Love yr attitude, Bibi… will look around for some less good players! Packing today. We’re all heading off tomorrow to Croatia for two weeks. V exciting, v excited. Things going well on the whole. Feeling positive mentally. Trying to keep boob lymphoedema in check with self MLD. Some days more swollen than others. Also, have developed something called “trigger thumb”… a known but not common side effect of letrozole. Rather painful. Hope it resolves itself. If not, minor surgery an option.
Tat, how are you? You’ve been in my thoughts.
AC, how are you bearing up?
Love to all.xx
Have an amazing holiday Brave … If u r anything like us, you lost last summer’s hols to BC, so you’d better enjoy this one twice as much. Sorry to hear about the trigger finger malarkey. Can it just resolve spontaneously? When I had a skiing accident years ago, I was on crutches for so long I got trigger fingers because of pressure on the tendon in the palm of my hands. Used to wake up with fingers that wouldn’t respond to mental instructions & had to unbend them myself …the orthopaedic doctor suggested, quite seriously, that I sleep with 10 smarties tubes taped on my fingers. Kinda like Edwina Smartiehands! It made me laugh so much. Guess yours is due to capsule thickening of the sheath that the tendon goes through. I know Tamox causes thickening of various things too. xx
Hi ladies. Brave, have a wonderful time in Croatia - such a beautiful and interesting country. We’ve sailed from Split and been to Dubrovnik a couple of times (son got way too excited at spotting some Game of Thrones filming locations and even walking past the crew and cast trailers… Fully intend to go back, but not on a GoT hunt 
Sorry to hear about the trigger finger, but Bibi’s smartie tube thing made me snigger. Can’t believe a medical ‘professional’ would give that advice and expect to be taken seriously!! Of course, I don’t have any useful advice, just sympathy for the cr@ppy side effects from drugs that are supposed to help.
My CNS called on Monday. The liver radiographer has reviewed my scans and is pretty certain the lesion is a benign haemangioma. He doesn’t recommend a lliver biopsy as the lesion is 9mm and would be difficult to accurately target, so I’m being booked in for a liver MRI instead… so, could be good news, but more waiting to find out. I’m not exactly relaxed about it, but a week in Dorset has helped steady us. And ‘Two go mad in Dorset’ made me laugh, Bibi
Hope you are enjoying a rest now the schools have broken up, AC. Sending lots of hugs so you can store them up for when you need them.
Weather’s still good here, in fact so good I haven’t done all the prep I should be doing for our youth camp. Lists of food shopping to do ahead of big cooking day and equipment to check. This will be my last year organising it as we had to make contingency plans in case I was unable to go - think this roller coaster is going to be a lifelong one now, so makes sense to not be the sole organiser again!
Hope everyone has a wonderful and restful summer. I’ll post when I have news xxx
Tat Wow, that really would be a marvelous outcome for you all, if that’s what it turns out to be. Hope you get the MRI through soon. Sounds as if your youth camp will keep you more than occupied in the meanwhile. Enjoy it.
AC hope all’s well with you & you have a holiday planned (or is just being off school holiday enough for you?).
xx
MRI on 8th August…can’t wait for more time in the noisy tunnel!!! They don’t seem to be very bothered by the possible recurrence on my chest wall, but by the time this is resolved I’ll be having my next set of 3 monthly scans in Sept!! Hmmmm xx
Well THEY might not be bothered, but surely they should consider how YOU feel too!?! Glad scan’s through & will send good vibes & say some prayers for you on Sunday. Enjoy your camp xx
Hope all goes well with your scan on Monday & results Tat. How was youth camp? I’m sure it was an excellent diversion for you xx
Best wishes to all. xx
Camp starts Saturday, so busy, busy, busy! Just the way I like it with results to wait for.
Abdominal MRI involves lots of breath holding, so not as easy as thorax and pelvis! The chap who called me in was a big guy and his English was not very fluent. He didn’t introduce himself and kept calling me ‘lady’. He put the cannula in and tightened the tourniquet to ‘painful’, but was blessedly quick inserting the needle. However, when he ripped off the plaster afterwards he was so rough he pulled the cannula out with it! Not a pleasant experience all in all. I should’ve said something, but just wanted to get out of there 
I hope I would refuse to be treated by him another time.
Hope your hols were relaxing, Brave?
Hugs to everyone else xxx
So good to hear from you, AC. Hope the results = Cambridge place and you all have a wonderful and relaxing holiday.
We saw my onc today and the news is not good. There are 4 or 5 lesions in my liver, too randomly placed for surgery, so I will be starting paclitaxol, 3 weeks on one off, when we get back from the wedding in Corfu in early September. I’m a bit numb about it all at this stage, now reading all I can about weekly taxol side effects and making what plans I can for when they hit. My daughter and I are off to London for a couple of days next week and I’m so pleased we organised that. It’s been quite a summer so far, chez Tat. Son’s degree, 21st birthday, and posting to Liverpool on the Civil Service Fast Stream (starts 3rd October). A Level results yesterday were a teensy bit stressful, but our daughter is going to Leicester uni, her insurance choice, in September, so lots to prep for that… And now this!! Need a few days to absorb this.
