Jojo Gingerhead

Still, some things remain the same and I do feel excited, partly due to the morphine I shall hopefully be receiving later this morning, partly because I know my friends have organised a huge birthday party for me tomorrow but mostly because IT’S MY BIRTHDAY AND I’M I’ve had 3 operations, 10 rounds of chemotherapy, 15 blasts of radiotherapy, 6 months of hormone therapy, shaved my head 5 times, been admitted to a&e 4 times, had countless appointments, biopsies, scans and procedures and taken more (legal) drugs than I care to remember. I’ve cried, I’ve been terrified, I’ve been in unbearable pain and I’ve thought I was going to die There’s still so much I want to do, so much I want to make, so many people I want to meet and so much love I want to give,

It has definitely been a wake up call to implement a super healthy diet and stop eating so much crap that I’ve been stuffing myself with recently. This means that it’s likely I am triple negative in my liver (the same as my breast) and therefore less treatment options available. It’s a constant effort to try and prolong my life in between spells of feeling unwell but it also gives me the drive and determination to regain some of my life back and get my creative projects back on track. During my time writhing around in pain in bed, I watched an awesome documentary called Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (using Hola so I could stream for free from the US).

Today is Easter Monday but for many thousands of other women like me, it is also mets Monday – a day to raise awareness of secondary, metastatic or stage IV breast cancer. I personally have spent the morning in a load of pain from the cancer in my liver and wondering if the shooting pains in my head are side effects from all the drugs I’m on or something more sinister. 1 in 8 women will now face a breast cancer diagnosis at some point in their life and at least 30% will go on to develop secondary breast cancer. Half of the UK are now expected to get cancer yet the government are cutting cancer drugs and our cancer services are some of the worst in Europe.

I’m a secondary triple negative breast cancer patient with metastasises to my liver, chemo so far hasn’t worked on my liver, although it has worked very well on my breast tumour. The consultation was very thorough, it took just over 1 hour and they took my vitals (height, weight, blood pressure etc) before explaining in detail about the study, the drugs they use and how they work. He said they had seen very good results with breast cancer patients and they hope to bring the use of these drugs to cancer treatment on the NHS, hence the study taking place. As triple negative breast cancer patient, I haven’t been prescribed Tamoxifen as it’s a drug that suppresses oestrogen levels in ER+ breast cancer patients and therefore helps to inhibit cancer growth.