Timing is Everything....2 Funny Broads and the 86 Tram

It seems a nifty piece of cosmic timing that whilst learning about this cancer parlarva, that the Melbourne Comedy Festival is currently underway and some very funny humans are providing the good citizens of Melbourne with some seriously good belly laughs.

Siobhan and I have been going for many years. For me the standard one hour performance is one of the best concentrated and focused times when human nature with all its foibles and idiosyncratic ways is served up to you on a plate. You get to empathise with, be embarrased for, admire the comedian's courage, be astounded by their openness, be charned, be revolted, be shocked and sometimes even horrified. But mostly you will connect and just laugh your head off. And  all this, for a bargain basement price of usually twenty or thirty bucks.

In the past few weeks we have seen Charlie Pickering and the wonderful Waleed Aly and their take on climate change. Sounds dry and boring I know.....but quite frankly folks it was intelligent, thought provoking humour at its very best.We also saw Hannha Gadsby twice. Once, doing her Art Show at the NGV on Nudes, (preferred her previous show on the Virgin Mary in Art) and the second time performing her standup gig " Happiness is a Bedside Table. This show was briliiant. This woman can rock a neck to knee lycra swimsuit like you would not believe. She made the audience howl with laughter.So glad we didnt head to Tracey Morgan, I have it on good authority that it was terrible.

Having been to Peter Mac on the Thursday, we were heading to the Princess Theatre the next Saturday to see two veterans - Denise Scott and Judith Lucy. We frocked up because we were heading out to dinner afterwards and to ensure safe travels opted to take the 86 tram to and from. Now Ms Scott is a Thornbury local but I can honestly say Siobhan and I  didnt expect to be sharing a Myki swiper-on-er-er as we (all) headed to the Theatre. We did a double take, continued to stare at the poor woman, then thought - how uncool, and moved onto the tram.

Fast forward a couple of drinks on the rooftop of Siglio's Bar (upstairs of the Melbourne Supper Room overlooking the house where Pontificating Pollies commit hyperbole and bellicosity and get well paid to do so........and we head to see Misses Scott and Lucy. Row G middle of the row, stalls.

Denise Scott begins with a rap about public transport and her love of the 86 tram and the people who travel on it and says she noticed two gals travelling to the same destination as her self and calls out to the audience  the question as to whether they might be in the audience. Naturally I scream and wave out in the affirmative, whilst Siobhan shrinks into her seat. She asks us our name and I yell out KELLY. She asks Siobhan her name and in a voice coming from near her boots Siobhan offers up her name!! Denise Scott says  she suspected as much as we were her demographic because ladies of a "certain age" frock up when heading out. Can I share with you that Siobhan wasn't all that enamoured with being described as a lady of a certain age.......

The show is literary in nature, both comedians having recently published a book. I would like to share two good lines from the show. Firstly at a writers festival Q&A, Denise was told by a lady that "She was a huge fan" and that "she simply loved Denise's self-defecating humour". Second, as Judith Lucy paced across the stage she told the audience she was a member of a discussion panel at another writers' festival and that fellow panelist Peter Carey (famed Australian two time Booker Prize winner) called her a C@$%........ The audience took this collective audible gasp and then the theatre was totally silent. Judith stopped pacing middle stage, peered out into the audience, lent forward and said...... 

"But it maybe because I called him Wayne"...............the audience went wild..............

They stripped off and performed some hysterical dance moves in nude leotards complete with texta- drawn on boobs and pubic hair - though a tad too bright due to the stage lights, these brave gals invited photos being taken because they were happy with whatever attention they could get. 

So with the ravages of middle age being played for such laughs by two talented ladies ringing in my ears, I prepare for Peter Mac. No longer taking HRT, I am having so many hot flushes of such magnitude that  I could power a steam engine. 

When you combine these industrial strength heat surges and my radio-active substance injection I am to receive, there is a strong possibility that  could become Thornbury's very own Fukoshima nuclear power plant.!! 

Surge on Good Friends as I warm your hearts and light up your lives - literally.

PS; Peter Mac, drugs and surgery up next so stay tuned.

Kellyx

Introducing the B Triple CCC...........

So all the Easter Eggs are gobbled up and the last long stretch of consecutive public holidays are behind us. Its two days after Easter Monday and we are off to Peter Mac to meet the team of people involved in deciding what will happen next.

A big plus is the discounted car parking one receives if one is a patient because as anyone who frequents the G will know that parking in and around East Melbourne is a total  bitch. We arrive a tad early and so Siobhan shouts me a coffee - surprisingly it is quite good proving once and for all that Melbournians, regardless of their current mental or emotional state, are still pretencious coffee tossers!!

