Moving, part 1

I've loved life here at my little bahtocancer.blogspot. But times change, and things grow, and things outgrow.

So I'm moving. From now on you'll find this blog over at my new site, www.bahtocancer.com. You'll find more there too: more on the Bah! approach, more information about the charities I'm supporting and my talks about my dance with cancer. Yes, my friends, the Excellent Idea has come of age.

Please, come on over. Bear in mind that the new site is a work in progress and will change, but it will be the blog's home from now on.

Setting up a new site is scary and I feel as though I'm starting afresh. I'm doing it because I want to support people dancing with cancer, cancer survivors, cancer charities. This is part of my obligation, as someone lucky enough to be cured. I am still walking and talking and wearing v-necked tops and washing my hair. I want to be part of the movement that makes sure others can, too. (Obviously your choice of neckline is your own.)

So, please, come on over. and if there are people you know that you think the new site will help, please let them know.

I'll see you on the other site.

Model behaviour

Here I am.... Lei, anyone?

Shop - Race for Life - Cancer Research UK

Race for Life 2010, Part 2

A little while ago, I asked if you wanted to do Race for Life with Joy and me on Saturday 22 May in London. Last year, I wanted to get a team together but didn't really have the energy. This year, I do.

So I'm thrilled to tell you that Team Bah! is looking pretty good so far:

- Me and my daughter Joy

- Emma and her daughter Hannah

- Jude

- Nathalie

- Karen, Sandi, Sandi, Vicki and Fiona

So. Two things.

1. It's not too late! If you'd like to do Race for Life with us, please email me or leave a comment and I'll be in touch.

2. If you can't do Race for Life but would like to support Team Bah!, hang on for the fundraising page. It's coming soon. Oh yes it is.

Oh, and a third thing.

3. 5k is really not that far. And we're walking, not running. So if you'd like to join us but are worried that you couldn't manage it, don't worry. you'll be fine. And I have my bionic arm to help you along.

Actually, one more.

4. If you'd like to Race for Life but can't join us, check out other events here.

9 reasons why I knit

1. My Grandma knitted. My mother, my aunts knit. I know knitting of old.

2. I can make things that no-one else has. I can choose the pattern, the yarn, the gauge, or make something up as I go along. Complete creativity. Complete control. (Joy might argue that these are also things that no-one else would want, but I let those go serenely by.) Here's a scarf I'm working on.

Yes, it is different to the earlier scarf I showed you in this yarn. Another joy of knitting is that it doesn't work out right, it's easy to start again.

3. Knitting had brought me new friends, new skills, new patience. (I don't knit because I'm patient. I'm patient (-ish) because I knit.)

4. When I spend hours in hospital waiting rooms, I have something to do that makes me feel I am not wasting my time or being sucked into being nothing more than a patient.

5. There is no better way to introduce a new person to the world than by giving them something made for them before they were even here.

6. Like crosswords, sudoku and stimulating conversation, knitting helps your brain stay fitter for longer.

7. You can knit all of the love and appreciation you have for someone into something, so that when they are wearing it, they are carrying that love and appreciation with them. Here are the mittens I knitted for Susan for Christmas, and every time I picked them up I thought about what a force for good she has always been in my life. (Apart from the bit when I realised I'd knitted two left mittens by mistake, and I wasn't thinking any kind of a good thought then.)

8. You can knit yourself better when you need to. This is what I knit myself better with after all of the pea tests.

It's a sock, not long after the heel turn. I'm liking this pattern and yarn so much that I'm even going to knit the other one.

9. You get moments like this. I knitted a doll for Evie for Christmas, but illness, holidays and diaries have meant that my first chance to give it to her was on Tuesday.

Storm in a pea-cup

(Well, if everyone else gets to make pea puns, I don't see why I shouldn't.)

Nathalie, Diane and I arrived at Breast Clinic at 1pm and I was called to see Joe, the nurse practitioner who was my first point of contact when I went through the diagnosis process at St George's in 2008. He confirmed that there was a lump, checked my breasts, armpits and clavicle, and found nothing untoward, apart from the pea. He did a fine needle biopsy and put his money on the pea being a cyst. (Cysts are good, not least because we don't need to do anything about them.)

Then Joe told me what would happen next: he would send me for a mammogram then an ultrasound scan, and if the doctor who performed the ultrasound was concerned about the pea in any way, she would whip her Big Biopsy Needle out there and then and take a cross-section of the lump for analysis. (That's a slightly more involved process involving local anaesthetic, a spring-loaded hollow needle, and a nurse to hold your hand and make sure you don't look.)

