Thanks everyone for your kind support. 11 hours in the operating theatre wacked me a bit but now the vomiting is over and 4 out of 5 drainage tubes are gone I’m on a roll! I even managed to pick up a toilet roll from the floor, walk around the ward and independently shower myself today.

Unfortunately the breast flap transplant is ‘dubious’ in one section so I may need to go back to surgery and have it ‘tidied up’ either tomorrow or Tuesday. The right breast reduction is looking healthy but old lefty isn’t happy. 

Also (sigh) the mole they took off my arm as a side line, was a melanoma so they are going back in for more. It’s my right arm 😳 but it’s ‘just a flesh wound’ to quote the great Monty Python LOL.

Oh and did I tell you that the day before I went into surgery the nurse from my medical clinic called to say I had Rheumatoid arthritis markers in my blood? It’s going to be double checked at a more convenient time. If I were a horse… 

You won’t believe it, or maybe you will. My reconstruction surgery is booked in for the 9th of March and we are MOVING house on the 18th. That’s one way to make me run in circles. I feel like I’ve been doing that for 2 years now. Enough is enough. Does anyone want to throw any more fun at me???

I am still dreadfully drowsy but I’m trying different strategies to overcome it. Packing boxes flat out all day means I don’t go to bed until 10pm. That’s one method. The other is diet but I won’t bore you with that. Because the CT scan showed nothing, the bone scan showed something in the skull and I still have symptoms, they have moved my reconstruction to an earlier date. That way they can remove the metal in the tissue expander so I can have an MRI. They plan to cut up my stomach and make a breast from it and reduce my ‘good breast’ and lift it to match the new one. Cripes. I will be like a 15 year old… give or take a wrinkle or 3. New stomach and 2 new girls!

No driving, lifting etc for 6-8 weeks afterwards. Eek. That’s going to be interesting. Could everybody come over so I can boss them about?

Just to explain, we are moving in with Sophie and Jarrod while our house is being built. We have already taken most of our ‘stuff’ over to Glen Waverley so the process is happening. Sophie only moved out 6 months ago. So much for empty nesters! At the same time, we are finalising the new house being built at Safety beach. I’m so excited about that I’m beside myself.

I promise with my whole heart, that as soon as I can I am going to catch up with people for a farewell coffee or dinner. It may not be until May but it will happen… just NOT NOW.

My wonderful friends are coming to clean the house when I get out of  hospital so that it is ready for settlement day. It was all a plot to get them to do my cleaning and it worked ha ha.

Don’t you love your oncologist when she tells you you have nothing in your brain? Already The MOTH has used that phrase 4 times in 12 hours. 

No news is good news!! So the CT scan showed nothing and I can go back to choosing tiles for the new house. Colin said he will cancel the graveyard plot he was buying. It doesn’t mean it IS nothing unfortunately but it’s a nice breathing space for me/us.

My daughter Sophie and The MOTH came into the appointment with me and quizzed my oncologist. So the plan now is to have my case discussed on Thursday with the ‘team’ and they will decide if I need to have further tests to figure out what the abnormal Bone scan results are about. If I don’t hear from her we will meet up in 3 months and have a tumour marker blood test. If I have other symptoms I have to report back to base earlier.

When we left the room the staff at the breast clinic gave me hugs and kisses. They are such a gorgeous and caring bunch of people. It’s stupid to say I will miss them because I can’t wait to never see them again ha ha.

It’s difficult to shrug the memory of my Mum, who died when she was 54 from a brain tumour, 3 months after getting a CT scan that was clear. But I refuse to have that hanging over me. I’m back to planning and scheming and living life. I don’t plan to spend life on tender hooks waiting for the worst. Especially with all the aches and pains you get at this age but I DO have to get them checked out which is pretty annoying. It seems like there is always a question mark hanging over me (other than… Where am I going to live when we move out of our house which has sold?).

I plan to live my life to the fullest. So don’t ever wonder why I cram so much in… it’s because life has so many opportunities and we never know what’s around the corner do we?

It’s not a tragedy to die… it’s a tragedy to have a life and not live it. 

Thanks for your prayers and concern as always. I’m here to annoy you for a long while yet YAY!

My apologies for yesterdays blog post. It’s a little garbled and in my usual black humoured way, I’ve focussed on it being funny instead of informative. That’s meant many people are very confused and I’m attempting to sort out your confusion! I know you all think activity is normal for my head but apparently it’s not!

If you subscribe to my blog by email, you only get the first version so any edits I do later on are missed. It might be worth you reading this via the blog so that if I alter it you will get the ‘better version’.  https://dishmoptop.com/

A BONE scan is a scan they use in oncology to look for cancer in the bone. They inject a ‘tracer’ into your veins which highlights any cancer activity in the bone. I’ve had 5 of these in the past 18 months now so they are also able to compare previous scans.

In this recent scan they discovered ‘activity’ in the skull. By ‘activity’ they mean that this area has been highlighted by the scan and there is an ‘uptake’ by the tracer. In my case it’s across the front of the skull towards the top of the BONE… not the BRAIN.