The here-named B Triple CCC is the Breast Cancer Consultative Committee. (note the branding use of the colour pink!!) No self-respecting Industrial Relations Practitioner misses the opportunity to create, name and establish a working party - particularly in the health industry!!!!! And so we head around to Clinic A where I am to meet this multi-disciplinary team.  I am bombarded with forms to complete before the consult. What is it with Hospitals and forms ? They look like they were designed by a Grade 3 schoolkid using carbon paper and a ruler (Peta, ask Jo what carbon paper is). I complete two bundles of these requesting the same info over and over again. I would give my right boob (well possibly not) for the electronic medical records to be fully funded and completely implemented!!

So there we are killing time (probably should refrain from the use of such expressions given our current locale)  in the waiting area. Rows of horrid plastic framed chairs with commercial grade hideously patterned upholstery. Having recently completed an upholstery course, I find I am now strangely evaluating  hitherto ignored infrastructure with my newly acquired knowledge!! It fails the Minogue quality assessment dismally.

We are welcomed into the consult room by a visiting Fellow - for those not familiar with the strange & secret employment practices and customs of the clinical world, this is not some random jovial guy passing by the Hospital window, gave a wave and a smile and invited himself in for a chat. No, this guy hails from elsewhere (interstate & overseas) and he is here at Peter Mac learning from the team. He is qualified but he needs more "hours" kind of like a Learner's Permit arrangement to be able to go back and put out his shingle with the alphabet soup configuration after his name.

He is cruisy, informed (as you would expect/hope) but most importantly, he is responsive,  patient, inclusive, exhaustively detailed and welcomes me bombarding him with a barrage of questions. I have not spent my time idly people - I have researched everything from hormone receptive types of cancers to HER2 -positive and HER2-negative, mastectomy v breast conserving surgery.

For future reference; if the lump is small, say >2cm, with no cancer cells in the lymph nodes and the  cancer cells have hormone receptors and the cells are HER2 negative and the cancer grade is low and the surgical margin is clear then the cancer is LESS likely to come back or spread. If they are the opposite of that, then it is likely to come back or spread. What they dont or possibly cant tell you is how many of these elements or characteristics or what percentage they each contribute to being able to forecast the probability of the return of cancer. Crack that formula and I imagine you would be collecting a Nobel prize.

But it does provide for a nifty and concise summary of what I need to be evaluating as we proceed.

Midway through, the Breast Nurse comes and joins the discussion - a lovely woman with the most beautiful Irish accent. We look at the family photos of my breasts under lights and identify the offending little sucker. She also puts me down for a "lovely" (her words not mine) bra and diary that the Breast Cancer Association provide to all diagnosed woman. Take a look at this thing below. I could use it as a bloody parachute. It is a marvel of reinforced engineering.

The breast surgeon also joins us and she advises that it will be two weeks before I can get a reservation at the best table and a further week before we will know what the surgery will reveal. We go through a range of stuff together but fundamentally, this op will provide the team with the cells to put under the microscope and identify those elements raised in Paragraph 7. they come togther and then with me determine the best treatmnent plan based on type, size, location, spread etc of what they found.

In short, I head to Nuclear Medicine, they inject radio-active gunk into my underarm WITHOUT any anaethestic people and in the most deadpan and understated way, the Breast Nurse does say that it is going to hurt. She thinks it's better that I know now!!! Then when I go into theatre this stuff under a certain light will identify the sentinel node - which they take out together with the lump. This sentinel node is important because IF the cancer has headed or is heading into the lymph glands, it will show up here. Then they sew me up and I go home later that day - its day procedure folks - no swanning around in hospital for days - its like a Macca's Drive-Through. The upside though - cant vacumn or house work for weeks!

Oh, a side bar point for your enjoyment. Apparently, a possible side-effect of this radiactive stuff is that I could develop a temporary but lovely blue hue to my skin tone - I could end up looking like a F@$%ing Smurf good friends. I am already short and dumpy- so this will just complete the look. If there is a God, he has a bloody evil sense of humour!!

Together with my breast surgeon, breast nurse and Fellow, I will have a a pathologist, radiologist, radiation oncologist, radiation therapist, medical oncologist, oncology nurse, psychologist, social worker, plastic surgeon and genetic counsellor - depending on how things pan out. I will not want for attention. Perhaps we will all sit in a circle and sing "Kumbuyah My Lord"

The BCCCommittee is now in session. Take the minutes please.

