Peach Tears

On a sad note, those of us in WCSUK were reminded that not every case of womb cancer can be treated successfully. We recently lost a wonderful lady with a beautiful smile.
She had been an active member of the chat group, and even when she had moved into the hospice towards the end, she still found time to log on and chat to the other women.

She will be sadly missed by those of us that knew her; however briefly that may have been.

How to be a crone!

Not long after I had my hysterectomy back in early 2010, a female friend, who had had her hysterectomy 12 months previously said "You're a crone now!"

I was quite taken aback at that, until she explained that as a Pagan, a Crone was regarded as a wise woman and a respected elder!

Thoughts of being seen as a wisened up old hag soon disappeared to be replaced by thoughts of being a wise goddess!!!

Ok, maybe thats taking it a bit far, but after some reading up on the subject I began to embrace my "cronehood" and have come to feel quite comfortable in my new skin! My Pagan friends even held a small croning ceremony for me to honour my transition.

And why not! There are many female orientated organisations around the world who seek to honour a young girls transition into womanhood and we as women, celebrate the transition of our sisters into Mothers so why do we not honour the third age of womanhood in the same way?

The word "crone" has become a derogatory word and its time to reclaim it and return it to its proper use - as a way of describing a woman who has lived a full and eventful life and has many experiences and words of wisdom to pass down.

I remember as a young child, spending time with my Grandmother, in the kitchen or walking round the garden. She would tell me what flowers and herbs were good for helping sore throats; what to do with the dried flower heads in order to save the seeds for next year! I know now that she was doing what her Grandmother had done, and all the previous Grandmothers before. They were passing on their knowledge to the next generation.

If you look across many cultures, it is women that hold society together. In our modern day fight for equal rights, have we lost sight of the fact that being a woman is a very important part of who we are?
We are responsible for the next generation; it is us they look to for the skills to get them through the early part of their life.

Even if some of us don't have children of our own we still have a role to play. Being an Aunt can be just as rewarding as being a Mum.

So, at 49 I am approaching that milestone that many women dread. But actually, I'm quite looking forward to it! I intend to celebrate my cronehood; be happy in who I am.

Having cancer made me realise that its pointless stressing about things that you can't change; a wise woman would have know that! I had to learn the hard way, but its a lesson that I won't forget in a hurry!

Honour the wise woman within you!

Peach Ponderings

Here is another guest blog for you to read.

My ponderings are peach because I’ve been on an unexpected journey with womb cancer and, as all followers of Kaz’s WCSUK blog will no doubt know, peach is the colour for womb cancer.

I can’t say exactly when the womb cancer journey began for me because who knows when the cancer joined me. Maybe it took a long time to introduce itself, maybe not, but when I finally found out I had a companion I didn’t recognise its name, I knew nothing about it and I didn’t know anyone else who’d been through what I was experiencing. How ironic that, having been taught never to talk to strangers, there I was harbouring one and taking it with me wherever I went. I’d picked up a hitchhiker without realising.

I’ve since found out that approximately 1900 women die from womb cancer each year in the UK and around 8000 annually in the US. I also know that, far from being alone, there is support out there for women who need it. That support is being provided at WCSUK  by other women who’ve been through womb cancer, or by those who’ve lost loved ones to it. It’s no longer as it was when I was diagnosed, I’m no longer alone and you don’t have to be either.

 

Here a blog, there a blog!!!

During September's Womb Cancer  Awareness Campaign we had some guest bloggers write for us here and it was great to see the response that they got. Some of the stories were quite harrowing and some very inspirational. Many thanks to all the lovely ladies who agreed to write for us.

I'd like to share a couple of blogs posts that I came across over the past couple of days and I hope that you will read them and then pass on the links as I think they make very good reading and deserve to be more widely seen.

The first is by a young man who I first came across a few weeks back when I found a blog post he had written about his Mother who had sadly died of womb cancer. It was a moving blog and I reposted it on our FB page. Shortly after, Dan contacted us via the FB page. Turns out that he is in The Philippines and there is a lack of information and support there for women going through womb cancer. Within a few hours, Dan had set up a FB page of his own to fill the void. He is also doing a blog and he has reposted the original post that first alerted me to him. Please read it and share it. It doesn't matter where in the world we are, womb cancer can strike any women.

http://endometrialcancerphilippines.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/a-woman-named-jocelyn.html


The second blog post that I'd like to share with you is one that I could easily have written myself. It explains exactly how I felt, and still feel about my journey with cancer.

http://imjustsarahcate.tumblr.com/post/33154691916/i-am-not-your-hero

I hope that you will read and share this blog posts and maybe they will inspire you to write something yourself about your cancer journey. If so, please let us know and we'll glady share it here.

