Oncologist out

Imagine feeling cared for, nursed, being someone special.  When you're waiting in a busy waiting room, in the oncology department of a big hospital, with no one to talk to, a nurse comes up to you, addresses you by name (almost right) and asks very nicely if she may weigh you.  Someone's paying you attention, aren't they?  They care whether you've put on weight or lost it and the nurse will pass the information to the doctor who knows that some anti-breast cancer drugs tend to make you put on weight, and the doctor will discuss that with you. 

But no, "that's just something the nurses do", explained the oncologist (B) I saw that time, saw just the once, never again.  The next time I came to the oncology department, I courteously though somewhat nervously refused to allow the nurse to weigh me.  She told the doctor - at least now I know that they communicate - and the doctor (C) talked about placebo treatment - visiting the doctor makes people feel better.  Yes, I understand that, having once visited my doctor anticipating our second baby, but wanting a home birth - he said he couldn't treat me because he didn't do home births, and I went home rather melancholy.  Being treated makes you feel good.

Nevertheless, last week when I went to the oncologist, I allowed the nurse to weigh me.  It amused me to note her complete lack of observation as I stood on the scales fully dressed and holding  two bags, one with a purse, a digital recorder, a camera, and a paper back book inside.  Needless to say, I weighed more than before. 

However, for the first time, I saw the same oncologist again.  This man (C) copes with me citing breast cancer research on predict, vitamin D, hyaluronic acid, aromatase inhibitors and that women diagnosed when over 60, gain less benefit from these drugs.  We had a discussion on the relative statistics of taking an aromatase inhibitor versus exercise (pdf), and he tells me not to stop taking the drug but that as far as the oncologists are concerned, I'm cured.  They removed the physical lump; they radiated the area in case they dropped anything; the aromatase inhibitor will prevent anything else starting up.  Keep up the annual mammograms, keep taking the aromatase inhibitor for five years (I can have a trial month out to see if the aches go away and if they do then they'll use a different aromatase inhibitor) but otherwise go away and don't come back. 

I'm cured.

Stories of middle-aged women

"As a woman of 50, I’m surrounded by my contemporaries and what women of that age go through: parental loss, cancer, dealing with Alzheimer’s, children growing up. All these issues that are here in our lives and they’re invisible."

thus spake Samantha Bond recently, here, when bemoaning the lack of stories of middle-aged women.

Such am I.  I and my peers are coping with aging relatives, taking on legal powers of attorney, mourning those we are losing alive to Alzheimer's, and vicariously taking on the troubles of our grown-up children.  Our children may be living the dreams we once had: emigrating, studying fantastic university courses.  Or they may be worrying us with troubled relationships, dangerous driving, failing exams, not working. 

Is there not drama in such lives?  Apparently not, and hence Bond's moan.  There are few theatre, film or stage productions of the lives of people like me.  Despite the bulk of theatre audiences being made up of middle-aged women, despite the novels written by and for us, there are not the productions, and hence there are not the roles for the actresses like Bond. 

Middle-aged women are like the main supporting wall of a house, central and sustaining, but hidden.

Radiotherapy

Seven treatments down, thirteen to go.

They told me the side effects would mean that I'd be tired and lethargic, but the tiredness is only because I'm driving so much. I'm out of bed half an hour earlier to get to work twenty miles away an hour earlier, eat my lunch at my desk, and then drive 44 miles to the hospital for the treatment, which is nearly always late. The lethargy is because you sit around lethargically waiting, fifteen, thirty, forty-five minutes until your machine is ready for you. It takes five minutes or more for the radiographers to position you exactly right, with the tattoos and their latest felt tip pens marks lined up with the green laser lines, and then two minutes for the treatment. Then I drive 20 miles home again, in the rush hour.

These radiographers work long and intensely without a break, from eight o'clock in the morning until 6.30 in the evening, hoping to reduce the waiting lists. In the mid-afternoon, there are more people to chat. The men agonise over how long they have to wait and just how full their bladders have to be before they have the therapy - they've got prostate cancer - and they have to have a full bladder and an empty bowel so that the full bladder pushes the bowel out of way of the radiation that would otherwise give nasty side effects.

Waiting, we read, chat, do suduku puzzles. I take a research paper to peruse. I'm making a lot of progress on my reading, and I drive home calmly, usually later than I'd hoped but in time for evening activities like tae kwo do.

Race for life

Daughter ran in the Race for Life - well she walked it actually, but still completed her five kilometres in less than an hour despite predicting she was going to take two hours. Well done her, and well done that she raised nearly all the money that she targeted.

Tattoos

I now sport three tattoos.

What?! Me have tattoos?

It's not a well-known side effect of treatment for cancer that you can get tattooed, but if the treatment is radiotherapy, then they have to measure you very carefully to be sure to aim the radiotherapy in the right place, and you have repeated doses of radiation day after day after day. So when they measure you, when they know just where to aim, they tattoo you so that they can use the tattoo marks to place you and to aim the radiation just right every day.

