Overwhelmed

DH and I are overwhelmed my your love and support. DH has tried many times but not been able to read all your comments, so moved by the kindness of strangers.

A huge thank you to my gorgeous bloggy mates Eden, Stacie and Mrs Mask for recruiting extra prayers. We are going to need all the help we can get for this new fight.

My uncle visited today. His 40yo stepson was diagnosed late last year with Stage 4 cancer of the rectum with spots on the liver as well. He's been having chemo for about a month now and the main tumor has reduced from 75mm (same size as my lymph node tumor) to less than 7mm and the liver spots have dramatically reduced as well.

We have been crying every day but we have hope. Hope has always and will always be with us.

I am just anxious to start treatment and get the fight on.

And it just keeps getting better

The past few days have been horrid.

I had surgery on Thursday to remove some suspect skin lesions. One on my back, one on my thigh and another on the sole of my foot. All pathology came back as benign. Obviously the one on my foot has me laid up for a few days. My parents are here again but this time has really bothered me because I am an invalid. Kayla has a cold and has been crying a lot more than usual, and I can't get up to her, I can't carry her and I can't bath her. I hate it so much. It seems too much like a window to the future....

The Professor finally made contact about my latest scan results. The cancer has spread to my bones - it's in my shoulder, thigh, hip, pelvis and I think a few spots in my back. He said my prognosis is not good - about 8-9 months - but they are trialling a new drug which seems to have some promise. I'm not sure what this means but I will try anything, do anything to gain even just a little more time with my precious family.

My heart is breaking for DH. Imagine what it would be like to be told the person you love may only live another 9 months (unfortunately at least a couple of you know this feeling already and that breaks my heart too.). We haven't told anyone else yet and I don't know if we will. I have so many thoughts and feelings running rampant in my head but truly don't know what else to say right now....

Liver Spots

I thought liver spots were those brown marks old people get on the backs of their hands. A CT scan yesterday revealed spots on my liver. Not good news apparently. According to the report the lymph nodes in my groin are also enlarged but the Dr did not mention this. Good news is that there is no sign of cancer in my lungs or brain. Possibly something sinister hanging out near my left kidney but other organs look good.

The breast surgeon has been awesome. Since the diagnosis I have spoken to her or her secretary every day. She has organised an absolute barrage of tests for this week and even an appointment with one of the Melanoma experts at the local cancer hospital for today. So hopefully they will move just as quickly and aggressively with treatment.

On a much lighter note.... Kayla had her half birthday yesterday. She is just so happy and gorgeous and is loving spending all this extra time with Grandma and Grandpa.

Cancer Schmancer

Hello. My name is Louise.

I have cancer.

Melanoma.

Fuck it.


I noticed some swelling in my armpit about 3 weeks ago but didn't think much of it. I knew I had a breast screen appointment on January 27th so I thought I'd mention it then. By then it felt like a hard lump, maybe a bit smaller than a golf ball. The breast specialist scheduled another ultrasound and a needle biopsy of my lymph nodes for February 9th. Two days later the lymph node(s) was the size of a tennis ball and a huge lump had appeared under my collar bone. I rang the specialist again and she did the needle biopsy herself yesterday morning. The results came back as "Atypical", so I had a core biopsy yesterday afternoon to get a bigger tissue sample. She rang with the results today. Cancer. Melanoma. The pathologist checked twice.

We don't have a lot of information yet, but par for the course with me there is a kicker. The kicker is that the cancer in my lymph nodes is a secondary cancer and we don't know where the primary cancer is. And therefore how advanced it is.

I am booked in for some scary bloody radioactive body scan on Friday to help find the sucker. Then hopefully next week I will have surgery again to cut it out and remove the lymph nodes.

I can't get the image of ugly black cancer cells multiplying in my armpit out of my head.

The speed at which this thing appeared scares the fuck out of me.

The fact that I have a six month old daughter scares the fuck out of me.

I want to be there when she gets married, I want to be there when she has a baby of her own.

Infertility kicked my arse but did not beat me. Cancer will not beat me.

Same Same but Different

The days are flying by so fast. Amazing considering I seem to do the same things all day every day and always end the day thinking "damn I still didn't get to do the ironing"... or wash the floor... or finish decorating bub's room.... A good day sees me showered before DH gets home, the laundry hamper closer to empty than full and the breakfast dishes washed before dinner. These are now the markers of my day - not how many invoices I sent out or how much profit we made last week.

But just when I think I have some kind of a routine happening, Kayla does something to remind me that it is she who is in charge - thank you very much. This week its rolling, and flipping on to her tummy - not so good at bringing her hands up under herself yet, so there's also a lot of flailing legs and mashing her face into the rug. I'd been dragging my feet with the whole moving her out of our room and into her cot thing, when she decided to force the issue and start rolling around in the cradle. Last night was the first night she's slept in her cot. She did much better than I did. I had the baby monitor right beside me but my heart pounded for the first hour because I couldn't hear her breathing which obviously meant she wasn't. I made myself wait for an hour because I knew I was being ridiculous (which is surely ridiculous in itself!).

