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Heather's blogThe latest on me! (New? start reading at the bottom or in the archive!) 17 dicembre Back home for ChristmasI was thrilled to bits to get the hospital to release me the next day! And I HAVE been resting - lots! Even though I am in some pain, the fact that I am on mondo pain control for the nerve damage on the left side (which is slowly improving) means that it is pretty well covered by the drugs that I am already on. Now I just need to heal...
I want to say that Lez and the children have been amazing this year. They have all been so supportive and have had faith even when we were scared that I wouldn't be here for this Christmas. I wouldn't be without any of them for the world.
I am also grateful for our families who have rallied round and made sure we were looked after. Thanks MUM and thanks Bob and Rae. Thanks Reta for coming down to look after me when Lez was away and I had just had chemo.
I also have wonderful friends, who collectively spoil me and have kept treats coming.
Thank you Christie, for the wonderful flowers that came this morning and for the trip to NY which was soooooo special and coming to my first chemo with me.
Thank you Sue for accomodating us in NY - old friends mean so much and our friendship is just as fresh as it was at 6 and 7!
Thank you to Phil and Adrienne for Thanksgiving and for the tickets to Radio City Music Hall - it was amazing!
Thank you Piper for encouraging notes and meals (YUM) and hair enhancing(!)
Thank you Lynn for baby-sitting and shopping and always being available if we got stuck.
Thank you to Kelvin for getting the boys started on a fun project to make life more normal for them.
Thank you Meg for an amazing photo session when I was feeling lop-sided and bald and generally hopeless.
Thank you to Su and Asha and Sandie for doing charity runs in my name.
Thank you to Althea for organizing a meal rota when I was so sick!
Thank you to Cath for keeping me in touch with work and for an amazing book by Wendy Bray to keep my spirits up.
Thank you Helen for Chelsea flower show and a picnic at Kew and a magazine subscription.
Thank you to Victor, Luisa, Amy and John for taking the boys on exciting Pathfinder outings.
Thank you Anne for sweet treats and a gorgeous pendant to cheer me up.
Thank you Ang for many hours on the phone and a place to live during my Radiotherapy.
Thank you to Nathan who called me just to shoot the breeze and prayed for me and who told me to get on with it when I was too scared to do any more chemotherapy.
Thank you to Karen for finding creative ways of supporting me including a lavender-sprigged set of crayoned prayers from her and Bernie and my family to take into hospital. Thank you to Bernie for looking after the kids one Sabbath when he had only a few hours before travelling.
Thank you to Anne and Ron, who opened Elaines wardrobe to me when I had nothing to wear and felt so low.
Thank you to all those who took me out for meals ( I love eating out!).
Thank you to all those who cooked for me and cleaned for me and looked after children at no notice for me and helped with care over the summer.
Thank you to those who took me to radiotherapy and especially to those who took me on to Starbucks!
Thank you to Nathan and Bernie and Victor and Kirsten for annointing me with oil and praying for me - although the medical staff did their part, I believe that my getting better was a miracle and I am humbly grateful for it.
Thank you for all of you who prayed for me , whether you believed in God or not. He has definately given us an answer - HE IS and He loves us. But know that even if I had been dying as I typed this, I still would have said the same - HE IS and He loves us.
Oh darn it - it sounds like an Oscar speech! ewwwwwwwwwwww! If I have not mentioned you , it is not that I am not grateful, it is just that I am tired!
If I have learned one thing this year, it is this - Carpe Diem - make a list of 4 things that you have always wanted to do and do them. Anything! My list for next year looks like this - go horse-riding, take the kids to the Globe to see a Shakespeare play, find some iceskates that fit me in the second-hand market, spend a day in London with Lez and pretend we are 20 again!!
Please e-mail me to say hello. Our Christmas e-mail is due out soon.
Love,
 Heather xxx 14 dicembre Op NewsWell, I hear you say - no updates for ages and then two in two days!
Lez here letting you know that all has gone well with Heather's surgery and she is recovering in hospital. They boys and I visited her this evening and she was in good spirits, but pretty sore. Daniel and Michael were please to see her awake, but we did not stay long as she was understandably quite tired.