Another advantage of tattooing is that if years later you need to explain where you had the radiotherapy, the record is there on you in the tattoos, warning medical people that you've already had radiation to that spot.

I wonder what they do when they get patients in who are already so well tattooed that there's no room for a radiotherapy tattoo.

The tattoos are tiny - the size of a full stop on this page - my husband kindly tells me that one of mine looks like a blackhead. Thank you husband.

A good friend

What's a good friend? What can you talk to a friend about? It used to be that you couldn't at polite dinner parties discuss

• sex
• religion
• politics

But I think I've discussed all these with my best friends. I had some fantastic friends in the town where I lived for twenty years, and they helped me crystallise ideas on many aspects of life. One friend - a mother of four children - had her youngest son at the same time as I had my first born. She was so helpful and sensible on bringing up children, just being there doing it in front of me, advising if I asked.

Another friend wanted to talk about religion and gave me the opportunity to attend an Alpha course at our local Anglican church, something I'd have liked to have done through the Catholic church, but there wasn't the opportunity. I see Alpha courses are discussed on Mumsnet here.

And only good friends can talk to you when you've got cancer. Servan-Schreiber writes that the evidence is that women with good friends (girl friends, not husband) survive breast cancer better. And I know from the reaction of my women friends that they're supporting me. Aren't I lucky with my friends?

New job

I have a job, a new job, a job that starts on Thursday, a job I can do, a job that uses my research skills, my experience of teaching in Higher Education, and my computing skills. How's that!

It's a job that requires me to focus on communications and usability of a web-site, and to bring in more participants, specifically doctoral students as a pilot study round a particular part of the site. It's a part-time temporary job, partly because they're working on renewing the funding, partly because we don't yet know each other, partly because I'm still preparing for my viva, and don't know when that will be, and partly because I want some spare time in case I need extra treatment.

So how's that! I'm cancer-rid, and stitch free since yesterday and I have a job. Go me!

Team of medics

I saw fourteen medical professionals yesterday:

1. staff nurse, Stef, who took blood pressure, pulse, temperature
   
2. a reassuring junior surgeon who likes her job because she sees people get better and that's what she went into medicine for. She drew in black felt tip pen on my breast, marking it with a big black arrow and the acronyms WLE and SLN for wide local excision and sentinel lymph node biopsy
   
3. a senior surgeon, but not my own, who told me they'd get me on the conveyor belt
4. a breast care nurse who told me that surgery was the first step to recovery and my cancer is oestrogen positive and that means I'll probably get hormone therapy tablets rather than chemo.
   
5. an anaesthetist who wanted to know about my dentures and crowns
6. three people in x-ray to do ultra-sound, insert a wire into the cancer, then x-ray it
   
7. two people in nuclear medicine, one to inject a radio isotope and one to photograph it reaching the first (sentinel) node of the lymph glands
   
8. another nurse to fetch us from one place in the hospital to another
   
9. another anaesthetist or nurse when I walked down to the operating theatre
10. my own surgeon - we made eye contact, not conversation
    
11. three anaesthetists as I went to sleep
12. two different anaesthetists when I woke up, one shouting "It's negative"
    
13. a different staff nurse on the new shift
14. a different breast care nurse who left me with a leaflet on arm exercises

I suppose that they all work together as one team.

Surgery

Tomorrow I go for day surgery, the start of the treatment for cancer. The surgery scares me less than anticipating chemotherapy making me unable to do things, like not being able to prepare for my viva, not being able to get the new job I want now I've finished my thesis. I want to travel abroad, but chemo makes insurance difficult I read. I have read loads of leaflets on breast cancer and its treatment and the side effects of the treatment, and it sounds a horror story that I don't want to know.

• Lymphodema in the affected arm because they take out your lymph nodes and your arms swells,
• Travel insurance companies turning you down because you're on chemo and might pick up any infection.

Pretty miserable really.

Stress coped with

What a stressful week that was.

On the same day that my supervisor gave me back the final comments for my thesis at one o'clock, I went to hospital for the results of the x-rays, ultra-sound and biopsy.

"Unfortunately, ..."

started the doctor as she told me that the lump is cancerous, just a tiny 7 millimetre crab-like lump, creeping round my breast, a silent uninvited invader despite my excellent diet, and exercise regime. I spent the next three days desperately writing the final parts of my thesis, getting up at four in the morning to write because I couldn't sleep for thinking of my thesis and my cancer, and

I have to rewrite that bit, but I've got cancer so now what do I do?

The thesis is in. I win.

Research on colon cancer

We lost a family member to cancer years ago, so any news that suggests advances in preventing it is importnat. The Open University (OU) has some here, sucggesting it's something in the diet.

http://www.open.ac.uk/alumni/news-events/publications/openeye-bulletins/july-2007/diet-holds-clues-to-cancer-risk.php