Hugs to all xxx
Heads up for anyone in West Sussex who wants laser tattoo removal.
Brian at rebel laser tattoo removal and body piercing (inside Needle and fred tattoo parlor) will remove radiotherapy tattoos for free!
This is my review I left for him…
Came in today to ask about a very sensitive tattoo removal. 3 little dots from radiotherapy for breast cancer. Brain could work out from looking at them how they were done and treated them straight away. Even better too he was so understanding of how these awful dots made me feel that he is treating them for free. So nice to find someone so understanding and compassionate. Thank you so so much Brian you probably don’t realise how much this means to me. I will be telling everyone I know how great you are!
Hi Tat really extremely sorry to read your post & to hear that you’re looking at chemo. Must be extremely difficult to hear that information & I hope you’re holding up as well as possible. No doubt it’s a really difficult time for you all. Are you having weekly or 3 weekly? I did the weeklies & found it not too bad at all, until right at the end, although clearly it means that you’re never away from the hospital, you can just go about your life as usual. My best advice is to drink for England the day before, day of & day after chemo, by that I mean 2-3 litres. If you need any help just PM Brave or me, we both had Taxol. I hope your youth camp was a success & that you enjoyed the time away from the usual routine. All my love & thoughts coming your way xxxxx
Tat, massive hugs to you and fervently wishing you all the best in this next stage. I hope you manage to enjoy your holiday.x
Hi M sorry to read on your blog that you have lost another close family member recently. Hope you are all ok. On a cheerier note, have you won a game yet? I was playing with some teacher friends of mine in Wimbledon Park on Tuesday. They are beginners. Piece of cake thought I. Not so, they had me running all over the place in the effort to get/keep a rally going for longer than a couple of balls. Their shots literally went all over the place, high & wide, &, of course, I had to dolly drop all of my returns right onto their racquets. I was utterly knackered by the end of the ‘game’. I had an interesting chat with the onc about swimming. M bought me a summer membership to David Lloyd in Epsom, which has a wonderful outside pool. I used to love swimming outside, but hadn’t done it for around 18 months. The backstroke has massively improved the mobility of my shoulder, which I thought was fine before, although there were a few pilates/yoga stretches that I just couldn’t do without quite a bit of a struggle/pain. Now, absolutely no problem at all. Mentioned to onc last week in passing & she said ‘oh yes, & it’s wonderful for seroma reabsorption too’. Just thought it might be worth a try if you’re still struggling with the latter. xx
Tat hope you’re holding up chuck. xx
AC hope you had a great hol. xx
Yay!! Well done Brave & a decisive win to boot. Suffice to say he’s retaking 2 this term, so the less said about that the better! Glad your boys fared better. Tat hope you enjoyed Corfu. Wishing you all the best for chemo, if you are starting this week. You’ll find it a bit nerve wracking the day before, sort of fear of the unknown, but the actual giving of it isn’t usually that eventful once the cannula is in, it’s the wait to see what happens after. I had a port, as you know, but the girls having cannulas recommended a small hot water bottle on your arm on the way in, plus a lot of fluids to give you the best chance for a first time cannulation. xx
Nice to hear from you, Tat. I was thinking about you earlier this week & wondering whether you had decided to go ahead with chemo. I’m glad it wasn’t too horrific for you. I had a sudden panic after sending that PM, about whether it actually was OK, or if I just thought it was because it was a million times better than FEC. Most of us ended up on Lansoprazole or Omeprazole for the heartburn, so do ask for that if gaviscon stops working for you. Hope you are feeling a little more normal by now. Enjoy this beautiful day…English weather resumes tomorrow. Xx
Thanks, Tat. Yes, any death is sad but there really was a sense with my mother-in-law that it was time to go. And it was lovely that hubby and I were with her at what was a very peaceful end.
Sounds like you tolerated your first Taxol quite well. Fingers crossed for future sessions.
Ladies, I’m waiting in the breast radiology dept at King’s College Hospital… they’ve called me in to give me the results of the review of the manmogram I had in October 2014 which they said was clear. I asked for the review as I felt I needed to know if they’d missed anything. By the time i was diagnosed in July 2015 the tumour was “probably bigger than 5cm”. Onc said it could have grown to that size in 9 months but I still want to know. Will keep you informed.
Wishing you all well.xx
Best outcome. There was nothing suspicious in my two earlier mammograms. So my tumour went from nothing to probs wider than 5cm in nine months. Scary indeed. Take care all.x
…and spread to lymph nodes in that time too.
Wow that was super Brave, Brave to go & find out. Imagine how you would have felt if they had missed it. Pleased (?) they hadn’t, but what a fast grower. Extremely scary that something can go so badly wrong in such a short time. Makes you wonder about the benefits of 3 yearly mammos. I had never had a mammo when mine was diagnosed & have read conflicting things about how long it’s likely to have been there. One said it has to divide 80 times before you feel a lump, so must have been there for at least 18 months, the other said an aggressive grade 3/HER+ could have just been a few months. Who knows. At least we found them when we did. I have carried on doing the daily post radiotherapy massaging a) because I do still get freaky rubber boob syndrome from time to time & b) hopefully I will pick up anything dodgy fast. Nice weather xx