Double C - a blog about a husband and wife both diagnosed with cancer just months apart

Coffee Lounge Speaking and writing about your experiences
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Hi,

My name is Fiona and in September 2021 I was diagnosed with Her2+ breast cancer…. Five months later, my husband was also diagnosed with multiple myeloma - an incurable blood cancer and we were only in our forties.

To help me make sense of things (not to mention, stay sane), I’ve written a monthly blog on Substack called Double C. It offers an honest, yet humorous account of our situation and includes tips with helpful links for anyone living with or beyond a breast cancer/multiple myeloma diagnosis. Here’s the link: fionaccowan.substack.com/

The blog began with just a handful of subscribers, but is now read across the world and from the many messages I receive, continues to help people just like me… Perhaps it can help you too.

So, please consider giving it a read and if you know someone who might like it, spread the word ?

Our story can also be found in this week’s edition of Pick Me Up magazine: ‘Staying Positive Despite a Deadly Double Diagnosis’ 

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read and sending love n hugs to you all.

Fiona

x

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I fear Pick me Up is a magazine that would make me firmly want to put it down. I do have a school friend who has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma recently who had stem cell treatment. Her uncle had the same condition so she thinks hers was inherited. She’s pretty annoyed about having a chronic cancer. I find breast cancer annoying as it’s very common but highly variable in how it behaves. I got it back after 19 years and with oestrogen positive breast cancer it has a 1% a year recurrence rate so I have it hanging over me for years, either a new primary like I had this time, a recurrence of the new breast cancer of no special type I have now, or metastatic cancer from cancer no 1 or cancer no 2.

Quite frankly I would rather not have it, but my mother has heart disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimers and living to 96 as she has doesn’t appeal either.

Seagulls