Thursday, May 20, 2010

Update on mum and the cancer thing.

Cor blimey guvnor, time for a brief update..
Just got back from one of the hospitals with mum. I was a bit confused at first, the doctor called her in, 20-30 mins passed, then he came out and called someone else. While I wondered if she had strolled off somewhere or something, Joan the nurse appeared and asked me to go with her... Uh-oh I thought.

We went into an office where mum was sitting, sat down, and the conversation started. Her regular doctor was not in, and having seen a slightly stronger willed doctor he has reopened the suggestion of surgery for mum. So Joan wanted to sit us both down to talk it over. Mum has been against any form of surgery from the start, although she was also against chemo and radio therapy, but ended up taking the treatments, so this could go the same way. I could see from the look on her face from the start that she was not too impressed at it being brought up again, but she weathered the storm and talked.

The suggestion they are making is to clean up the wound on the right side, which is starting to weep again, and will just get worse and worse, smelly, large and painful for her. It will involve removing a large section of the breast, and require a skin graft due to the loss of area skin. The graft is suggested that it will come from her thigh.

Now naturally she has done more negative thinking about the whole matter than the average human, and feels she knows every possibility, so is a tough one to break.
The nurse and surgeon will be discussing the matter at an inter-departmental meeting on Monday and seeing how they can best approach it. They will also be involving the plastic surgeon in the discussion to see how he wishes to perform the graft. So there are lots of decision and things to talk about before the day can come around.
In the meantime she has to decide if she is ok with going ahead with it, or would rather the messy painful route.

The nurse will call me Monday afternoon to say what they have planned. She has already been deemed fit for surgery by the POPS team at Guys, so there is no delay there. Just got to hope she goes with it now. I know she is scared of the whole matter, but fingers crossed she will be brave and realise its a positive thing, not a bad thing.

This is NOT to remove the tumour, this is just to remove ulcerated tissue from around it to make life a bit more manageable.

So thats the update. Oh the other bit is that she has decided that taking Folic Acid for her other conditions is now a no no, as she read somewhere that Folic Acid can affect SOME tumours, and the hospital could not reassure her enough that she would be unaffected by it. So thats another condition about to get worse again.
Mothers eh ! lol

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