Another new hobby of hers is talking. She's also been pretty chatty but now she's found a whole bunch of new sounds to play with. I love waking up in the morning listening to her "sing". She has such a such gorgeous girly little voice and she just sounds so happy nattering away to herself. I hope she can sing, a talent I totally missed out on, and play a musical instrument like her dad. Ju.lie Andr.ews was being interviewed on tv this morning and they kept playing footage of her singing "the hills are alive" and Kayla seemed to be listening and smiling, I said "that lady can sing almost as good as mummy", she stopped smiling and turned to me with a very blank look. Ouch!

Monthly post

One post a month? That is terribly slack of me I do apologise. I think my new years resolution for 2010 will have to be something to do with improving my connections. I've dropped off my blog as well as FB, I haven't been visiting people as much as I'd hoped. The only people I see regularly are the women from the council's weekly "mother's group" - and I doubt that will last much past January.

My friend said to me that other day that her son's first year was the loneliest of her life. I was a bit shocked at the time, but thinking about it I can imagine how that would be. Because I live out of the city people only tend to visit on weekends. My husband's business is expanding at a ridiculous rate and he is having to work huge hours. So I am reluctant to make weekend plans because I want to create space for Kayla and her dad to spend some precious time together. During the week I am racing around trying to get Christmas organised in hourly chunks between sleeps and feeds. Soon enough I will have time to see people and no-one will be interested. I will have time to blog again but will have no readers. Vicious circle.

Mother's groups are an interesting concept aren't they?! Lets get a group of women together who will probably have nothing in common besides the fact they've just had a baby, stick them in a room together and see if they get on! Seriously though, of the seven in my group, six seem really quite nice. But there is always one isn't there? A bit of a nutter, slightly weird, terribly needy person who nobody likes but who is totally oblivious to this fact. And even though everyone else seems to get on reasonably well, this one person will break the entire group apart.

Apart from the gorgeous Kayla, my most loyal companion lately has been 17yo step son Tiger. Having finished school for the year he comes to bludge on our couch for a while and eat all our food (for something so skinny he sure can pack it away!) Kayla squirms and beams at the sight of him as he tells her all the things he has planned for her when she's bigger. It is really quite cute. He played two golf tournaments in a row last week and told his dad that he missed her. I think he's surprised at how easily the connection with her has come. The other two haven't really bothered, they'd be more likely to wait for her to connect with them. Self-absorbed much? But, of course, that is the nature of adolecence I guess.

I am still hanging in there with breastfeeding. The morning feeds (4am and 8am) are mostly breast then maybe again in the afternoon. She has stopped refusing but most times will not feed longer than 5-10 minutes. I don't mind now. Sleeping is improving all the time. We had to stop swaddling because she was fighting it so much, even though she slept much better wrapped. After a few rough nights she now sleeps in a Grobag, from 7-8pm until 4 or 5am. At last measure she was 6kg and 60cm long. She smiles all the time but hasn't found her laugh yet. She's getting so big but is still so small. She faces outwards in the BabyBjorn and has just about outgrown her pram. After Christmas she will move out of our room and into her cot *sigh*

Merry christmas, happy holidays and happy new year!

Breastfeeding

Its ironic that I was so defiant when Kayla was born against the breastfeeding bullies, protesting that it would make no difference in the long term if she was bottle fed or breast fed. I felt that it was my choice and i would not be bullied into thinking there was only one way to go.

Now I am desperate at the thought of stopping breastfeeding. My milk came in late and my supply has never been great. The milk let down can be incredibly slow and has pretty much always frustrated bub but we have soldiered on and I've come to love the intimacy of feeding. The way she looks at me as she feeds and holds my fingers or strokes my skin.

The past few weeks here have been unseasonably hot here and she has been wanting to feed far more often, so when my supply couldn't keep up I gave her extra bottle feeds. This week she is refusing the breast during the day, but at this stage will still accept night feeds. It started with just the left one - a notoriously slow let downer- but this afternoon she refused the right as well. She turns her head and screams and cries real tears. This afternoon I joined her - and not for the first time.

I am finding it so hard to look at this logically. I can tell myself that she is just being lazy, she wants the instant flow of milk she get from the bottle. We live in an instant gratification driven society afterall - why should babies be immune? She is not rejecting me, she is rejecting the dodgy milk supply offered by my aging breasts. But I am taking it personally. I can't help but feel she is refusing me, rejecting the intimacy I am offering. And that hurts.

I should ring a lactation consultant and see if we can turn this around, but I can't talk about it without crying and that makes me feel like an idiot. It should not matter how my baby is fed as long as she is being fed and putting on weight. It surprises me that I feel so strongly about this.

Other than this issue, everything else is going pretty well. The pediatrician says her heart murmur is just a little flow murmur which may resolve itself with time. She wants to check it again in 6 months.