Most people have been touched by it in many ways, either them themselves, a friend or a relative. For some, it’s caught early, treated fast, and life can continue as usual.
For others it’s not quite as straightforward. The cancer may have started in one place and spread somewhere else. Like me.

However, when people learn you have secondary cancer, it baffles me when they say something like, “You’ll be glad when this is all over!”

The thing is, with secondary cancer, it will never be ‘all over’. There is no cure there is only ‘management’. The Oncologists and Surgeons have a lot of tricks up their sleeves in order to manage the secondary cancer in order to keep me alive for as long as possible.

I’ve realised looking back over the blog, the posts the first time round were quite frequent. Sometimes once a day. This time round, after a flurry of posts when I was first re-diagnosed, I haven’t written any posts. I don’t know why. Possibly, because the treatment has been largely the same. Every 3 weeks I have my Herceptin and Zometa infusion. Nothing has really happened. Except something has happened…

The L4 vertebrae, which was the one the cancer spread to, and had the cyberknife radiotherapy to, has now collapsed, and is unstable, which could cause huge problems if something isn’t done. I’ve been seeing an Spinal surgeon who has seen my scans and between him and the oncologist, they have come up with a plan. So, on the 4th of June, I shall be having a Partial Vertebrectomy. (If you want to look up the details, the internet is a marvelous thing! But as far as I can tell, it’s surgery done with play dough and meccano.)

In another news, due to my hand swelling up, I have not been able to wear my wedding rings, although my eternity ring hung in there the longest. I’ve been married to Ross for 11 years, and we were engaged for 18 months prior to that, so it felt very odd not having a ring on my ring finger. Whilst I was out buying a friend’s birthday present, I started look in the trays of silver rings. Once Ross realised what I was doing, and why, he started looking too. Eventually we found one that we both agreed on, and I love it!

Jx