Hives, joint problems, headaches and attention/information processing issues were part of my childhood. I was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis around age 9-11 and put on painkillers until I was 17 and had few white cells. I had had immune problems all my life and was used to infections running in succession, lasting months and not responding well to antibiotics. By 17 I had regular migraines and was on asthma sprays and thrush became my constant companion. By age 26 I had multiple simultaneous infections (respiratory tract, bladder, eye infections), chronic thrush, severe fatigue, and episodes of numbness, vein problems and swelling in my hands, very dark circles under my eyes and what would later be diagnosed as ‘severe reactive hypoglycemia’. It was 1989 and when I was asked if I’d ever been tested for allergies, I was surprised such a thing could cause such ill health. I was referred to an allergy clinic. Read the rest of this entry »

However appalling the topic, when it comes to hearing from women sexually abused by fathers, uncles, brothers, grandfathers, society is at least aware of the issue. As a society we have become so used to the potential of men to abuse that men working with children or interested to do so are sometimes instantly under suspicion. Yet up to 40% of those who sexually abuse children are women and around 10% of reported child sexual abuse of girls is perpetrated by the child’s mother. Read the rest of this entry »

Whilst we all hear the rate of breast cancer is increasing and is one in 8 women, I was surprised to read this:

The risk ratio that we all hear about — that one in eight women get breast cancer — is for women over 90 years of age. The rate for women in their 50’s is more like one in 50.

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We Pollyanna types have done it a hundred times. We meet s Sociopath, Psychopath, Narcissist, or a cling monster with Borderline Personality Disorder any of whom may also have a series of addictions or untreated bipolar or Schizo-affective disorder and we sweep aside all this ‘other stuff’ because we see their inner loveliness, their humanity, their potential… or do we? Read the rest of this entry »

Autism is a medical diagnosis according to DSM criteria. AUTistic, however, is not only a description of those with autism, it is an adjective describing self orientation/containment and there are so many roads and reasons why a person may become entrenched in an AUTistic state that its no surprise the range of people who come to identify with the term ‘autistic’. Read the rest of this entry »

Please know that every person’s journey with chemo is different. For some its a doddle, for others its a war, for others its a spiritual journey or any combination thereof. Every person’s body responds differently to chemo, you can go into it and get rid of arthritis instead of finding it exacerbated, you can find life long conditions suddenly amplified, you can find you get the extended warranty/expiry date you’re looking for, or you can find its a real tough road on the way out. I’m doing adjuvant chemo, 4 lots of 3 week cycles for breast cancer. I have a life long history of immune and autoimmune dysfunction, a history of brain injury effecting my autonomic nervous system, a daunting family cancer history on one side and inbreeding on the other. I am doing my journey as someone with Autism and DID and I bring all that to the table. With cancer there is no ‘Mary Bloggs’. Every person’s body and brain, personality, environment, baggage and support, identity/identities and orientation, hopes and pessimism come to the table. I wish any of you well on your own journies with cancer or supporting those with it. Here’s the chemo part of my journey. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not scared of going to Mars at the Day Ward tomorrow.
It’s only a docking station.
They will inject me with an IV and drug me for 3 hrs whilst I take my trip to Mars… sort of like Mork Read the rest of this entry »

I have my schedule now and chemo starts on Thursday. I’m starting on steroids tomorrow to counter any autoimmune chaos and even better, guess who surprised us all by having a NORMAL white cell count!!! Yup, it was in the normal range. I haven’t seen a normal white cell count since 2009 when the immune deficiencies stopped being nicely in remission and came back and bit my bum. So finally, something good happened! Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, scenario, you had a breast cancer tumor. It was 3cm. They removed it. The sentinel lymph node showed no cancer but was ‘benign with reactive changes’. But when breast cancer tumors are 3cm+ a clear lymph node result (ie no cancer there) has a 14% chance of being a false negative. Plus cancer can travel through the lymph node without embedding there and cancer cells can float away from the tumor, off into the lymph only to later embed in other body parts; lung, liver, bowel, bone. Read the rest of this entry »

My breast cancer tumor was thought to be 2.2cm. Scans showed no cancer in the lymph nodes. The doc understood I lived with immune deficiencies, that my family had an extremely high cancer rate and that I was nervous of how taxing radiation or chemo would be. I knew I didn’t care about cleavage, that I’d invested my life in my personality, not my breasts. Read the rest of this entry »