Here's part of the form I was given to take to mammography/ultrasound:

Scientific, no?! The breasts are already printed on the form and then Joe gets to draw bits on it. The representation of the pea is, I think, a good one, but there really isn't that much cross-hatching on the scar.

Anyway. We decamped to the X-ray department. (This all happened within 20 minutes of our arrival. Clearly where I have been going wrong with lengthy hospital waits in the past is to actually have made an appointment.) Mammograms were first. People complain about how painful mammograms are, but I find the discomfort of having each breast squashed first horizontally and then vertically is mitigated by the comedy aspect. Ask a stranger - preferably one with warm hands - to stretch and knead your breasts, one by one, onto a sheet of glass. then get them to put another sheet of glass on top and stand on it while making a buzzing noise. I think you'll find it hard not to giggle.

I had one lot of mammograms, and then was asked to go back and do a close-up. Then I got to get into a lovely hospital gown.

Blue is sooooo my colour.

When I was called in for the ultrasound, I found Dr. Wilkinson was still in charge of the cold gel and the magic stick. She, too, was involved in my diagnosis for breast cancer and was unfailingly kind and clear. So, I liked her anyway. I liked her even more after this conversation:

Dr. W: Oh, yes, I feel it. It feels like a lentil.

Me: Actually, I thought a pea.

Dr. W:(considers) Oh, yes, a pea. Very like a pea.

She had a look, and told me that once a fine needle biopsy has been done it's very difficult to get a clear reading from an ultrasound, because the biopsy process (which involves sticking a needle in and jiggling it about a bit to loosen some tissue, which is then extracted via the needle and syringe) disrupts the tissue. But her opinion was that the pea is a (charmingly named) 'fatty necrosis': an area where damaged fat in the breast has partly broken down and formed a lump. It's not uncommon after surgery or radiotherapy.

The Big Biopsy Needle stayed in the drawer, and I was free to go.

In due course - I won't be looking for it for a week at least - I will get a letter with the biopsy results. I will then know whether the winner of the Name That Lump competition is Joe or Dr. W. I'm assuming that one of them is correct and the pea is nothing nastier. Please do the same.

Now the tests are over, I feel a little bit wrung out by the experience. I'm going to have a bath, and then I'm going to knit myself better. But before I go, there's one more thing:

Since my post on Sunday evening, there have been comments on the bog, text messages, Twitter messages, emails, and phone calls, all telling me not to worry and reassuring me that the chances of cancer being back are laughably small. A lentil in a haystack. A pea in a hailstorm. Thank you, everyone. You're right, and I look forward to receiving the official confirmation of your wisdom from Joe soon. Again, thank you.

Sometimes it's hard to be a blogger

I've been blogging for long enough now for Bah! to cancer to have become part of my life. Every couple of days, or when there's something to say that relates to my dance with cancer. I blog. I blog because blogs only live when they are constantly renewed. I blog because I enjoy it. I blog because, before I can post something, I need to process it, so blogging helps me to deal with each little step in my dance with cancer, and I think it's much easier to do it that way than to process the whole thing when it's over.

And I blog because - and I hope this doesn't sound too grand - there are a lot of people who now wait for me to blog, and who have even bothered to email me to tell me that they are disappointed on days that I don't, and worried if a few days pass and there's been no sign of me. Because of the nature of what I'm blogging about, I feel an obligation to people who see me as some tenuous part of their support network. I don't know how much help I actually am to anyone, but I'm happy to keep telling you what's happening here.

Generally speaking I have found blogging an easy and straightforward thing to do, and without ever being too formal about it, I've worked up a little set of rules for the blog. They go something like:

- be honest

- try to give the information as well as the emotion

- if you wouldn't be prepared to talk to a friend about it, don't blog about it

- if it's not your story, don't tell it

- if people offer you money to post about it, don't take it, and don't post about it.

These rules have served me fairly well over the last 14 months, But on Thursday, something happened that threw me, because I didn't know whether to blog about it or not. I've thought and wondered and discussed it with Alan, Ned and Joy. And I've decided to tell you about it, with their blessing, because this is, above all, an honest account, and I don't see the point in telling you about my dance with cancer if I edit bits out.

But please, read to the end of this post, and read everything, and think about everything, not just the sentence I am going to type next.

On Thursday, I found another lump in my breast.

It's pretty much the size of a pea (on the pea-golf ball-orange-grapefruit scale of measurement beloved by medical professionals everywhere). It's in my right breast, which is the breast the cancer was removed from, but on the side.

