Chemo is over....here's why

Yay! Wooooo! Well done me, I got through chemo.

Only I didn't, not really. 

My oncologist has stopped it half way through because (and these are her words not mine) the threat to my life is just too great to continue.

I should have finished the full 6 rounds of chemo by now but I've only managed to get to round 3. If I continued at this rate I would be looking at September before it ends. The trouble is my cells just can't hack it. My oncologist told me that it has been a long time since she has seen somebody, especially of my age, that has been so intolerant to the chemo. She had to make a choice between my safety now and my safety in the next 5 to 10 years. I guess I'd rather take 5 years over  3 months.

Why is it so dangerous? Well, normally a patient would have chemo and around 7 to 10 days later their neutrophils will drop. Neutrophils are the white blood cells that fight off bacterial infections. This is why chemo patients need to be careful with hygiene and to stay away from people who are sick. 

The neutrophils will then start to pick up again ready for the next round of chemo.

Sometimes, as was the case with me, a chemo patient will have daily injections in their stomach to increase the production of these white blood cells. 

2.5 - 7.0 is a normal white cell count. If the count drops below 1 it is classed as being neutropenic, meaning that you have no immune system. If you get a temperature if means you need to get to hospital straight away as you could have an infection. This is what happened to me after every chemo. My neutrophil count was 0 and with an infection meant I was neutropenic sepsis. I would then have to spend several days in isolation with heavy duty antibiotics going straight into my veins. What worried my consultant also was the fact that the daily injections in my stomach were not helping at all. They should have been producing white cells to prevent neutropenia, but were doing nothing. She even asked if I was having the injections, she thought maybe I wasn't bothering with them.

So that was one problem with my cells. The other problems were the red cells. Every chemo left me anaemic, which left me feeling very tired and breathless and also my platelets would be low, leaving me spotty and bruised. I also needed potassium infusions.

To put it bluntly I've been fucking ill. Whilst I was in hospital several people pointed out that I should enjoy the rest and not worry about housework. Now I didn't want to sound "not positive" so I didn't mention that I haven't done any housework since January because I've pretty much been in bed since then. I'm sure that sounds like heaven to people who are all working hard and longing for a day off.....believe me, it's no fun at all. My cells were taking longer to recover each time making the gaps between each chemo longer, dragging the whole process out. Even with transfusions.

So the decision was made. Chemo is over. I cried with relief when those words were said out loud but I also cried because part of me feels like such a failure. Part of me also feels like I did 3, pretty fucking amazing considering how ill it made me. 

I'm also scared. What if 3 isn't enough? What if the cancer returns in the next 5 years? Will I blame myself for not being able to get through the 6 rounds? Did I do enough? But then again I could have had the 6 rounds of chemo and the cancer come back anyway. Cancer is a bit of a bastard like that.

Now I know I've had a bit of a moan but I've always tried to keep my funny face on. Only my mum and Darren have seen the real me through this. I don't want people judging me and thinking that I'm not being very positive but here the truth comes out.

Since January life has been shit. I have cried every single day. Some days I've just had a little weep but other days I've been a heap on the floor sobbing my heart out. Some days in hospital when I've felt so ill, I've even begged for it to all end. I've wanted to die only to wake up the next day and not feel so bad again. 

I'm not giving up though and I never will and now chemo is over I'm already beginning to feel like the old me. I'm still very tired but I'm going for longer walks. I've not managed to dance all the way through a song yet, but I have danced. I've even signed myself up to do the Race for Life so all sponsors are gratefully received :)

I see the breast surgeon in a few days time to discuss about having a double mastectomy so there is still plenty of fighting to do yet, at least now I can do if with a smile on my face.

Sorry to Kat, Emily and George for not being fun mum these last few months. I will make it up to you. I promise x

I'd like to teach the world.....how to raise awareness properly!!

Oh here we go again!

The latest craze to sweep the internet comes in the form of young, big breasted women shoving a can of coke between their tits, taking a picture and claiming they are doing so to help raise awareness of breast cancer.

No love, you are raising penises and coke profits.

Does your picture include any facts on how to check your breasts for lumps or any other changes like dimples, discharge or rashes? Does your picture state that men can get breast cancer? Does your picture explain that you need to check your collarbone and armpits too?

Your pictures don't inspire me. They don't make me think "oh this is is a serious life threatening condition, I'd better check my own breasts"

And what about the ladies that have gone through gruelling chemotherapy and radiotherapy and double mastectomies. Do you think they appreciate seeing your wonderful, ample, heaving, healthy bosoms on display? 