Kellyx

The siren sounds......& so it begins

It's the day before Good Friday. The jungle drums are vibrating. There is a building sense of excitement in the air as the countdown to the Victorian start of the AFL season begins. Now as a Carlton supporter, I had no shortage of coverage in the off season about how the Blues, with Head Driver, Mighty Mick Malthouse, was an express train to September finals with no stopping at any other stations along the way. But I should add that after less than stellar appearances in the "Who Cares Cup" I seemed to come across quite a few passengers jumping off this Mickey Train!!! - including, it has to be said, Mick himself, who when being courted for the job, was very comfortable with the depth and capability of the line-up. In the weeks before the season start though, he seemed to be creating some wriggle room in the event of thwarted expectations.

Is it just Siobhan and I who think that Mick didn't really want to coach Carlton per se ?  That really he just wanted to prove to Eddie that other clubs still saw him as an attractive and virile coach capable of still getting it up- oops sorry, getting Carlton up into the finals.........Clearly Mick wasn't ready to be relegated to the viewer wasteland of late night footy talk shows with poor production values populated by portly middle- aged men who are hirsutely challenged ? Let's talk again at Round  Six Craig,  about how effective this coaching coup has turned out to be shall we??

So in my preparations to meet the footy gang for a per-match dinner and discourse, I get a phone call mid afternoon from my GP with the results from my biopsies. The Imaging place had kindly put a rush on the results from the tests done the day before. She originally tells me its both some good news and some bad. The good news being that one of the lumps tested has no dodgy cells but that in the other lump, that I have DCIS - ductal  carcinoma in situ - a pretty good thing as far as it goes because these cells are not quite yet cancer cells - still need to be treated but its relatively good.  So we exchange a little yeah and we tee-up an appointment for after Easter.

Fast forward a few hours and I am at the Baden Powell Hotel with Siobhan waiting for the Carlton crew and I get another call from my GP. She explains that she went into the surgery and read the report in detail (her first reading was done via the phone because she actually wasn't working on the day) and she advised that she had some more bad news and that was that there was also some fully fledged breast cancer cells  associated with the lump as well as the DCIS. So it was a bit more serious.

So, I put this news to one side for a few hours. I can process it later. I will be able to have some influence and shape how I will deal with this cancer caper after Easter. Tonight the pressing challenge of Carlton v Richmond was in the hands of one Mick Malthouse.

Is it wrong that I felt more apprehension about this one?

Go Bluies!!!!!

Kelly

(And can someone tell Mick to lose the "flavour savour" - it is so Boganesque - fine for Collingwood 
but he is with Carlton now!!) 

One Lump or Two.....

So Lumplings,


I head off to Medical Imaging land with only
a very vague concept of what constitutes a core biopsy. Now sometimes it would seem that ignorance is bliss. As it turns out, anything to do with this nasty little procedure, is one such time.

I am neither weak stomached nor do I have a low threshold for pain. But this was, my Breasted Brethren, quite frankly - just plain icky. I will not regail you again with the numbing beige-ness of the waiting room. I proceeded quickly into a large-ish room complete with a guerney and lots of blinking machines and computers on wheels and the ubiquitous Crash cart - what happens in these rooms I ask myself??

I am briefed by one RN. My name, date of birth and address feature again a few times in questioning - clearly a recurrent theme. Is it possible that a whole bunch of strange and odd people just outside the building who are seriously trying to sneak in and get a free biopsy on the public purse and the staff have to make sure that the only one getting that particular prize today is Ms Minogue from Thornbury ????? She asks me what I know about my cancer, its type, grade, state etc. I reply that I know nothing as yet. She advises that there are many types of breast cancer (who knew - it comes in all fashion colours and sizes it would seem) and that this process wont take too long.

Perhaps the most interesting and yet reassuring bit is that the nurse asks at least five times which breast the biopsies are to be performed on - this is one time that I dont resort to humour and say - "you choose"! She outlines the process and advises that the doctor will be in shortly to perform the procedure and she is whilst mid-sentence, another RN appears.  It would seem I am straddling the afternoon shift change-over time. So dear readers, please go back and re-read paragraphs three and four and that will approximate my experience in readiness for this yet to appear Doctor. (Love that Nurses Hand-Over Time!!)

Doctor arrives, he is a chatty fellow very pleasant. Comments on my tattoo - calls me Kylie, then calls me Kerrie. He rolls me onto my side with a foam block underneath my back to place me on a raised angle from the bed surface and then proceeds to puncture my poor left breast not once, not twice people but with each biopsy, reloads this little gun thingy inside the needle and takes FOUR - yes FOUR samples for each biopsy. As he was 'aerating' my breast I could feel a warm trickle of blood running around and down my back.  Finally the good doctor manages my correct Christian name as he instructs me to firmly hold a small cloth against where he has performed his needlework to stem the bleeding. He advises me to wait about five minutes, that the nurse will pop a little frozen saline cold pack into my bra and that I can then go. With that, he snaps of his latext gloves and heads out of the room. 