Normally they would then compare it to the CT scan to see if there is damage to the bone or surrounding areas. The only place the full body CT scan I had doesn’t examine is the head! Typical. So I am having my head scanned on the 28th and will get the results on Jan 4th.

She would prefer to do an MRI scan which will tell us more but I have this (stupid) tissue expander in my breast which has a metal port in it. She said she might push for me to have my reconstruction soon so that they can take it out. Sigh. I feel like just ripping it out but that would be gory.

If the CT scan is clear, at the very least I will need to revert to more frequent appointments with the oncologist so they can keep an eye on me. My situation will be discussed at the Maroondah specialist forum next week where they talk about ‘difficult cases’.

So when asked what it means, the oncologist smiled sympathetically and said ‘we don’t know’. That’s not a good answer. I hate the unknown more than the known… even if it’s bad.

So basically… on Jan 4th I’ll find out if the news is BAD or I’ll find out nothing… which means they have to do more tests and wait and see. So there is no actual ‘good news’. Just another QUESTION MARK. Yeesh. I have so many ???s going on right now.

I do have other symptoms going on but I have attributed them to the fatigue, and that may still be the case. I have ‘eye floaties’, inability to concentrate etc. I have always read 1-2 books a week but I am not able to concentrate on even a page. This may well be due to the sleepiness. I’m not TIRED or EXHAUSTED… just sleepy!

As you know, once cancer leaves the breast area it’s considered untreatable so this is something I would like to be free of! So please keep your prayers up I really appreciate them. I read and love all of your comments and well wishes so don’t think I don’t. I have plenty to occupy myself right now so that will distract me nicely and thank God the oncologist has pushed my appointments early!

Firstly, let me wish you all a very happy and safe Christmas. We at the Wood Hood are very excited to announce that we have bought a block (with an old house on it) which we will be building on in 2016. It’s 400m from the beach and about the same distance in the opposite direction from a golf course. Sigh. That is like a dream come true.

Now I have a garbled update on my health for you…

The mystery of the fatigue continues and because the GP had saturated all of his dance card of tests, he sent me back to my oncologist. The difference with general tiredness and fatigue is that I feel like I have jetlag 24/7. I sleep 2 to 3 hours in the afternoon and then get a solid night sleep of 8-9 hours at night as well. I wake up feeling sleepy in the morning. I don’t lack energy as such but I can’t concentrate or organise things like I usually can because I’m in that sleepy fog!

The oncologist ordered blood tests, full body CT scan and a bone scan, which I had last Thursday. More radiation in my veins has given me the warm glow I’ve come to know and love.

Today I got the result (if you can call it that!).

The tumour marker tests were clear, the CT scan is clear but the bone scan is showing activity in the skull bone.  The oncologist said we don’t know what it means (!). She will put my name forward to be discussed (again) at the ‘forum’ of specialists at Maroondah hospital.

The CT scan didn’t include the skull so they can’t see what’s going on which means I have to have a CT scan on the skull to check if the bone activity from the bone scan is cancer. They wanted me to have an MRI but I can’t have one because I have metal in my breast. She may push my reconstruction forward so that I can have the MRI.

So the upshot is that they still don’t know what’s going on but no news is good news. I am blessed in knowing nothing and believing that all is well.

I’m going to have to wait until the new year for more tests. 4 months of this and it’s really no further forward. I know now that my heart, kidneys, lungs and everywhere from the neck down is all ship shape. My brain is questionable but you already knew that.

It seems that I might just be sleeping beauty 🙂

I know, I know… I should just be grateful that I have LIFE… and HAIR… but oh dear. This photo is the progression from short fuzz to afro curls and then the hair straightening catastrophe which resulted in it standing on end. Straightening it took my daughter forever and nothing we did would make it settle back down. Even mousse.  So I went back to the curls very quickly by washing it out. I can only laugh. So far I’ve been told I look like a Granny and a baby lamb. I can’t believe how many people rub my hair to see what it feels like. I don’t blame them because I do it myself.

Medical news

It’s only 4 weeks until we go to Europe for 8 weeks. I’m getting very excited about it but also apprehensive given that I have a torn tendon in my left hip. It keeps me awake most of the night with the pain but seems fine during the day. Maybe I’ll party 24/7! I am doing as much ‘Body balance’ classes and running as possible as the doctor said weak muscles cause it in the first place and it will help. Next weekend I’m running the Mothers day classic. I ran it last year without stopping and ran it in a good time WHEN I WAS ON CHEMO!! Now… well I don’t think I’ll manage to run the whole 4k as I lost fitness during surgery and radiotherapy. I can manage 2-3km on the treadmill but that’s a lot different to running on the track.

As for my RIGHT hip which has the strange ‘spot’ on it… I told the oncologist that I am going to Europe regardless of what the test says so she suggested I have the test when I return. Ignorance is bliss. So I said ‘Good idea’! I really don’t think it’s anything to worry about as it’s not getting any worse. I suspect it’s just an old war wound.

I’ll post you our itinerary once we get it all organised. I know… we’ve left it awfully late to organise but we weren’t sure if it was even going to happen. Now we are starting to panic. Whee!! I can’t wait.

I’ll return to Aus in time to have reconstructive surgery and we are also putting our house on the market. We just like to add more complexities into an already chaotic world!