The day went very well with 64 women attending and helping our team ‘Breast Friends for a Cure’ raise a further $2500 towards our goal of $40, 000.

It’s mid-May and the year has just begun in my mind but my feet tell me another story. Brett is overseas walking the Pyrenean high route for two months. He’ll return June 26th. So I’m a single mother of a crazed muppet. The word that sums up my days is ‘busy’.

The Ride to Conquer Cancer ride takes place in three months – August 20-21st. So far our team ‘Breast Friends for a Cure’ has raised $23,050 – so we’re getting up to our goal of $40k (sort of). Breast Friends for Cure I’m putting on a High Tea – Champagne, Croquet and Cupcakes – May 29th at the McIllwraith Croquet Club from 2:30pm if anyone’s interested. All funds to the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.

Health wise, all is going well. I still get injected every month with Zoladex to keep me in a menopausal state. I’ve decided that in the next few years I’ll have a full hysterectomy to put paid to the Zoladex injections and the risk that oestrogen might swamp my system again and feed cancer cells. Not a fun bit of surgery and recovery but I believe necessary.

Today Felix and I go down to Melbourne and out to Janalli – Brett’s parents’ property. Feed me some beauty.

Ba bum … my nipple tack unravelled with the infection so I’ve decided to leave the scar tissue as is and just get nipples tattooed on with my areolas. My plastic surgeon chose a pinky-brown, which faded (normal) and needs another coating before the right colour is got. I don’t have headlights, which makes wearing whatever I want without a bra a dream.

Making a difference
This is my story (not written by me) on the Mater Foundation – making a difference – site for people to get a sense of the impact of medical research and medical treatment on people.

Saying thank you to people who donate
Click on the video – it’s a thank you to all the organisations and people who donated to Mater medical research. I feature next to the chicks in pink ladies.

It would’ve been my mother’s 62nd birthday today. Heather died on Christmas Day 2005 from metastatic breast cancer.

My mother and her Gertrude

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2010. That’s about 5 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 25 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 58 posts. There were 20 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 28mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 28th with 40 views. The most popular post that day was Adshel Team clean-up the ol’ house.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were mail.yahoo.com, thelonecypress.blogspot.com, facebook.com, mail.live.com, and chasingawaysaltwater.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for josie dietrich, breast blog, chemo, breastblog, and josies breast blog.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Adshel Team clean-up the ol’ house December 2009

My breast cancer pathology and important dates July 2009
5 comments

There better be a next time … August 2010
6 comments

Breast Reconstruction February 2010

Chemotherapy dates July 2009
3 comments

Felix, Josie, Brett, Annie, Martin, Lufe

Travelling parents with young sons. I find being a gypsy and having a child sometimes easier as you’re (as in Mother and Father) both together and there’s always something new happening. Travel is the best child minder around.

A 5 hour return walk with Felix on our backs.

After last year’s need to see something beautiful after 2009’s dreaded breast cancer treatment of surgeries, chemotherapy and illness we returned to NZ for more walking – this time with a much heavier son. We were joined by friends Annie, Lufe and their son Martin. So in two campervans we went all around the top end of the South Island camping, walking and eating.

‘These blades don’t fit.’ The head surgical nurse was talking out loud to a nearby nurse.

I was supine on the theatre bed. My left arm had a canula in a bulging vein in the crook of my arm. My right hand had an oxygen peg on my index finger. Both arms rested against padding. The image of being cut into was not something I wanted right at that moment.

‘These blades don’t fit.’ Sshh … I wanted to put my finger to my lip. Instead, I turned away from the fussing and fixated on a wall of Andy Warhol type repetitions of the previous patient’s brain. It appeared her skull contained an old oak tree with its branches twisting and turning. The image was in black, grey and white x-ray relief.

‘What’s that?’ I asked the interventionist radiologist.[1]

It’s a gobbledygook he said: some vaguely recognisable medical term that I promptly forgot. I think there was a dodgy vessel. That scientific enough? Well fifteen minutes later when I decided that I really wanted to know what was going on in the Warhol x-rays I asked the head surgical nurse the same thing and she said, ‘that’s a brain’.

The doctor was still examining the brain, so I amused myself by trying to control my heart rate and oxygen saturation numbers. My oxygen level hovered around 98. My heart rate was around 70. The numbers beeped in second intervals. At first I held my breath then I did some big breathing exercises. I hardly dinted the beeping numbers. Oxygen maxed out at 99. My heart rate went between 68 and 82.

For a portacath removal you’re put under a twilight which is different to a general anaesthetic. The sedationist doesn’t control your breathing like an anaesthetist does. An anaesthetist will intubate you after you go under as your breathing is suppressed by the drugs and needs external controlling. When under sedation the doctor can ask you to respond – say something or move a limb. What is odd about sedation is that you can’t remember a thing when you wake up even though you’re sort of ‘consciously out’ while the surgery is underway.

When my sedationist started the medication my eyes were drawn away from the x-rays to the fibres of the blue tent that was stuck to my chest, neck and went right over my face (they cut out a peep hole once they’d fixed the tent in place). My senses went foggy as if I’d run out of a cocktail party into the fresh night time air.

In the pre-operative interview with my radiologist I showed him the letter from the anaesthetist who assisted in my lumpectomy operation describing the intense nausea I get with certain anaesthetics. In response to this the radiologist had the private hospital it had been performed in fax through the amount and type of drugs he had administered when installing my portacath: ‘In case I did something clever.’ It worked. He had been clever: twice.

I also informed him of my double mastectomy, immediate reconstruction to which he responded, ‘I’ll make sure not to break your new boobs, don’t worry.’

and there is!

I had my nipples checked out by my plastic surgeon again, and he (again) told me to wait and see how they turn up (clear throat) after the infection disappears, but that they’ll likely need to be done again. It looks like (crossed fingers) he could do the same minimal procedure under local anaesthetic. Oh heaven on earth let this be the case, otherwise, I’m stuck with some ‘wee nipples of the rouge variety. Worse things.