About this Blog

This blog started as an online diary and place for me to rant about annoyances in my family.

However since July it has become a place for me to catalogue and express my views and opinions on the treatment I have recieved following the diagnosis of a potentially cancerous tumor in my bowel.

On 3rd August 2011 I was told that it was cancerous. In April 2012 I was given the all clear.

October 15th 2013 I was diagnosed with peritoneal disease and liver metastases. The cancer was back and this time it is inoperable.

It is a little bit out of date as the NHS doesn't tend to have a WiFi connection in hospital and I can only post when I get home and posts take a while to write.

It is NOT about individuals or the nursing profession. It is about some of the inadequacies in the system and the way the NHS is failing some people.

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Sunday 21 July 2013

24 months is really quite a long time

They say a lot can happen in a week (or a week is a long time in politics).

I am definitely not a politician and a week to me is far too long, mostly because of bickering children and the weather being far too hot for all of us. 

But I want to look even further back than a week, to Thursday, July 21st 2011. This was a date that will forever be etched in my memory as the date that I found out I had cancer. 

But, if you remember even then it wasn't definitely cancer. It was just a stage 4 tumor. The cancerous nature of it was not known. 

I have been reminiscing a lot over the last couple of weeks about this and how I feel now. I have to be honest since having Hope (14 weeks old and looking lovely) a lot of fears have resurfaced. 

Prior to my cancer diagnosis and since having Imogen I knew something was not right with my body and kept going backwards and forwards to the GP trying to get them to agree that it was more than just 'ovulation pains' or 'IBS'.

Since Hope was born, these fears have resurfaced. My body appears to have regressed to a post surgery state again. I veer from having very uncomfortable blocked bowels to liquid ones in the space of 36 hours. I am loosing lots of weight and am feeling tired, dizzy and rundown. 

My GP's are great at reassuring me and running goodness knows how many tests to try and put my mind at ease and constantly reminding me that I am breastfeeding a very hungry 14 week old as well as running myself raged looking after a 5 year old and a 3 year old. 

However the heat, coupled with the never ending back pain means that I am not looking after me properly. Some evenings I don't eat as I can't face any food. Other times I will eat three decent sized portions of food before midday .

At the moment I am feeling fairly confident that the cancer has not returned, but I cannot shake the fear that it will return and I won't know about it. It has snuck up on me once before, what is to stop it doing it again. 

Sometimes I look at the three beautiful children I have been so privileged to have and wonder whether it was fair to have a third knowing that she might carry my faulty gene and have the inherited risk of bowel cancer? I do have these fears for Isaac and Imogen, but I had them before I knew of my cancer. Was I selfish to have a third child knowing that I might pass on that gene?

Only time will tell, but if my children read this I am sorry if you have inherited the gene's that make you predestined for bowel cancer. I am sorry that I have exposed you to this nasty, evil disease. But I love you and you have made my world complete (sounds really cheesy).

So, 2 years on, I continue to live in fear, but also surrounded by the most wonderful things in the world

Isaac, Imogen and Hope and my fantastic husband