff know me well. I’ve been cared for by them, nursed by them, supported by them and carried along by them too. It’s been a real up and down ride between crying that I’ve wanted to go home, to see my kids and be with my family, to be amongst my comfort, my world; and of knowing that I couldn’t currently be in a better place, the help I need just a buzz away and my two girls saved the trauma of their mummy in excruciating pain.
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Chemo Round 4 update
Well! Hello there! It has been a while, hasn’t it? It’s been a particularly challenging cycle and it has sadly kept me from doing what I love most – writing.
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A Super Special Happy Mail!
My goodness. I am SO phenomenally lucky to have so many incredible people around me right now. I don’t want to sound like I’m overly gushing, but I feel so lucky. This Happy Mail has a bit more of a background to it. You see, the sender is a very courageous young woman whom I happened to be friends with at school. Her name is Stephie, and when I remember her at school I think of one of the bubbliest, most vivacious girls. We just sort of lost touch as everyone chose different colleges and different universities and all of a sudden there was adult life.
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Chemo Round 2 Update
So, this is round 2 (or 3) depending on how you look at it. The fatigue hit me hard, as always and then as the steroids finished the pain started to kick in and oramorph was no longer helping so we moved onto fentanyl tablets which dissolve under your tongue (and actually don’t taste too bad – bonus!) which worked for a while, until the night that it didn’t and we found that we were calling out nurses every 4 hours, except for during the night when I attempted to get through on fentanyl. In the end, after tripling the dose of fentanyl to no effect, we opted for a syringe…
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Chemo Round One Update
So, after my initial dose of Chemo in July we were sadly forced to take a break while I had surgery for a fistula that had formed between the top of my vagina and my bowel. Yup. Bowel and vagina. I was pooping through two holes for a bit (hey, I may as well tell it like it was). Stool in the vaginal area is a huge infection risk, meaning unless I agreed to a colostomy surgery I could no longer receive chemo. In the words of my consultant oncologist “it would be like giving you sepsis” – fair enough, I thought. “I’ll take the surgery then” I said. She…
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Motherhood & Cervical Cancer
I am pretty sure I never intended this blog to become what it’s going to be, but fuck it. That tends to be my general view these days. If having the big “CC” has taught me anything, it’s that life is too damned short for wasting it wondering if you should or shouldn’t do something. I am doing a lot more things these days than I would have before. But the hardest thing about living with this hideous disease is how hard it has made being a mum.
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I Don’t Know How
I don’t know how to put this chapter of my life to bed. The one that saw me diagnosed with cervical cancer at 29. The one that put me back on a surgeons operating table, for better or worse.
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But, I am not Brave
For those who do not know, in December I was told it was “highly likely” I had cervical cancer. In early January this was confirmed, the next day I met with a surgeon who talked through the procedure I required.