Until next time, stay peachy!!!!

Why we're not into pink!!

Well, Septembers womb cancer awareness campaign has now finished and what a busy month it was.

We had lots of great guest blogs from some very inspirational ladies that were read far and wide, according to the analytics. I really want to say a huge big thank you to the ladies that were prepared to share their stories on here; it was very brave of you.

The videos that were made and put over on our youtube channel were also well received. You can view our uploads here http://www.youtube.com/user/WombCancerSupportUK/videos?flow=grid&view=0

Our turn Facebook peach campaign was a great success. It was very uplifting to log on each morning and see lots of peach related updates. A lot of the women in the group had spread the word amongst their friends so by the middle of the month there were peach statuses popping up from all over the world - it was great!!!

Hopefully we have succeeded in raising awareness about womb cancer and many more women are now informed about the signs and symptoms to look out for.

However, just because September is over doesn't mean that the awareness raising stops. It does become slightly more difficult though as we try to "be seen" amongst the tidal wave of pink that is everywhere - in the media; on the web; on tele; in the shops! It seems anything and everything has had a "pink" makeover.

This is just my personal opinion, but I know its one that is shared by many.
Cancer is cancer. A person who gets breast cancer is just as important as someone who gets womb cancer; or lung cancer; or bowel cancer or prostate cancer or any other cancer. The whole industry, and thats basically what it is; that has grow up around breast cancer in the last 20+ years hasn't resulted in less women being diagnosed with  breast cancer. In fact the numbers have gone up alarmingly.

 I would urge you to read "Pink Ribbon Blues" by Gayle Sulik http://gaylesulik.com/  and form your own opinion but I think there needs to be a radical rethink in the way that cancer research as a whole is funded so that rarer cancers (and by that I mean cancers where only a small percentage of the population are affected) are not left out in the cold.

So, on a matter of principle, I won't be wearing pink during October. I want all cancers treated equally and all cancer patients deserving of equal respect.

Cancer kills - it doesn't care what colour ribbon you happen to be wearing!

One in Three!

Current cancer statistics say that 1 in 3 of us will be affected by cancer at some point in our lives!

It could be you! Or you! Or me!

Actually, it was me!

I was diagnosed with womb cancer on 23^rd Dec 2009.

Womb cancer? I’d never heard of it until I got my diagnosis! I’d heard of ovarian and cervical cancer. I’d even had a smear test a month or so before that came back clear – so how come I’d got womb cancer?

Apparently I ticked a lot of the boxes for risk factors! I was classed as obese; I’d never been pregnant; I had started my periods at an early age; my periods had always been heavy and prolonged.

Turns out I was the perfect candidate for womb cancer – even though I’d never smoked, rarely drank and had been a vegetarian for over 20 years!

Go figure!

So a hysterectomy was swiftly arranged for the beginning of 2010 and then I endured 4 sessions of chemotherapy and 5 weeks of radiotherapy.

All through the treatment, I searched on the internet for information and support. I wanted to talk to other women with womb cancer – women who knew exactly what I was going through and who understood what I was feeling. But I could only find the odd one or two. There must be more out there, I thought. After all, I’d discovered that at that time, over 7,000 women each year were being diagnosed with womb cancer.

 

I used the Macmillan Cancer Support website and a few others but I was perplexed to find that a) there was very little information about womb cancer and b) there wasn’t a dedicated womb cancer charity out there raising funds for research.

After months of scouring the internet looking for information, I decided to do something positive and set up an online support group for women with womb cancer, which I run with another womb cancer survivor.
http://wombcancersupportuk.wix.com/home  

What started out as a small group of women on a Facebook page talking about their experiences and sharing stories has now grown in almost 18 months to a group of over 500.

Women from around the world who, like me, had been searching for other women to talk to. They share their stories; they offer advice and tips but above all they can empathise with each other because they know what its like!

