Alison's Breast Cancer Diary
Feelings after diagnosis, surgery, and chemo-therapy

21 December - Telling Work Colleagues/Friends
I told my friends Patrick and Boris and David about the biopsy results (that there was no lymph node involvement) and they came back with the following:

From Patrick 21/12/06
Alison, that's great news ! Takes more than the Big C to keep a good woman down ........... 

I dropped into St Mary of the Angels on my way down Boulcott St to say a prayer for you. Every little bit helps.

And the best part is you can now have a really good Xmas, confident that while there are still obstacles ahead, they are nowhere as tough as they could have been

From Borris
Dear Alison, you have made my Christmas!!!!!

I am overjoyed that your test results are so good.  I have been thinking about you both lots and hoping like mad that things would be ok.  Your news two weeks ago really rocked me and I have to admit I felt incredibly helpless not to mention useless.  I guess these things affect everyone in various ways.  

I 'm sure you will have a great Christmas and as they say "make sure you take time to smell the roses".  

I wish you all the very best for the festive season and look forward to catching up with you both in 2007.

Merry Christmas – Boris

From David
Dear Alison,
Fantastic news - at least for the moment- lets hope it is permanent. Your strength and fortitude over the past few weeks has been amazing and you need to congratulate yourself. It is amazing how a life threatening event like an accident, near accident or a disease can alter ones perspective on life. It certainly makes you appreciate being alive and drives you to want to fit as much as you can into every day. You have now been there so we will be expecting major things from you in the future, in your health, fitness, work, spiritual or mental aspects of your life. An event such as what you have been exposed to is a bit like a rebirth- it will feel as if life has started all over again. There will be difficulties and at times major setbacks and a possibility that the cancer will reappear again. However, this time, you know how to deal with it.

The world works in strange ways and it certainly isn't fair. The one good thing you can take from this event is that you emerge from the tunnel of despair and doom a stronger person, more committed to living and assisting others and more focused on fine tuning the body to combat disease, stress and whatever else life throws at us.

I have thought about you every day since the cancer was discovered and when the going gets tough, I always remember that there is someone worse off than myself. Yesterday, I was at Waiouru participating in an Army thank you day (more like a day from hell) where we spent from 0800- 1745hr hurtling around the training area on our motorbikes in the rain, mud, sleet, tussock and rocks. At one stage, I had flipped my bike, flown over the handlebars and slid about 30m down a bank and landed in a swamp with the motorbike on top  of me. I felt as if I had broken my wrist, I was freezing cold and was too exhausted to attempt to lift the bike off me so just lay there for a few seconds sinking further into the mud. By some amazing coincidence, as I lay there in my misery, you popped into my mind. It made me appreciate that I wasn't so badly off after all and that I should stop being a nana and get my act together and climb out of the temporary hell hole my lack of riding skill had got me into. You became my inspiration to get going again so for that, a VERY BIG THANKYOU.

Have a fantastic Christmas. Live life to the full (but that doesn't include eating to the full) and be nice to everyone you meet. Thanks for the inspiration. I will be thinking of you. Catch you in the new year.
Regards
David

Dear David
 ....etc.......Tell you what I am motivated to get my new body.  You know I haven't been happy with the current version.  It made me tired and shopping for clothes has always been depressing because fat people just don't have the same sense of feeling great that slim people have.  So I've wanted the alternative body shape but always gave up when food was around which as you know we ensured was around most of the time.

I also complained about my lifestyle and balance and not having time to cook proper meals etc.  I had even said it would be fun to shave my head just to see what it's like.  I wanted to know what it was like to be bald so you sure have to be careful about what you wish for because now I 'm going to be bald.

Reconstruction surgery is planned for this time next year so that I will have the Christmas break to recover.  This surgery is major - unlike having a breast and lymph nodes removed.  I have a year to knock off 35 kgs and get fit. David - you and I will be running up the hills in the Belmont Regional Park.  Of course I could ever race you....etc....With regard to me having cancer I have never said it wasn't fair or asked why me.  Dad was asking why my Mum could go through so much before she died.  He was saying it's just not fair she was such a good woman etc.  I kept telling him that life isn't fair.  Always there are learning experiences.
Cheers, A

You dear reader will be forming the opinion that all I do is write e-mails.  My work is really play.  It involves communicating with people.  Here's another e-mail from 21 December.  It's from Christine.

Subject: RE: Merry Christmas
Dear Alison
I've just come out of a meeting and read your email!  I 'm totally in shock.  You 're such a strong woman I 'm finding it hard to imagine that it could happen to you, which wouldn't exempt you I suppose, but hell.  I 'm so sorry.  If I 'm in shock, what are you feeling?  Well the positive thing is the results of the lab testing.  It sounds as if it was contained just there, which is fantastic.

I actually don't have mammograms, instead I have thermography which is a bit controversial, but I have a lot of faith in it.  A Dr Godfrey in Tauranga handles it out of his office and one of his nurses, Pip, comes to Wellington and goes to Auckland regularly and carries it out.  He has a lot of patients who have had cancer or cancer scares and looks at everything about them, lifestyle as well etc.  Pip recommended taking Selenium and Vitamin C for keeping the breasts healthy, along with the rest of the body.  I have a friend who always got lumps in her breast until she started taking them and now doesn't get them.  So there is something in taking additional things that are lacking in our food chain.  Vitamin C is also a wonderful antioxidant for the whole system.  He recommended taking it for the rest of her life and so far it's working.  Our world is so contaminated now, food chain, chemicals, things we put on our skin etc.  Our poor systems take a hammering.  I now read all the labels on the sides of skin products etc for those nasty parabens and the other toxic things around and try and use as natural a product as I can find.  I'll never know if I am helping my system or not, but at least I know I 'm trying.

Well Alison, do have a lovely relaxing Christmas, know you have come through the worst of it, keep positive and look forward.  Be kind and gentle on yourself.  You are a lovely lady and will grow by this experience.  My thoughts and heart go out to you.  Stay in touch. 

Useful websites
www.cancerhelp.org.uk 

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