Another breast expansion today, with every visit there’s a little bit of teething pain for a few days, so my red medicine (wine) is indeed required by the evening. But I’m very thankful it is still clicking along like clockwork despite the balancing act to get them even.
Speaking of balancing acts, hasn’t it been a challenge, to follow the rules, keep our space, continue with our physical and mental health fitness plans, stay involved and motivated to work if we are lucky enough to still have jobs, while homeschooling, entertaining pets, looking for toilet paper, trying not to judge other’s motives …. argh the list goes on. Now personally I’m living the dream. I actually feel like this has been a real leveller. At the risk of sounding completey thoughtless, it’s kind of humbling yet liberating for me to know I’ve already self isolated for an entire 14 months after my bone marrow transplant (no government subsidies for us when I had to take that time off my full time job, or recently with some further unpaid leave-clearly I’m not bitter!), and we’ve watched our savings go down the drain on medical bills, having to spend the left over instead on ‘living’ as opposed to that delightful honeymoon, overseas holiday or dream house improvements as planned. So please forgive me if I seem to be embracing this all! (It’s nice to collectively not feel alone isn’t it? What’s been the catch cry? We’re all in this together! Inside I’m screaming “FINALLY”).
In an effort to balance out what might appear as callous or be perceived as ruthless or dare I say deleterious, let me also say I love you all, stay safe and we’ll see each other on the flip side.
Happy days xx
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Published by Debra Mesecke
I was 21 and I was planning a wedding, buying a house and had a job interview for the job of my dreams on my 22nd birthday. You see I was being made redundant and had to find a new job by August. Especially with the new mortgage now. It was April. I worked for CML and my new job was a done deal. All I needed was a medical. And with that, just like that....my life was turned upside down and I was diagnosed with CML, ha ha, I know the irony. My hematologist had a laugh at that too. I had Chronic Myeloid Leukeamia, which was normally reserved for 70 year old men. Quite rare for a young adult to get, so how would they treat it? I underwent two separate trials until finally it was decided my best chance of survival (all be it only 50% chance), would be a MUD BMT (matched unrelated bone marrow transplant), now known as VUD Allograt (volunteer unrelated donor). I was told 21 years ago the chance of finding a match was 1 in 20,000 (and that is everyone was on the bone marrow donor registry). Scary odds. So being the risk taker I am I said "go for it". They found a match and that was my first miracle in this journey. The second miracle was, it worked - new blood type, two different DNA profiles and the miracle of medicine was reborn inside me. The third miracle is my son.
25 years on, I now face a new challenge. Breast Cancer. Certainly not the first person to have cancer, to have invasive ductile cancer, hormone receptive and HER2 +, or to even have a dual diagnosis. But this is not another Webiste about a cancer survivor, this is just my excuse to finally publicly write. Along the way I am hoping I can share some insights I have learnt over the years and at the same time, give you a good belly laugh.
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