My Hero

A few months ago I read The C Word, by Lisa Lynch. I’ve been following her blog for ages and I also follow her on Twitter. All in all, I feel like I know this wonderful woman, despite having never met, and having never had any interaction with her apart from Lisa sometimes replying to my tweets (I still get starstruck every time, because I’m a doofus).

She was diagnosed with breast cancer at the tender age of 28. In reading her book and her blog, I identified so much with her, and she’s been a real inspiration for how to make it through ‘The Bullshit’ (as she calls it) with grace and with humour (and the odd tantrum here and there). And, more importantly, how to live life once all the needles, scans, tests, and hospital appointments begin to wane. I know she’d be proud that I’ve titled this post “My Hero” after a fabulous Foo Fighters track, because, the self-confessed doofus she also is, she’s a massive Dave Grohl fan and secretly wants to marry him (if she didn’t already have the most wonderful husband in the word. Second to mine of course).

End of an era

It has been a crazy, stressful past few weeks. I was planning on 1) celebrating, and 2) relaxing, given I had my last chemo exactly two weeks ago, but that didn’t exactly happen. The company I work(ed) for went into liquidation on 31st March and we all lost our jobs. We started finding out the state of affairs around a week before this, and it felt like we were all kind of in limbo, waiting for an official announcement to be made so we could all move on. I then had to decide what to do with my life/career. The problem was I had too many options! I was approached by another company who wanted me to work for them, either in a permanent or contracting role, but there was also the opportunity to independently contract to a new company started by three of my old colleagues.

I had to choose between a secure job, with a very decent salary, or something not so secure, but potentially very exciting, and the opportunity to be my own boss. I took a leap of faith and went for the latter. I am now owner/director/consultant/administrator/lackey/coffee lady at my new company The New Black Online Solutions Ltd. Please don’t judge my website, I haven’t had any time to do it property, but it is on the (very long) list of things to do! It’s an exciting time, but also a sad time as we had a great team of people there, and I’m going to really miss working with everyone.

A decent nights sleep has been hard to come by. With all of the above going on, I’ve also been having to cope with hot flushes waking me up several times throughout the night. A side effect from the chemo. This condition even has a gloriously colloquial name – chemopause. It’s been going on for about a month now, and it’s really starting to piss me off. It happens frequently throughout the day, but also at night, when I wake up in a hot sweat and have to throw all the covers off. Then, if I can get back to sleep (which I often can’t because I’ve had so much on my mind), I end up waking up again because I’m freezing with no blankets on.

Making babies

I’ve been meaning to write this post for weeks but better late than never huh.

During the writing of my last post I was about 2 weeks into IVF treatment. I decided to subject myself to this crappy process (read: needles every day and mood swings every other day) in order to put some embryos aside in case the upcoming chemo wrecks my fertility.

From the 6th September until 29th September I had to inject myself every morning with a hormone called buserelin. Then from the 30th September until the 6th October I had to have the buserelin every morning, and then a Gonal-F injection every evening. Great fun. It didn’t stop me going up north for 10 days though for my sister in law’s hens’ weekend and fabulous wedding. Pissed me off though that I had to leave the wedding earlier than I would have liked just to go home and stab myself yet another time. All for a good cause everyone kept reminding me.

Post surgery wrap up

Surgery sucks balls.

It’s been 9 days now since my mastectomy and I’m still sore, and likely to still be sore for many weeks yet, although it should get better (so they say). I’m getting frustrated by not being back to 100% already. But that’s me, impatient, and known to want everything done yesterday.

But despite my whining, the doctors say I’m recovering well.

After meeting with the nurse, the anaesthetist and my surgeon, they took me into surgery around 9.15 a.m., Wednesday 4th August. I don’t recall being scared or nervous at all, but then again they had given me a lovely little calming pre-med around half an hour earlier 🙂 The anaesthetic technician spent a while trying to find a vein, then wheeled me into theater and the next thing I remember was waking up in the recovery room.