Why is breast cancer ok to sexualise? It's not sexy. It's a killer. Thousands of women are killed every year because of this bastard disease.

We lose our hair, we lose our fingernails, we suffer excruciating bone pain and fatigue. We are put on medication that shoots us into menopause. Imagine being young, diagnosed with breast cancer and having to have your womb and ovaries removed because your chances of getting ovarian cancer increases to 80% and all before you've had children. 

I know I sound like a stick in the mud but I'm not going to apologise for that. Breast cancer almost killed me. I had a tough time with chemo, the doctors had to stop it early or I could have died. 

As I'm writing this I am thinking ok it's a bit of fun but raise your awareness with some facts. Share a link on how to check your breasts and how often you should check them. I feel mine once a month. 

I'm also thinking actually, do you know what, more power to us ladies that have gone through it. We should be proud of our bodies. 

Fuck it....if you can't beat 'em, join 'em but you'd all better go check your breasts straight away. I'll post a pic showing you how to with this blog!

My darling friend Leeane is also going to share her pic with us. She's had a double mastectomy.  Hopefully it will hit home. You can follow her on twitter. She's @Miss_LLC. She's all of the awesome. These pictures, these are 'The Real Thing'

Now go do some checking!

Peace, Love and Chocolate cake x 

THANK YOU ALL FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY FARTS

So I did it.

I made it to 40.

When I found that bastard lump in my right breast 3 years ago I honestly thought I wouldn't get to this milestone.

People have joked about me getting old but 40 is young. It's stupidly young....I have lots of living still to do.

Twitter and Facebook have left me feeling totally overwhelmed today. So many lovely and funny messages not to mention the many, many photos of Simon Le Bon. GOD I LOVE THAT MAN!! 

I wish I could reply to you all instantly but there are too many. I promise to get round to you at some stage. 

I want to thank you all so, so much though. Firstly for just putting up with my utter nonsense and moaning but also for keeping me company during the lonely hours. You don't know just how much you all mean to me and what you have helped me get through.

I want to thank my kids as well. Kathryn, Emily and George. They have gone through this crap with me and are totally amazing. Each one of them struggling but keeping it together. We are a team and I am so very proud of all of them. They are my reason for being. They make me laugh every single day. 

I also want to thank my wonderful, amazing boyfriend Bill or @Chap_Of_Steel as some of you may know him as. He is the reason that all my days are just that little bit brighter now. I have a future to look forward to. He makes me extremely happy and I can't imagine my life without him in it.

Although today is a MASSIVE celebration for me it's also an emotional day. Friends that I have made over the years who are no longer with us. Friends who have been told that the bullshit is back and have to go through all that treatment again and friends who just aren't going to get better. My thoughts are with them. If I had a magic wand I would use it.

Please check your breasts on a regular basis. I want you all to be safe and well. 

I'm going to celebrate the rest of my day now by getting suitably pissed and totally emotional.

I am 40.

I am young.

I flipping did it!! 

Peace, love and chocolate birthday cake xxx 

The State of my Brain

So, four years ago we had the London Olympics and wasn't it bloody marvellous? It gave the whole of Britain a proper feel good vibe and I was a little bit lost when it ended. I thought to myself what can I possibly do now to fill my time now that there is no more dressage or triathlons to watch?

Do you know what I did?

I got diagnosed with Breast Cancer and boy did that fill a gap!!

The problem I have now is that we are four years down the road and the Rio Olympics have just finished and once again it was bloody marvellous. I was hoping it wouldn't be marvellous. I was hoping that the feeling would be very different from four years ago. Not because I want Team GB to fail but because I thought maybe it would somehow put my mind at ease. You see, my stupid brain is convinced that because I had cancer after the last Olympics that I'm going to get cancer again now that these Olympics have ended. I know myself just how mad that sounds but what can I do to stop my brain being a prick?

I was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when my treatment ended and I think this may have something to do with it. I am living in this flashback.

One of the odd things that is happening to me at the moment is something that I named 'mushy hand syndrome'. That's not the medical term, but basically whilst I was having chemo my skin would often feel mushy. This sensation was worse in my hands and my face. The only way I can describe this feeling is that my face and hands were made of papier-mâché .

My skin would become clammy and then the mushiness would begin. I would spend ages staring at my hands, I could see that they looked normal, but the feeling was very disturbing.

That feeling has come back and it's freaking me out. I know that it is 'in my head' but it feels very real and mix that with the Olympics ending and my mammogram that's booked for the end of September, my anxious brain is all of a dither.

