Tag: Triple negative breast cancer

Posted in About today, Living with cancer

Young, fit and healthy

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote I have mostly been reflecting on being young, fit and healthy. Let me explain.

I first heard the phrase ‘young fit and healthy’ being applied to me at my initial Breast Care Clinic referral appointment. The context was that even though I was only 39, and even though I didn’t have any significant risk factors for breast cancer, and even though I was otherwise fit and well, all the indications were that the lump in my right breast was suspicious nevertheless.

It was a phrase I would hear again and again in the weeks that followed and I came to resent it. It made me furious. It made me want to shout and scream and rage because if I was so young fit and healthy WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THE HOLY THINGS was I doing sitting in an oncologists office? Why did I need a CT scan? Why did I need blood test after blood test after blood test? What was all this chemotherapy nonsense about?

chemo suite

Every time a doctor or nurse commented on how young fit and healthy I was it just reminded me what a bum deal I thought I had been dealt and I raged all the more.

I raged because despite breast cancer being the UK’s most common cancer, with over 55,000 women being diagnosed every year, only 2,200 of them (or 4 percent of the total) are aged 39 or younger like me. I raged because triple negative breast cancer is similarly uncommon – only around 15 percent of breast cancers are ‘triple negative’. I raged because it wasn’t fair, because it wasn’t my fault and because there was nothing I could do about it.

And then, of course, I stopped raging. The thing about raging is that it you have to stop eventually – either you run out of rage, or you run out of things to rage against. I suppose it stared to occur to me that, quite aside from everything else, it really wasn’t doing any good being furious with myself for having cancer, or for being young fit and healthy with it.

Here’s the thing. I am, at least as far as cancer goes, quite young. I also am reasonably fit and reasonably healthy and whilst you will NEVER hear me say that anything about my situation is lucky, I do have to concede that there are scenarios where things could have been a whole lot worse for me. The fact that I am young gives me a bright future to keep my eye on. The fact that I am fit gives me reserves to call on as I make my way through the more gruelling side effects of chemotherapy. The fact that I am healthy means we’ve been able to pursue the optimum, most likely to save my life treatment, (basically kick this thing super long and double hard with chemo before surgery) because I am healthy enough to tolerate it.

I’m a big believer in looking on the bright side – not in the impossibly optimistic sense, just in the sense that there’s always a tiny chink of light. I’ve got cancer and that is all kinds of rubbish but I’m young, fit and healthy and so far, I’m living with it well. And that isn’t rubbish at all.

future
Look to the future – the t-shirt and bright pink lipstick have become my cancer appointment uniform

I’ll leave you, as always, with a little song. Just because…

 

Love you lots, like jelly tots.

 

WeeGee xoxoxo

Posted in About today, Living with cancer

Call me what you want

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote cancer has been in the news again, or specifically, the terminology we use to refer to people with cancer has been in the news. The poll itself makes for interesting reading, although I must admit that my overwhelming feeling in response to it all is that I don’t much care what people call me so long as it’s broadly polite….

I don’t mean to be glib. It’s important that we find ways to be better at talking to one another about cancer and it’s important that people with cancer get to shape the way their stories get told. Some of us will feel like we are going into battle, but others will completely resent the implication: and that’s absolutely fine.

My view, for what it’s worth, is that if you find your self talking about, or indeed to someone with cancer – take the language they use as your lead and if you can’t do that be polite and kind and you really won’t go far wrong.

Here’s the thing about having cancer: WE KNOW YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY. Just say something. It’s all good, man.

Love you lots like Jelly Tots,

WeeGee xoxox

Posted in Living with cancer

Hair today, gone tomorrow…

Posted on by WeeGee

I’m sorry. I had go with a lame, hair loss related pun as the title because starting off with a lame hair loss related pun is THE LAW according to WeeGee today, okay?

