I’ve been largely missing the last couple of weeks. Only those customers asking for support will have really seen much of me.
There are two reasons.
#1 – I’ve been helping Alex Jeffreys get his new site together, and it’s taken a lot longer than either of us thought it would. This is because Alex wanted to test out a few things, and so we had to take a bit of care over how the site was constructed, and more specifically the site flow.
#2 – My mom found out that her breast cancer had returned, so I’ve been very distracted and pre-occupied with that. She had an op to remove the cancer and seems in good spirits. A body scan (results came through yesterday) has revealed that there are no secondary cancers detected, but she’ll still have to go through radiotherapy and chemotherapy anyway.
It turns out that for the last 3 years since her last lumpectomy, she’s been taking a drug called Tamoxifen which has no benefits in her case. They couldn’t (or didn’t) test at the time, but it appears that it has no effect on suppressing cancer for her. It doesn’t work for everybody.
So two weeks ago they put her on a different drug called Irimidex which they’ve tested on her cancerous cells they removed and can see that also has no effect. The only one that has proved positive for her in tests is the so-called wonder drug Herceptin. She’s been told they’ll put her on that during or more likely after chemotherapy.
So it’s good news all round really, and a bit of a relief for us all. Hopefully there’s just 6 months of her feeling very ill due to the chemotherapy, and she’ll be okay.
Time will tell.
On a much lesser note, I’ve been so distracted with other things that I just a few moments ago realised I wasn’t feeling very well myself. Now I look back over the last few days, all the warning signs were there, but this time I didn’t notice.
I guess it’s just a “summer” bug (it’s just been announced that summer in the UK is on a Wednesday this year), but it’s scrambled my brain, made me ache all over, and generally made me feel very tired.
So I’ve just had something hot to eat, half a pint of orange juice, a couple of ibuprofen and I think I’m going to take a nap.
Just one of the many benefits of working from home…
-Frank Haywood
Sorry to hear about your mom’s cancer. Real life must trump blogging every time.
Hi Frank,
So, so Glad the news is so positive about your mum.
Please take some time out for yourself, stress can show up in all sorts of funny ways. Why not take a couple of days off and just chill out, and I do not mean heavy driving, going on a day out!. Isn’t there some sci-fi novel you’ve been promising yourself you would read? Tell your family you need some time to yourself, Go and sit in a park or library, somewhere people cannot find you, leave your phone behind and just read and relax. You are no use to you family or anyone if you work yourself so hard you become ill. You have just had a very stressful experience and it sounds like your body is trying to tell you something
Anyway….. that’s what I think.
You better scrub this post after you have read it, post it and it will be bad for my image!
all the best
Gareth
Sorry to here you are not feeling well & your mom is having health issues too…can’t blame you at all for putting blogging on the back burner.
sorry to hear frank. I’m sending positive intentions for your mom to have a speedy and full recovery.