Lyn

As promised Part II, if you recall I was saying that I always had something to say except for lately, here I go again, while I have been in the dumps and despair of depression, my last biopsy confirmation, going cold turkey on my eostrogen blocker Aromasin, to let the cancer cells grow so the chemo can find them and destroy them, interesting concept, oh well, together with the remnants of my last agressive radiation, the pain of my shoulders, numb feet and finger tips, all this was making the here after look pretty inviting, I even looked up how many potassium tablets I would have to swallow to do the job properly, my luck I would end up on life support and all would have been to no avail, the CSI programs on TV are too informative at times, anyway I think it was in the hundreds, then I just started looking at other things on the net diverted my energy elsewhere, like lobbying our politicians to get rid of the rediculous 5 year trial for drugs after other countries have already trialed them for 10 years and had them FDA approved. With my recent shoulder diagnosis, which I had to just about prove myself, the orthopaedic surgeon kept looking at the shoulder area, I was feeling like a hypochondriac except I have to rely on Ordine, liquid morphine, for pain relief, so when he suggested I have a bit of physio and come back in 6 weeks, I just sat there in disbelief and repeated I am on morphine, hello, I haven't been in this much pain even with the fractured shoulder, so he humoured me and arranged for another X-Ray, to reassure me he said patrnosingly, what a word, then he came back into the room with his tail between his legs and I now need urgent physio, the tear is the same as weight lifters get, I definately don't fit into that category so I think it may have been brought on with the chest radiation, who knows what causes what anymore, a few more falls in between all of this, I get off balanced at times, not surprisingly since one side of my chest was filleted to the rib cage, and 16 glands with no clear margin added in for good measure, all the symptoms we have been treating this past 2 years, hard lump in side of neck enlarging, numbness from the ear down to the shoulder blade, head tilting to right, trouble swallowing like I am choking and being strangled, did have a few near misses choking on tablets, mainly vitamins, breathlessness, were all put down to radiation, heart problems with fibrosis of the lung from radiation, I already had fibrosis on the other lung from early radiation, connective tissue disorder sjrogens saliva glands not working, are all symptoms of dislocated shoulder with serious ligament damage, I found this out when I read the bone scan and it said changes to the superclavacial joint, I was just a bit out in this diagnosis it was the shoulder blade, scapula, even the second independent X-Ray technician couldn't be bothered taking a proper film of the Scapula and argued with me that there was nothing wrong with it, I should have known when I saw a staple on the image, I thought it may have been one from my original radical mastectomy where they removed the chest and pectoral muscle, then I realised it was on the wrong side of the chest and it was a paper staple, anyway I got another referral and X-Ray from a different technician, and guess what, I was right, I just get so sick of having to prove myself when they are getting the big bucks and have to be hand fed, so that did nothing for my depression either, I just felt like throwing my hands up in the air. I could write a book on my experiences but it would have to be a trilogy and I wouldn't be able to write the ending. Without realising it, posting on this forum is actually therapy, and even if my posts are not read I have let it out and it increases my typing spead. I have worked from the legal age while at school and have done so, until struck by this disorder, at the age of 44 in 1998, and only then I gave up because the fellow workers insisted on smoking in the air condiitoning, the geologists who travelled around the world brought back all of the foreign diseases and coughed and spluttered into the air conditioning, the pay or the appreciation wasn't great, they still expected 110% so I said that is it, I have had it, I use to turn up to work, travel 50ks each way, crawl in peak hour traffic, usually have a mechanicl break down on the way home for good measure all the while, having chemo, wearing my Barbie doll wig, heavy prothesis and try and wear a smile as I attended reception as well, no I don't think there is an employer out there that could change my mind about returning to work, not to mention, all of my hospital visits, blood tests, medical oncologist, radiation oncologist and radiation, CT scans, Heart Specialist ecocardiograms every 3 months, orthopaedic specialist for 2 shoulders now and of course my lovely GP, her own husband died of an inoperative brain tumour a few years back at a young age, we don't have Cyber Knife here, in Australia, the so called lucky country, and it only hit our virtual TV hospital program last week, I have known about it for quite some time now just from the ladies on this site, but we are a backward country, the problem also is that there are so many different cancers that our oncologists can't possibly be up to date with everything unless we tell them what we know is good for us, and then face the stupid government with a wait and see policy, in the mean time hundreds are dieing because they can't get what works, the drug companies are making a fortune and don't really want a cure or they would have a lot of redundent drugs. Anyway I had better get off my soap box, I thought I was the only one who posted long messages, but it is a breath of fresh air to have someone like yourself with a passion to fight this disease, like my dear old English grandmother use to say, "I bet his mum is in arf proud of him", I can just hear her now. And for good measure, the middle of my house has been diagnosed with termites, the agressive ones I might add, and why not, another challenge, but it hasn't metastised anywhere else so another distraction, one I could do with out, they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

I will say my good nights again...Lyn