Leveling Up For The Boss Fight - My cancer journey

Well a LOT has happened over the past 7 days, starting from not long after I posted last weeks blog. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you will know on the same day as posting the blog last Thursday, I was due to find out what the plan is for kicking cancer in the ass, and winning the boss fight. I have T3 N0 M0, stage 3 cervical cancer.  I'll explain what the letters and numbers mean. T3 = Tumour 3.  How far the cancer has grown.  This is ranked between 1-4, with small being 1. N0 = Nodes 0.  This is ranked between 0-3, grading if the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes with 0 meaning it hasn't spread at all. M0 = Metastases 0.  This ranks whether the cancer has spread to other parts of the body with either a ranking of 0 or 1. 0 being no, it hasn't, and 1 that it has. The treatment I'll be having is a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy followed by brachytherapy, starting in three weeks.  Radiotherapy will be for 5 days a w...

I'm hopeless at remembering dates.  I can remember 4 important ones: My parents birthdays, my other half's birthday and my own.  Facebook saves me, when I check it!  However I have a feeling I may remember this one. Today is the day the oncologists will have their meeting to look at all my data, and then I'll a meeting to discuss this. I write these blogs throughout the week, and give it a final edit the evening before it's posted.  I schedule it to post very early on a Thursday morning.  You can also follow this blog for new posts, which I'll explain at the end.   I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a little worried about how this will pan out.  It's cancer.  It doesn't care who I am, what my background is, what race I am or if I'm religious. However, I had some good news on Monday.  My specialist nurse, Maria, phoned me to say the PET-CT scan results were back, and my cancer hasn't spread elsewhere.  I cannot tell you how...

So we had Easter over the weekend, which would've been a bit strange for most.  As I work in food retail, more often than not I'm working the whole of Easter weekend. So being away from family for me wasn't too odd.  However Easter weekend I spent a lot of my time napping, as my sleep had been broken.  This would be either through my bladder not managing to let me sleep through the night, or pain creeping in. I'll be honest, I've not done an awful lot over the last week.  I've been making notes on how I've been each day, in case I need to refer to a particular event or issue.  Our dog absolutely loves being out in the garden when it's warm and sunny, so I've been walking laps around the garden when she's wanted to go outside. Wednesday was the final piece in the jigsaw day, my PET-CT scan.  My appointment was at 5pm, and I had some instructions I needed to follow.  I could wear comfy clothes, so long as there's no metal.  I could only dri...

It's been one week since my diagnosis, and I've been truly humbled by all the comments from family and friends. This is a weird time to be living, as we're still in lock down with Covid-19, and I know many of you are overdue hugs, as we've not seen each other for so long, but I'm so thankful we have all this technology just to make keeping in touch a little easier.  Yes, it's far from ideal, but we all have a duty to stay home to stay safe.  Even more so, I've got to be really careful, especially when I start my treatment. Monday, I had a pre-arranged call with the specialist nurse, Maria, from the gynecology team.  She was there when my consultant, Jo, broke the news.  I had said to them both, that I was OK, but probably will have some questions, as it was quite hard to take all the information in. Maria called me and asked how I was doing.  She informed me that the results of the biopsy's hadn't come back yet.  I informed her I hadn't hea...

Hello and welcome to my blog. I've decided to document my journey on here, as an easy access to updates for anyone who wishes it.  This will save me making multiple posts and messages, and also for those who don't want to miss an update.  I plan on posting an update each Thursday. For some weeks I have been unwell, and made an appointment with the doctor to get checked out.  I was experiencing some pain and thought it may be appendicitis.  The doctor examined me, and wanted to refer me to the gynecologist at the local hospital to check further checks, as there was a mass we couldn't identify. After going through an ultrasound, there was a 9 cm fibroid discovered, but I was experiencing pain which they wanted to be certain of where it was coming from.  A CT, then MRI scan later, I was told on Thursday I have cervical cancer. Next I'm waiting to have a PET scan.  I've already had biopsy's taken from me and markers placed around the area ready for trea...