Just over six weeks ago I was busy getting my hair cut. Here’s the thing: I don’t like getting my hair cut. I’ve never liked getting my hair cut because it’s weird letting a stranger touch your scalp AND because it’s also weird letting a stranger take a pair or scissors anywhere near your face AND because small talk is crappy enough without being forced to do it with a stranger who is touching your scalp and snapping a pair of scissors right in your face AT THE SAME TIME. But social norms and, to some extent my own vanity, dictate that I get regular hair cuts so, six weeks ago I was sitting in Toni and Guy in Harborough town centre getting tortured my hair cut.

hair cut

It was a fairly memorable haircut, as far as haircuts go. Just the day before, we’d had confirmation that the lump in my breast was very definitely not harmless and I sat there with the world crashing down around me wondering if really gave a flying fuck whether she took a smidge more off my fringe now or waited until it was dry….

At the time, I didn’t realise how fast things were going to move. I was expecting my treatment to start in the New Year, for one thing, and although I knew there was a fair chance I was going to lose my hair it was a dim and distant prospect that I didn’t really have the brain capacity to think about it. In short, I thought I had at least one more hair cut in me before I had to face up to being a baldy for a bit.

Reader, I was wrong.

My treatment started much sooner than we first thought, and – despite plenty of re-assurances that EC chemotherapy usually takes your hair after the second cycle – 14 days after my first dose my hair gave up the ghost and started falling out. BY THE HANDFUL.

You’d think having your hair fall out by the handful would be pretty traumatic and I expect for lots of people it is incredibly traumatic but for me, it just didn’t feel like that at all – in some ways, the sensation was so foreign it was a source of fascination. And besides, I think I’d had long enough to come to terms with the fact it was going to happen and had been been able to frame it as a ‘small price to pay’ in the main scheme of things. When it actually, for real happened, I approached it like I’ve approached pretty much everything else about my diagnosis and treatment – just another thing that needed to be dealt with. And so, with a little help from Mr Awesome Thing Number Five, I dealt with it and shaved the whole lot off in a ‘well fuck it, I might as well jump before I’m pushed’ kind of a way*

Shout out, of course, to the aforementioned, long suffering and ever patient Mr Awesome Thing Number Five who didn’t so much as bat an eyelid when I told him that our plans for the evening included shaving my hair off. There have been lots of times in the past few months I’ve been struck by how lucky I am to have chosen the right person, but none more than when sitting in our kitchen, wrapped in a shower curtain, with only half a head of hair left wondering out loud if ‘it was too late to change my mind…..’

gl cg haircut
Choose your people carefully. One day, you might need to let them loose on your noggin with a set of clippers……

It’s the strangest thing, having no hair for the first time since you were a baby and it does take a bit of getting used to, not least when you find yourself looking at a TOTAL STRANGER in the mirror first thing. That said, aside from finding it impossible to regulate my temperature, I’m living with being a baldy quite comfortably enough, thank you very much. I suppose I’m helped by the fact that my skull is a reasonably normal and neat shape, my eyebrows and (most of) my eyelashes are hanging on in there like the tiny hairy warriors they are**, I’ve got a decent wig and I quite suit a hat. Most of the time, I look pretty much like myself although every once in a while I do look scarily like my (very definitely baldy) dad.

baldy gail
She’s a baldy. She’s a baldy. She’s a baldy. (only people who REALLY know me are allowed to chant this at me…..)

I don’t want to underplay it. I know for some women, and indeed men, the hairloss side of chemotherapy is gut wrenchingly awful and I understand how it might come to feel like insult added to injury. Personally, I found the grit to park it in the ‘stuff that’s going to happen whether I like it or not’ bay and move on. I’ve long since thought you need to pick your battles in life and right now, with everything I’ve got to face up to, railing against the universe because my hair went and fell out isn’t something I’ve got the time or energy for.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

As usual, I’ll leave you with a song – an old one and a good one, for old times and for good times sake… It’s been my ear worm for days since the veritable Shaun Keavney played it on the wireless radio one afternoon….

 

Catch up soon. Love you all lots, like Jelly Tots,

WeeGee xoxoxo

 

 

*Traditionally, all major decisions in WeeGee land have been preceded by the words ‘fuck it’ and it turns out cancer isn’t going to change any of that.