Below right is a jaunty little happy snap of his work. 

The after -effects on Day Two from the 2 biopsies. It got a whole lot blacker!!!

Hang in there folks

Kelly xx

We can't go on together.......with suspicious minds.....er.. lumps

Do lumps hang out with a dodgy crowd ? Loitering in front of fast food venues selling questionable methamphetamines? Are they helping police with their enquiries?

What constitutes suspicious?

So I head to my  GP's rooms the next day. Perhaps its not appropriate that I reveal her name in such a forum without her express permission. Besides even if I did reveal her name, you can't get an appointment because she works in a surgery in the inner north that is no longer accepting new clients. Apparently a common occurence these days.

But she is wonderfully level. A good thing. I have an early morning appointment and we get straight to it. She advises me that not only is there the lump that I already felt  but there is also another one in the same breast (the left) and another little bugger in the right breast. But from what she tells me, this right breast one isnt "suspicious" at all - its more of a Carrie Bickmore -all form but no substance.

The two in my other breast however, are what are decsribed by medical parlance as suspicious. According to the mamogram and ultrasound the signs are not promising and I will need to have a core biopsy of each lump to determine the extent and type and the results will also determine the next procedure that I may need. We talk about many things and I am extremely conscious of the need to remember and recall all that she is imparting.

I tell her that I am balancing what she is saying at the same time as metally preparing myself to ensure that I continue to hear everything. My mind is concurrently chugging down two distinctly separate but parallel tracks. I digest the information. She tells me somewhat drily - which I appreciate enormously, not to rush out and rewrite my will that very afternoon but to prepare for the significant possibility of bad news post biopsy and to try and emotionally get to a place where I could hear that further treatment will be required.

I deliberately raise the worst case scenario situation (not death - though I guess that is probably the worst case outcome but to me that seems highly impropbable in this day and age), I do this not because I am a drama queen - though many of my dear dear friends would have you think otherwise.......but because it helps me process and plan. It's what I do with all major issues. Think the worst, process and plan for the that and then anything of lesser impact or outcome can be readily (and more easily) managed.

So, to me the worst case would be a final outcome of requiring a double mastectomy, but not for vanity reasons. And it is at this point that I think there is an interpretation issue for clinical person versus lay person.

A double mastectomy for me is not the worst case. I understand that reconstructuive surgery is terrific these days (and who at my age wouldn't want some firmer more northerly positioned bosoms - unless you were a bloke of course??)  My greater and greatest fear is psychologically and emotionally let alone physically having the strength to bat up for a series of procedures based on the principle of doctors seeking to minimise harm but being unsuccessful in those attempts and thus more invasive work is subsequently required.

At this stage of the process and indeed if and when I start it, I wont know how awful it will be or how bad I will feel. But fast forward, -  and if I had to face it a second or third time knowing in advance how awful it is and how crap I am going to feel will be so much harder. I may not know many things but I do know my limitations. And whilst I will be stoic first time around - I would be a total mess in a dress the second time on the merry go round. Hence I told my GP I am not a fan of episodic processes or euphamistically speaking, death by a thousand cuts. I want to know if it is perhaps better to go more radical in the first instance and blow the bastard right out of the water. Like all good doctors - she said we can discuss these options when we had a firm basis upon which to weigh such options.

Its abit of a bitch because we are two days from Easter which could mean a bloody long wait for the results and that isn't all that flash. So we book the core biopsies for later that same afternoon. I am to head back to East Melbourne where I have a date with needles, an ugly waiting room and more bad daytime television. As I leave her surgery I reflect on how I feel.  For me, there isnt any drop in my stomach, nor the white noise whooshing sound. I am clear and I am lucid. I have research to do.

Google on Readers

Kelly

The Mammogram - A Misogynist's Playdough Machine?

So off to that most hallowed suburb East Melbourne, I head. But not this time to the G to watch those Bluies try for more traction this season, nor to the Rod Laver Arena for our yearly pilgrimage for world class tennis and not-so-world-class but corporate sponsored wine.

Into a well proportioned and well built  but anonymous building I go. Having submitted the first of what will be at least 3 million forms with my name, date of birth, and address (and should the treatment prove unsuccessful, only one of these key details will change anyway - so why I ask you?) I then sit in the ubiquitous waiting room with others waiting this or some form of testing.