She is keen to get home and the doctors may discharge her tomorrow! I will let you alll know when it happens.
Heather wanted me to thank you all for all your prayers and support - she is very grateful for so many special, caring friends in her life. 12 dicembre Another op...Hello! Well it has been rather too log since I updated this blog... Still as they say - no news is good news!
The radiotherapy went well - much better than I had expected with my track record, but it did make me extremely tired for well over a month and my skin broke down after the treatment finished (whew) but it is *much* better now. The tiredness, athough not as bad, is expected to persit to some extent for probably a year.
Unfortunately I seem to have developed lymphoedema (fluid retention) in the left breast (where they first operated). There does not seem to be much to be done about it, but fortunately is it not severe at this point.
A couple of weeks ago I was able to spend a week in New York visiting a friend. Christie and I went to stay with my friend Sue and we all had a wonderful time shopping, sight-seeing and visiting with friends. We did the touristy thing in downtown NYC. It was so nice to go home.
Tomorrow I am going into hospital for reconstructive surgery on my right side. This should be a lot less traumatic than the last operation and, althought it is still quite a major operation, they are expecting me to say on the ward for only a day or two before going home.
There was a pre-op concern from a routine CT scan that I had a brain aneurism but an MRI ruled it out today, much to our relief.
I'll have Lez post an update in a couple of days to let you know the operation went and any other news.
Well it looks as if my style is a few long blog entries rather than lots of short updates - so now you know
I'd like to thank you all for your support/treats/prayers over the last year. And if another entry does not appear before the end of December then it not my fault - blame Lez!
Love
Heather 25 settembre UpdateLez here.
Well, I can see from the last blog entry that it's been a while now. Heather asked me to check in with you all and post an update on how things are progressing. The not-so-good- news is that Heather had a few weeks of feeling rather down about her appearance, etc. Might sound trivial, but I can assure you that it is not. Keeping positive is tiring and cannot be continuous. Now she is feeling a bit better about things and is half way through the radiotherapy course - more in a moment... This is giving her and end in sight - which has not been so close before and now it seems that it might just actually in fact end. Please keep praying for her as she still needs your prayers as much as ever.
The radiotherapy is now in week 3 (of 3 weeks and three days) so Heather is delighted to be over half way now. She has had a bit of redness - like a bad sunburn - but nothing too serious and it has healed a bit over the weekends. The main problem is that the hospital where Heather is getting the daily treatments is about an hour away from home. The good news is that she was invited to stay with one of her friends (thanks Angelica!). So I drop her a the hospital on Monday and pick her up on Friday. The boys and I are missing Heather a lot, but at least we have her here on the weekends and it will not be too much longer until we have her back properly. She could have had treatment more locally, but due to the vagaries of the NHS she would have had to have changed oncologist so she went for continuity to reduce the risk of handover misunderstandings. This seems to have been the right choice so far.
Anyway, thanks for your continued prayers and support - spiritually/emotionally and physically (Marenko & Smilka and Kelvin & Lynn for boy-sitting). And for the many of Heather's friends in the Watford area who have given their time to take Heather to and from the hospital these last weeks - Heather can do the naming on that one next time!!!
Please do leave a quick comment to Heather so she knows that you are up to date with things, but if you are not able to post a comment here, please just ping Heather a short email mailto:hjshanna@msn.com <-- click here
 Thanks to you all
-Lez
24 luglio MiracleJust got back from seeing my oncologist and plastic surgeon and am please to report that I am officially in complete remission. Praise God 'cause they could not find any trace of cancer in either the lymph nodes or the tumor area which they extracted so don't forget to tell God "thank you!"
The only down side is that I sustained some nerve damage and am in constant neuropathic pain from my shoulder to my elbow and in the same area down my back and I am bit woosy as I am on some pretty strong pain killers. The doctors hope that this will improve with time. The plan is to start radiotherapy in September just because the oncologist is determined to keep me cured.
It is still going to take some time to get over the trauma of the operation and the radiotherapy, but I can walk again now and one side of me looks really good!!! My hair is growing back slowly and I now have a hair style like Dame Judy Dench.
Thank you for your continued prayers and love and support.
Love
Heather |
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