**The less said about my remaining, unmentioned and unmentionable hair the better. It’s an actual real life mystery what happened to that….

Posted in About today, Living with cancer

Another fine mess

Posted on by WeeGee

Hello – it’s me, WeeGee! I wonder if there is anybody out there any more?! I suppose I’m about to find out…

i'm back copy

I’ve been trying to write this post for quite a while: it’s one of those “I don’t know where to start” kind of posts y’see. There’s always the beginning – I suppose I could start there except I’m not too sure where the beginning would actually be. Or I could start by telling you what I’ve been up to since I last wrote, but that was a long time ago and a lot of life has happened since then, and most of it isn’t really relevant to the story any way. Or I could start with the news I came here to share – just come right out and say it, like, because when you’ve got something to say, nine times out of ten you might as well just come right out and say it*.

So here’s the thing. On the 6th December last year I was diagnosed with breast cancer, or if we want to get particular about it, invasive ductal carcinoma of no special type. The cancer is grade two, stage 2b and for those of you who really want to get to the nub of it it’s neither hormone nor protein receptive. In the main scheme of things, it’s a fairly fancy pants kind of cancer. Thankfully there is no distant metastasis (cancer lingo for ‘it hasn’t spread beyond the attached lymph nodes’) and the prognosis is, at this stage, good.

I don’t know what to tell you about getting a cancer diagnosis. On the one hand its pretty straightforward. You go along to the hospital, a bunch of doctors do a bunch of tests and then you go back the next week and they break the news to you very gently indeed. They tell you what you need to know and send you away with your treatment plan, a SERIOUSLY MASSIVE supply of leaflets, and a life changing diagnosis. The life changing diagnosis bit is the bit that isn’t quite so straightforward….

all of the leaflets
ALL OF THE LEAFLETS

Since I got my diagnosis I have cried precisely three times, which is intereresting because I’m pretty sure that’s actually less than I would have cried in my ordinary life without the diagnosis. I’ve been every shade of angry under the sun, I’ve been hopeless, sad, overwhelmed and so very sick and tired of the whole damn thing. Every so often I’ve forgotten about it and then I’ve been surprised because how do you go and forget about something that came along and changed EVERYTHING?

In life there aren’t many things that can’t be undone. Usually when things go wrong, you can put them right, learn whatever you need to learn and then move on. Cancer isn’t like that. You can’t wish it away or reason with it. Once the cells have gone rogue it really doesn’t matter that you think they are a bunch of disloyal little bastards. Once you have cancer, that’s it – you are in it up to your neck and you just have to get your head on straight and get on with it. Even if it really does feel like another fine mess that you’ve gotten yourself into….

another fine mess three

Still, all is not lost and there’s still plenty of WeeGee awesomeness around. I’ve gotten pretty good at putting one foot in front of the other over the years and I’m putting my skills in that area to very good use at the moment. I’m doing my best to get used to living with cancer** and I’m going to write about it here – I feel sure that writing about it will help me through it, and if it doesn’t it’ll give me something to do with the ridiculous amount of time I have on my hands all of a sudden.

Treatment wise there is a long old road ahead of me. I’m currently two cycles in to eight cycles worth of chemotherapy***. After that there will be surgery and after that, most likely another six months worth of radiotherapy. None of this is how I expected to spend my fortieth year on planet Earth, and I’m still getting used to how I feel about it all. That said, there is every hope that the treatment plan will lead to ‘a complete metabolic response’ (more cancer lingo, basically meaning CURED) and, I’ve always said “Hope is Important”****

In the time honoured tradition, I thought I’d  leave you with a song. It doesn’t mean anything in particular, its just that I like it and I thought it would be a nice little bit of normal to round things off….

Love you all lots, like jelly tots, WeeGee xoxoxox

 

 

* There are of course some things you absolutley should NOT just come right out and say but that’s a matter for your own judgement

** For the time being at least

***The first one was on Christmas Eve, so that was really, like, festive. Ho, fucking, ho.

**** I wasn’t the first person to say it. I pinched it off a band I love of old.