There is still no national dedicated womb cancer charity – but we’re hoping there will be soon. There is a petition running and there are currently over 1,400 signatures. The target is 1,900 – the number of women that are dying each year from womb cancer.

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/wombcancercharity  

Since my diagnosis, I have discovered that womb cancer is supposed to be a cancer that post menopausal women get, but I was 46 when I was diagnosed, and there are women in the group who are in their 30’s. Sadly, the latest to join us was just 19 when she was diagnosed!

Many of the women say the same as I did – they had never heard about womb cancer.

This needs to change!

Over the years, there have been massive awareness campaigns for breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer. Well now its time for there to be one for womb cancer.

We at WCSUK can only do so much; what is needed is a nationwide media campaign by a large cancer organisiation or the NHS. Sadly, it would appear that nothing is likely to happen in the foreseeable future, so it remains for us, the women who have had or are still dealing with womb cancer, to do the awareness raising. So we will continue to do so, because we know just how hard a womb cancer diagnosis hits a woman.  

Present statistics show that around 8,000 women are diagnosed each year, and the numbers are rising.

There needs to be much more awareness of the risk factors and the signs and symptoms to look out for.And it’s not just women who need educating about this. GP’s need to start taking unexplained or unusual bleeding seriously and stop telling women in their 30’s or 40’s that they are too young to get womb cancer.

As many women in our group will tell you; you’re never too young!

Thank you to Margaret MacGillivray for this, and all the other images she created for us during the last few weeks.

I also want to say a huge thank you to all the brave ladies who shared their stories here and the ones who allowed me to use their stories and turn them into short films for our youtube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/user/WombCancerSupportUK/videos?flow=grid&view=0

Together, we will change things. xx

My Story - by SB.

Continuing on with our guest blogs for September's awareness campaign, here is another survivor's story!

I was diagnosed with cancer in June 2007, aged 39. I had been for a colposcopy at my local hospital in Ascot and after the examination I was taken into a different room and asked to wait for the consultant who would come to see me. This room had proper sofa's, proper carpet and proper flowers and so I figured I was now in 'proper trouble' as this room was a far cry from the plastic chairs, lino flooring and 9 year old Readers Digests that I was used to.

The consultant, with a nurse, informed me that I had cancer and I would need to go to Queen Charlotte and Chelsea Hospital in London for a biopsy in the next 10 days or so. I called my boyfriend from outside the hospital (at that stage I was still adhering to the 'no mobile phone' signs) and gave him the news. I don't remember what he said, or what I said or for that matter what happened for the next few days. I do remember telling my manager at work whilst we were 'brewing up' together in the works kitchen. I thought I could keep it a secret from everyone but of course she needed to tell her manager and her managers manager. I had to have a couple of short meetings with them as they needed to know if they could do anything for me but most importantly to them - how long would I be off !! I didn't at this point have any answers as I didn't know much more than my appointment date.

The day of the biopsy came and started off more fraught than I hoped it would. I got a local taxi to take me into London and he had very annoyingly left his sat nav on for the previous trip and so we didn't get to where we need to get! In fact, I got out of his taxi at some traffic lights and with my little overnight bag (just in case it was needed) I got into a black cab and I arrived at the hospital more or less on time with a tear stained red face. They assured me I was in good hands I assured them I was crying because of the taxi driver !!!
The London Consultant wasn't best please when I told him my Ascot Consultant told me I had cancer as he said it hadn't been determined yet - so that then added to my emotions as I now didn't know if I did or didn't have cancer - anyway as we now know I DID.

I then had to decide which type of hysterectomy I'd have - the radical were everything is taken out or a type where they leave the ovaries (and therefore the eggs) behind. Up until this stage in my life I hadn't had children but hadn't really ruled them out - however I now had a week to decide if I wanted any in the future. Tough choice. I'm an only child and spoke with my parents about my options and as much as they would have loved grandchildren they also quite fancied the idea of having me around for a bit longer !! The other thing to consider would for me to have 'kept some of my bits' for a bit longer, had a child and then for the cancer to return, and you never know next time I may not have survived, and so the child would then be motherless. We decided as a family to have the lot out!

My operation was scheduled in for 1st August 1998 and so I arrive at Queen Charlotte and Chelsea the day before for them to do all the tests needed. I was in hospital for 11 days which is what was expected, there were no major hiccoughs and everything seemed to have gone well. I was determined to have stitches and not staples and so to make sure, I wrote instructions on both of my hands (where they put the IV line in) and I also wrote instructions on my belly - just to be sure and it worked !

