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 »

I’m so excited. Chris has been taking photos since his teens but he has progressively become such a wonderful photographic artist he would have visitors in awe of his work. Some of our friends wanted to buy art cards and prints of his work and I urged him to set up a gallery so they could do so even if they weren’t physically visiting us here. Finally, he did. I’m really proud of him and his work. I hope you enjoy his gallery here.

I have 2-3 weeks before starting chemo for breast cancer. With plenty of surgery, blood tests, genetic tests, scans, biopsies, and soon chemotherapy I haven’t been able to work since July. So I thought I’d do something positive and sell off as many of my original art works as I can from now to the end of August in an Art-Not-Cancer art sale. Not only will art sales help by me some hats 🙂 but I see it as doing something to spur me on to then make more art during the four months I’ll be tackling chemo. Read the rest of this entry »

Cancer is a guest, it walks into the room and changes the whole milieu. It can turn life into a pity part, a battle, a comedy sketch, a medical parade. Read the rest of this entry »

Bottom line, the oncologist felt, statistically, in the case of my size and type of tumor and my age of onset etc, that without chemo followed by hormone therapy, that I had a 25% chance of dying from recurrence within the next 15 years. He felt that statistically chemo followed by hormone therapy would reduce that chance to 10%. This was based on this occurring in someone without my immune deficiencies, meaning the prognosis would perhaps be even tougher in that context if I don’t do chemo followed by hormone therapy. 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 »