Is it not enough that these Medical Imaging companies force you to sit in uncomfortable seats in ugly waiting rooms with bad art, where to kill precious time you flick through old magazines that would have you believe that really bad perms are still de rigeur? No. In your most vulnerable state they subject you to all this ugliness but even that is not enough. They have an enormous TV screen that seems to have sucked the colour from all the waiting room patients and redirected that colour onto a nuclear coloured "Ellen" and her stupid stupid guests banging on about some 'weight loss journey' and then doing a badly executed jig.

So like the local deli, my number is called and off I trot to the room. A brisk and friendly registered nurse (as it should be) runs me through the process. Throw on the robe, leave my gear over there. Stand and wait. Ms Minogue, this is a new maching, two of us will be with you today as I am learning how to drive this. Apparently it takes pictures, films, whatever,  from all cross sections of the breast enabling a more complete assessment. The science or mathematics is lost on me. No problem.

Now it may be a new machine wherein a barrel section of this large machine turns and snaps the boob at creative angles. Nonetheless, the basics remain the same. They take your lovely (and for me fortunately, ample-ish bosom) and pull it onto an innocent looking glass plate. The fact that it is still attached to the rest of your skin near your rib cage seems to escape the nurse's attention. She is determined to get as much of my non-stretchy bosom onto that plate as is possible. I have not had kids, I have not breast fed. All things considered, my breasts are reasonably buoyant and dont take too kindly to being manipulated like a piece of pizza dough. The nurse positions you as close as possible to said plate, drapes your plated boob arm around the machin in some kind of weird loving embrace  and then with a swift foot, pushes the descending plate glass down onto your Bosom Entree and squishes it til it resemblems something akin to a very wide piece of homemade pasta!!!!!! It isnt pleasant.

I am pretty sure that if the penis required some medical imaging test, the machine that was designed to do this would not be like the one they use for breasts.

She takes the odd few pics and then proceeds to do same with the other breast. The two nurses partake in a conflab, consult with the doctor to see if more images are required, come back and then tell me I am good to go. And then I head for the ultra sound. Along the corridor in my unflattering robe I head. Fluorescent lights make me feel both a little queasy but also more tellingly, slightly vulnerable. I hate their harshness, they make me feel exposed and drained of all naural colour and spirit.  I wait in a nasty little cubicle awaiting the ultrasound. Some 20 minutes later into a darkened room I venture. Up on the bed couch I hop. A Radiologist I presume performs the ultra sound. She does not tell what she is doing or why. Apparently us mere mortals dont need to be told. So I ask and she is disconcerted.

She spends quite a bit of time locating then entering data. The gel is warm. The process is very easy. She  sends the films to the doctor, tells me to wait to see if more is required, comes back and says I am good to go. I pay a king's ransom and I leave. Tomorrow I head to the GP to find out the results.

As I leave, I can see into the waiting room. Ellen is again doing her stupid dance.

Smile for the Camera.

Kelly

The Shower Scene..........

Routine weekend ablutions commenced early saturday morning three weeks ago. Without going into the relative merits of a herbal Ph balanced shampoos and conditioners or that big looming consumer question of shower gel v soap, it all went to plan as one would expect a usual shower to do.

Discovered a small pea like lump located at 6 o'clock on my left breast whilst soaping around. Not 6am or 6pm according to Eastern Daylight Savings Time (who showers at that time anyway ) mind you - just imagine, if you will, that my breast is a clock face....now are you following?

So having had a few lumps and bumps appear in previous years - I didn't over react. Despite what some may say, I didn't run screaming from the shower doing a hysterical Lady Macbeth with my own version of "Off Damn Spot, Off" These things can come and go and I do have, as once was beautifully described by a former colleague - when talking of her own breasts, that they were quite "ropey". I like that description. It tangibly describes the oft changing or shifting thickness of the breast tissue.

So I didn't bother for a couple of days but kept checking intermittedly to see whether I could readily feel the 'pea'. In a previous experience, I discovered a lump in my other breast that was more 'globby' and it turned out to be a cyst that simply needed to be drained - by, I might add the most bloody scary needle I had ever seen up close and personal.

But this was different. Felt different. So I booked into the GP and was there having it confirmed two days later. My GP was all over it like a fat kid over a cupcake. She confirmed its existence and booked me the next day for a mammogram and ultrasound, and also to be back with her in 48 hours in the event that it was problematic.

And so the treadmill begins........

Remember, lumps in boobs, like in cooking, should be removed.

Kelly x