I am a member of various groups and forums and i recently attended a breast cancer conference, run by breast cancer care, specifically for younger women. It was a great experience to meet such powerfully heroic women at varying stages of this catastrophic disease, who all continue moving forward the best way they can. Since this conference ladies have actually died, one was a music teacher who was still working as she loved her job but became ill with pneumonia she posted in the last days of her life how sad she was that this illness was slowly stopping her from doing what she loved she had two young children. Another lady who i remember was at the fore front of our alcohol fuelled saturday night thankfully survived 3 heart attacks, fluid on the lungs and heart but is posting from her bed that she is still alive....but very weak........
i feel i am in a secret world that only people with this disease understands and those are the people that have to 'get on with it' while they struggle for breath because the NHS cant keep them in hospital and the district nurses are too busy.....thank goodness for charities and the hospices who, like winged beings fly in to assist and to be 'there' making sure you are comfortable even if that means being drugged up to the eyeballs for as long as your body will stand it.
They say we have come along way with breast cancer....survival rates are better for sure but secondary breast cancer is not moving forward fast enough the drugs, while keeping people alive slowly destroy what healthy cells are there, complications ensue, side effects, but we carry on....we keep going until the body slowly gives up....it has been nearly everyday this week that my phone has pinged from the breast cancer forum, there has been alot of bad news and i cant help thinking the destruction of the NHS is making it worse. It is hard when you meet these women face to face and hear the red tape that the trial doctors are faced with, women were pleading to get on trials that were teetering on opening but these women had been given 3 months to live they didnt have time to wait......i am trying to look forward to things, to make the most of my daughter for as long as i am me, even on casualty on tv an elderly lady had mets to the brain....the blood brain barrier prevents mets to the brain being treated by chemo in most cases, she was no longer her and was screaming like a banshee. I feel i am just placing my bets. Dont worry readers.....i have a retreat coming up soon and my father has got a gorgeous place by the sea for me to escape to. Lots of fun things planned with my daughter too. There will be lighter posts, it has just been a very dark few weeks and witnessing firsthand someone in the last two weeks of their life was a very upsetting experience. I know there are wars and bombs and dying children, i just cant bare this unneccesary suffering, we should all be able to have choice and be free of suffering in any form. I wish all of these brave women got the recognition they deserve for what they have been through, seriously you wouldn't believe what becomes 'new normal' in cancer world "ooh finally got my lung inflated again so i can breath abit easier, night girls thanks for the support' and "just had 2 litres of ascites drained today feel so much better, hope you are all good" "hi girls apparently i nearly died twice, sorry for the short post but I am very weak, thanks for your messages".........