I am always interested to hear if others have these same thoughts and feelings. Do you have triggers that put you right back there in that moment? Smells that cause sweaty palms or dreams that have you jumping out of bed?

Or is it me simply going mad?

Peace, Love and chocolate cake X 

Mimic This.....

I'm sure that most of you are aware of the ice bucket challenge that is taking social media by storm at the moment. I personally think that this is a great thing as it is raising awareness and funds for charities such as ALS and Macmillan. People should probably be reminded to mention this fact along with their donations in their posts or else it just becomes a video of folks tipping buckets of water over their heads. 

I have mentioned both ALS and Macmillan in this blog but there is an ongoing debate as to where the ice bucket craze originated. Macmillan are saying that they started the campaign in early July and that ALS joined in the fun towards the end of July. I'm pleased that both charities are benefitting. 

What I want to focus on in this blog however, is about a tweet that I saw earlier today. The tweet was about the purpose of the ice challenge. It claims that the dumping of ice water while your feet are submerged is to mimic the effects of chemotherapy treatments. It goes on to explain that being drenched is "exactly" what chemo patients feel. 

Somebody who tweets on behalf of Macmillan seems to agree with this statement. I can only assume it's somebody on work experience. They have clearly never gone through chemo. 

Now, I understand that every chemo patient has a different experience but I think it's safe to say that tipping a bucket of water over your head is not "exactly" what one who has cancer that goes through chemotherapy feels like. In fact I know so because I've been there and done it. 

To say that a bucket of cold water mimics the side effects associated with chemo offends me, deeply and since posting my thoughts on the subject on twitter I can see that it also offends many other chemo patients too. 

Chemo nearly killed me, not once, but three times. I'm not happy about that fact being trivialised by somebody who clearly doesn't have a clue what they are talking about. 

Here is a list of my side effects. There are many more. This is just what I endured. 

* Hair loss

* Insomnia ....like ALL NIGHT LONG

* Nausea/Sickness

* Sweating....cold, damp, clammy sweats

* Hot Flushes...and I mean HOT!!! 

* Stiff painful veins

* Bone Pain....I can only describe this as hardcore flu after being hit by a car

* Migraines

* Hallucinations....that pink clown....shudders

* Yellow diarrhoea....like rocket fuel. Just laying in the bath and letting it flow because I was too weak to sit on the loo.

* Mouth ulcers...to the point where the inside of my mouth actually started peeling away. So painful. 

*Fatigue....not being able to leave my bed  for weeks on end.

* Numbness in hands....a symptom that still troubles me one year on

* Weakness...crawling to the bathroom and taking 20 minutes to recover just to have a wee

* Palpitations....WOW!! 

* Finger nails falling off

* High Temperature

* Infections...Chest, Throat, Pneumonia, Shingles

* Sepsis (Neutropenic) 

* Anaemia...needed blood transfusion

* Low blood platelets...covered in bruises

* Low potassium...needed potassium infusions

* Bleeding gums 

* Tooth extraction

So as you can see every treatment does not feel "exactly" what the people who accepted the ice bucket challenge feels. 

Please stop sharing such utter fucking nonsense but please continue to have fun and don't forget to donate. 

To donate to ALS text "ICED55" with your donation to 70077

To donate £3 to Macmillan text "ICE" to 70550

Peace, love and chocolate cake x 

It's called gratitude and that's right

Today marks the second anniversary of the death of Adam Yauch aka MCA of the Beastie Boys. 

He died of cancer. 

My love of the Beastie Boys started when I was 11 years old. I heard Fight for Your Right on the radio and I thought instantly "Oh my god, they so get me"

Living at home WAS such a drag, I did wake up late for school and I never wanted to go. I didn't even know what a porno mag was but I was sure as hell that my mum had thrown away my best one.

I was one of the little shits that stole your VW badge from the front of your car...I still have it. 

I went on holiday to Whitby when She's On It hit the charts and I asked the DJ to play it so often that in the end he gave me the single. He hated the Beastie Boys. My Uncle hated the Beastie Boys. The media hated the Beastie Boys and my mum REALLY hated the Beastie Boys. All of this just made me love them more. 

I chose MCA as my favourite because he wore a leather jacket and then when they toured with Madonna it was MCA that she chose to do with what ever it is that Madonna does with boys. If he was good enough for Madonna then he was good enough for me. 

Anyway skip forward a few years and the shocking news of his death was announced. It seemed to come completely out of the blue. I knew he was ill and that their album Hot Sauce Comitee was postponed for two years while Adam went through more treatment, but the album was released and the Beastie Boys were even inducted into the rock n roll hall of fame. Adam Yauch wasn't in attendance for that but still I didn't think that it was because he was so near to death. 

