Lab Rat in......Life

I have to admit it feels quite strange and self indulgent of me to be here writing about my treatment in a week where so many young lives were needlessly lost in Manchester and it does put a lot of personal troubles and worries into perspective, my heart goes out to all the people affected by the tragedy and all other such tragedies going on, all too often, all over the world. However,  I am, if you forgive me, going to go ahead and indulge myself by writing another blog post as this really if the best therapy for me. The last few weeks have probably been the most challenging ones since starting chemotherapy. I think I explained a little in the first blog about the treatment plan I'd decided upon, but I'll explain again just to clarify. My chemo regime is one that is pretty standard for treatment of breast cancer in the UK, usually referred to as FEC-T - with the first 3 drugs (the FEC part -flourouracil, epirubicin & cyclphosphamide) are given in combination for three cy...

One of the hardest decisions I had to make when I received my diagnosis was whether or not to stay in Inverness for my treatment, I had only been living and working here for a few weeks and had only one friend (and her family) in the immediate area, with the majority of my family living almost 400 miles away in Huddersfield. As a well travelled 35 year old singleton I'd say I'm pretty independent and most definitely used to having my own space. My friends and family are quite used to me moving around and being away for long periods of time, but that's not to say I don't need them, in fact I depend on them a lot, WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook have become my lifelines over recent years. After some deliberation my gut told me to stay in Inverness, I knew that, if I could, I would want to work as much as possible to keep some normality and independence in my life and prevent me from being just a patient for the months to come. I also felt it was important to keep the contin...