2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Ride to Conquer Cancer High Tea, May 2012

Ride to Conquer Cancer High Tea

Breast Friends For a Cure raised $28,000 for breast cancer research by the QLD Institute of Medical Research.

I’m having a hysterectomy with oophorectomy March 21st, 2012

Hysterectomy with oophorectomy: involves the removal of the fallopian tubes, uterus and cervix and one or both sets of ovaries.

The procedure is performed laparoscopically. I decided to have it done for a few reasons:
* To stop my Zoladex injections. Zoladex is a pellet of meds shunted under my belly fat via a f@#koff large needle every month. This puts me into menopause. I have to have these for some time as I’m only thirty-seven, so it’ll take a while for me to go naturally into menopause.
* I have a small calcification on my left ovary, which worries no one but me. However, it brought my decision forward to remove the lot as the fear of secondary breast cancer on my ovaries is high. My mother, Heather, had this happen to her. Secondary breast cancer spreading to your ovaries from primary breast cancer is rare, but still occurs.
* I cannot have more children, unless I stop the Zoladex injections and resume menstruation.
* I have no more use for them, and consider their total removal another ‘tick’ on my list of do everything it takes to live without cancer.

I’m attending the Royal Brisbane Hospital for surgery.

Sunday – I signed up for organ donation today.

As a person who’s gone through breast cancer treatment I figured it was impossible to sign up for organ donation as my ‘goods’ weren’t good anymore. Not so!
DonateLife
If I die in the right conditions they’ll take what they can, like my eyes. Not an easy sell for the people at DonateLife, but a necessary one all the same. Irony of all ironies is that now my life has been threatened I’m happy to sign up for organ donation – but – before my breast cancer diagnosis I was spooked by signing up; that to sign up for organ donation would somehow bring my death on sooner, or that if I arrived in a resuscitation unit at some hospital’s A & E they’d not try so hard to revive me. All of which are false baby false.

 

Ambassadors’ Night – celebration and thanks

As Team Captain of Breast Friends For a Cure I went to the QIMR (Qld Institute of Medical Research) event’s night for Ambassadors. I was a silver Ambassador because of the amount we, as a team, raised – $42K plus.


Professor Frank Gannon Director & CEO

The Director and CEO is responsible for the research work undertaken by the Institute and management of QIMR employees. Previously, Professor Gannon was the Director General at the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) from 2007 until his move to Brisbane in January 2011.

His major research interest is the expression and functional regulation of the oestrogen receptor which plays a major role in breast cancer and osteoporosis. These studies have provided leads to novel treatments or therapeutic approaches to these and other cancers.

 

Tracey Atkinson, whose sister and dear friend had cancer, raised $51,530.90 for cancer research. She’d never taken part in fundraising before but felt compelled after her friend died from a brain tumour.