My auntie called me with the news and for me it was another Michael Jackson moment. I just couldn't believe it. I was gutted. 

One year later and I hear those words for myself. You have cancer. 

The world fell out of my arse. I fell to pieces. How the hell was I going to get through this? 

The first questions I asked myself once the shock had worn off was who else has had cancer? How did they cope? I started googling cancer blogs and making friends with the authors. That helped me tremendously because I could see people going through chemo and they were still smiling, still living. This gave me the courage to make those steps myself. It's the reason why I blog, so that others newly diagnosed can reach out or know that it's ok to have shit days because the good days soon follow. 

I then decided that I needed some kind of guidance to get me through. I didn't want God or Jesus. I didn't want prayers but something...I needed something. 

That's when I remembered Adam and I knew he was a Buddhist. I read up about it and I liked what I found. It's not about worship or prayer it's just about being a better person. Changing the way you think about situations and letting go of bitterness and anger. I read some Adam Yauch interviews and tried to get some insight into how he dealt with his own suffering. 

Buddhism and meditation got me through some really dark horrible days. Beastie Boys songs got me through to the next five minutes when I would be sobbing on the floor staring at a razor blade thinking "Just do it now Lorna and it's over...no more bullshit".....my kids were the first thing to pop into my brain and then I would blast Alive into my ear drums. That song I also played on the first day of chemo because I had never been more ready in my entire life...it had all been leading up to this moment.

Adam Yauch you are my inspiration. You are cooler than a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce. 

It's called gratitude and that's right!

RIP x 

I wish I had Breast Cancer.....not!!

So Pancreatic Cancer Action, as I'm sure lots of you have heard by now, have a new campaign up and running to raise awareness and funding towards their cause. For those of you that are not aware, this campaign shows a young woman who is dying from pancreatic cancer next to the words 'I wish I had Breast Cancer'

This has caused a lot of hurt and anger amongst many people, myself included, who have had a breast cancer diagnosis. Not to mention the people who are dying from the disease because yes, breast cancer kills you know. In fact it kills 12,000 people every year in the UK alone. It is not the "good" cancer that some people have told me that I'm lucky to have. It is most certainly not all pink and fluffy full of bald headed warriors. For many women, and men I should add, their breast cancer is terminal. They are stage 4. There is no stage 5. I'm guessing that they wish that they didn't have breast cancer.

The point of the Pancreatic Cancer Action campaign is to make people aware that their 5 year survival rate is just 3% compared to 85% of breast cancer patients and also that they get less funding. I am all for them gaining awareness. Every disease deserves awareness and funding and as much research as possible. I even understand why a pancreatic cancer patient who is dying would say that they wish they had a different type of cancer with a better prognosis but I don't agree with an organisation using this as a header in a campaign ad. Don't use one cancer against another, it belittles everything a breast cancer patient goes through. 

My breast cancer is called Triple Negative. It is a rarer more aggressive type of breast cancer. Many breast cancers have receptors for the hormones oestrogen and progesterone or for a protein called HER2. These receptors can stimulate cancers to grow. Breast cancer patients with hormone receptors are prescribed hormone treatments such as tamoxifen and Herceptin for HER2 receptors. My tumour didn't have oestrogen, progesterone or HER2 receptors, which is why it is called Triple Negative. Patients with triple negative breast cancer don't benefit from tamoxifen or Herceptin so chemotherapy and radiotherapy are our only treatment options. We have no back up. My 5 year survival rate is not 85%. Granted it is nowhere near as low as 3% but my chances of reoccurrence are higher than those of breast cancer patients with hormone receptors. Does this mean I sit and wish that I had a cancer with hormone receptors? No. I just wish there was more funding and research into triple negative.

I think what I'm trying to say is that all cancers are different and statistics don't mean all that much when you are the one who is dying. Yes, I am lucky in that I found my cancer early and it hadn't spread to any lymph nodes. Everything is ok with me at the moment but I live everyday with the fear of it coming back. I am not cured. There is no cure for cancer. This is what we should all be aiming for, a cure for all cancers. Not competing against each other and creating cancer envy. Get your campaign out there, raise awareness just don't do it at the expense of others.

I have no ill feelings towards the young woman in the pancreatic cancer action campaign. I can not even begin to understand what she must be going through and I wish her nothing but peace and love and as little pain as possible. To hear that she has been receiving death threats on twitter makes me feel sick to my stomach. To those that do that, stop being dicks yeah.