Here's the thing that the medics I've spoken to all agree on: given the surgery, and the chemotherapy, and the radiotherapy, and the herceptin, and the tamoxifen, it is extremely unlikely that this little lump is a cancer. Unlikely, bordering on the impossible. It's more likely to be an actual pea, in fact, than it is to be a cancer. (In that last part, I'm paraphrasing.)

So. Nothing to worry about. So I'm not worried, not exactly, although I do find myself, in spare moments, thinking about stocking the freezer and wondering how long I can get my Mum to come down for. And I did wake up at 5am today. That's not normal.

Anyway. This is what happens next. On Tuesday, I go to the hospital and I have:

- a fine needle biopsy

- a mammogram

- an ultrasound scan.

(Realistically, I will also examine the faces of the people doing the tests closely for Signs, and then remind myself that there's no point in speculating.)

Then, I wait for results. Then, I get on with herceptin and get on with getting to the end of my dance. Because this is not another cancer. Oh no. Absolutely not.

I hesitate to post this because I don't want to give it any more weight than it deserves. You know when you come home, late at night, and you walk into your living room and you jump because there's someone sitting at the table, in the dark, and then a moment later you see that it's not a person but the cardigan you threw over the back of a chair before you went out? That's what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with the brain putting two and two together and making a big scary 17.

And I hesitate because I don't want to distress, or worry, people who read this blog, many of whom are friends that I haven't spoken to since Thursday. I almost did a ring-round this afternoon, but I didn't see the point of calling people to tell them that I've got something that's more likely to be a pea than a cancer. (If you are offended or upset by this, I'm sorry. Call me and I'll try to explain better.)

So. Here is what I'm not doing.

- I'm not calling friends to tell them, because there's nothing to tell.

- I'm not putting clients on standby, because after tomorrow, this isn't going to be taking up my time.

- I'm not talking about it. I have nothing to say about nothing.

- I'm not speculating.

And when I get those results in, I'll let you know.

I hope this is OK. I hope I did the right thing here.

(If you want to help, send me a message or leave me a comment reminding me that this isn't a cancer. I'd really appreciate it.)

Smooooooth

So, what with the heart being fitter than a butcher's dog's and all, herceptin was back on yesterday. I needed a loaded dose - medical speak for a bit more than usual - because I missed herceptin on 23 December thanks to my poor battle scarred veins and the fact that I'd completely run out of inner resources. (Mental and emotional resources, I mean, not veins, although clearly they are inner resources too.)

My appointment was at 2pm, I arrived at about ten past and was called before I could get my knitting out. (Which is practically no time at all, as anyone who has watched me knock out a couple of rounds of a sock on a 5 minute bus journey will confirm.) There wasn't even time for any of my Twitter follows to place their customary bets on how long it would be before I was seen. I hit the jackpot with Sophie, who is unfailingly kind and helpful, and also has a sense of humour, a limited NHS commodity I have only ever experienced on the Trevor Howell unit. (When I joked to the dentists about string and door handles on Tuesday, they merely looked bemused and a little afraid. And I can't believe that no-one has ever made a joke to them about door handles and string before.) Sophie cleaned the outside of the line, gave the line itself a saline flush, and then the herceptin was in and we were off.

(Cytotoxic drugs always go in blue bags. Presumably bright red with a black skull and crossbones or POISON in huge yellow letters would be deemed inappropriate.)

To the right side on my arm you can just see the little 'wings' where the stitches that secure the line are. Everything up to the blue nozzle is PICC. The rest is the tube to the drugs. The lack of digging around for a vein was every bit as much of a relief as you might imagine.

Not long into this very straightforward experience, Rachel-who-I-was-on-iPM-with (hereafter known as iPM Rachel, to differentiate her from Rachael-the-sister-on-Trevor-Howell, although observant readers will note the distinguishing second 'a') arrived to keep me company. She was on her way back to the Midlands from a meeting in Winchester, and I was delighted to see her. We talked about families and work and cancer (but just a bit) and before I knew it the drug pump was beeping to say that the herceptin was done. 10 minutes of saline flush, a quick chat with Rachael-the-sister, and iPM Rachel and I were on our way to the cafe. It was shortly after 4pm.

It was that simple. It was that smooth. I was tired later, and I ached a bit, and this morning I woke up with that pre-flu post-herceptin feeling that I sometimes get, but frankly, it's nothing to write home about.

So that's it. I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to write a drama-free, pain-free post for a change...