My parents came down from Lancashire and visited me each day, I was surprised and scared by this thought seeing as my dad was 71 at the time and he hadn't driven in London for a l-o-n-g time. Mostly my boyfriend brought them but they did the trip a few times during the day on their own. This wasn't the first time they'd seen me in that state as a few years earlier I'd got into even more trouble when a bowel operation went wrong and I ended up in Intensive Care for 3 days on a life support machine and had three weeks in hospital, so a radical hysterectomy was a breeze!! That was until reality (and the menopause) hit ! Oh what I'd have done for a breeze in those days ! HRT sees me right at the moment. I have to have DEXA bone scans every 2-3years to test my bone density.

I recovered from the operation really well physically but emotionally I wasn't doing so good. I started to see a counsellor at my GP's Practice and she really helped me comes to terms with my loss...even though I hadn't lost an actual person I felt I had lost a part of me and strangely I worried about things like who would have the family photos that my parents have after I had died, and who would I show them to? I don't remember what her answers were to those questions but she did really help me.
About a year after my operation I was approached by a Macmillan nurse again from QC&C and she told me about a group she was getting together to meet up and talk and help each other, it meant me having to commit to 9 trips to London(30 miles away) over the next 9 months and actually 'talking out loud' to strangers! again I was frightened of doing this but I agreed to go and I'm so please that I did. I didn't speak much at first and was even frightened of introducing myself but I met a great bunch of ladies and its 3 years on and we still meet up 2 or 3 times a year....but this time in bars and without a nurse present !

Whilst I was in hospital my Macmillan nurse put my name forward for a 'Special Day' via the Willow Foundation. Luckily I was deemed ill enough to receive one of their weekends (ha ha) and I decided to spend my 40th Birthday in London with my boyfriend - we had 2 nights in a hotel on Park Lane, went to see Mama Mia, the terracotta soldiers at the British Museum, had a tour of Lords Cricket Ground, ate at Bibendem, had a car for the whole time and we were even give money to spend in incidentals, money at the hotel for room services and we were picked up and dropped off back home - it was perfect. The Willow Foundation were amazing and I knew I wanted to 'pay them back' for what they had done for me. I spent a few months racking my brain to think of a way and then came up with the idea of super soft hats for people receiving chemotherapy. I didn't need to have chemo but my mum did for breast cancer 10 years ago, and just so my dad didn't miss out, he has since has prostrate cancer and recently had a huge operation for skin cancer ( the three of us always do everything together !!!!). Its probably a good thing that I dont have any siblings !

I set up a website named Retail & Therapy www.retailandtherapy.com. I donate some of my proceeds to Willow and I hope to work with some other charities too so that they can promote my site and I can donate. I keep the costs as low as I can so that I am able to donate as much as I can. I have the beanies made in the UK by a lady who herself received chemo for breast cancer. The scarves come from Paris.

I'm coming up to being 5 years clear of cancer in August this year and I'm looking forward to cheaper travel insurance ha ha. I still am aware that once you get to 5 years its not a miracle date when everything gets better and this was brought to my attention even more so recently when one of my dear friends from the hospital meet-ups celebrated her '10 year clear' on 10th December and within a day or two found out her cancer was back. She had her operation on Tuesday this week and is currently in ITU due to an allergic reaction to a pain killer. The surgeon is sure the cancer has all been removed but she has a big hill to climb and another 6 months of chemo to get through.

My priorities changed after I had cancer, I decided to go down the healthy eating route (the words horse and stable door come to mind) I got myself an allotment about 1 mile from home, I reduced my working week to 4 days ( I REALLY missed the money for the first few months but soon adapted and would recommend it to any one) and I set up the website. I never realised it would take up so much of my time but it is a labour of love and each donation I make to charity makes it all worth while. I really enjoy my time at the allotment too and it is something I don't think I'd have thought of doing before having cancer. Plus, all the 80 year old men do my heavy digging for me - they moan but they love it really and I get invited to their BBQ's where we swap recipes for courgettes !

Thanks for reading this, I wish you and your loved ones all the very best.

Check out the lovely beanies and scarves here  http://www.retailandtherapy.com/index.html