Topping off a lovely few weeks with my 100th Parkrun

I’ve just done my 100th Parkrun and it was the perfect end to a lovely few weeks.

I started doing Parkrun seriously in April 2016 to get fit again after finishing active therapy for primary breast cancer. Little did I know then that these free, timed, volunteer-led Saturday morning 5k runs would become a big part of my life and that almost four years and two cancer diagnoses later, I’d be chasing down my 100th.

Reaching one hundred is a pretty big milestone in the Parkrun world. I couldn’t be more pleased, especially as at one point earlier this year, not long after I was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer, I genuinely thought my running days were over.

It really felt like a massive achievement. Others agreed. Friends turned up to cheer me round our local course at Tooting Common in southwest London with the banner they’d made when I cycled Ride London last summer. One friend ran the whole 5k with me. Another chose to make this her first Parkrun. Finally, there was a welcome party waiting for me with champagne, party poppers and cake!

It was the perfect end to what had been a very pleasant few weeks.

Just two days earlier, I’d gone ahead with the ninth monthly round of the treatment I began in May for secondary breast cancer. I’d had a wide range of blood tests the day before. It’s no longer as straightforward as saying that the results are showing good news across the board – the relevant tumour marker has edged up again. However, my oncologist clearly thinks the balance is still in favour of continuing with the same core medication I’ve been on since starting treatment last May. This is my first so-called “line of treatment” and the longer you can stay on these early lines – and off chemo – the better.

I’d been feeling good physically most of the way through the four weeks of treatment cycle #8 – apart from on one key front, more of which below. Feeling well, however, is no indication that things are going well inside. That being the case, together with the uncertainty of the past couple of months, it was a huge relief to hear I’d be staying on this treatment for another four-week cycle.

So off I headed to the day treatment unit for three lots of injections and to collect my next 28-day supply of the abemaciclib tablets that I take every morning and every evening.

Treatment at the day unit consisted of four individual injections: one of the same drug (fulvestrant) in each buttock lasting two to three minutes each, one of another drug in the left side of my abdomen (denosumab) that took about a minute, and a quick 30-second jab of yet another drug (filgrastim) on the right side of my abdomen to finish.

It’s not an exaggeration to say I felt like a pincushion by the time I was done. That’s not a complaint; it really is just a statement. They can stick as many needles as they want into me if it keeps the cancer in check.

It’s been the loveliest of Christmases and New Years – spent very sociably but also very locally. Our two boys started uni in September and it was great to have them home for a few weeks. A highlight was them treating us to a delicious home-made Beef Wellington on Boxing Day.

I’ve been having a lot of fun sports-wise. I was on a mission to reach my 100th Parkrun as early in the new year as possible. To achieve this, I did four Parkruns over a ten-day period – two regular Saturday runs at my home course and two special events, one on Christmas Day at Dulwich Park a couple of miles away and one on New Year’s Day, also at Tooting.

Also, I’m back playing in the tennis leagues at my club. Over the holidays I played – and lost – two singles matches.

Most fun of all, on New Year’s Day a friend and I took a dip in Tooting Lido, the local 100 x 33 yard open air swimming pool. Even with a full wetsuit, we managed no more than two widths – my hands and feet were frozen the second I got in. It felt like a suitably bonkers thing to do on the first day of a new decade.

Another positive relates to the issue of drug side effects. Severe diarrhoea is a potentially serious side of abemaciclib, one of the two drugs I’ve been on from the start. There had been moments but I hadn’t been too badly affected. That all changed with treatment cycle #7 just over two months ago when I switched from Zometa, the drug I’d been taking to reduce the risk of bone fractures and other “skeletal related events”, to denosumab, which is aimed at doing the same thing but in a different way.

If you’ve had bad attacks of the runs – and I mean really bad – you’ll know how nasty diarrhoea can be. If you haven’t, well just be grateful. The antidiarrhoeal medicine loperamide quickly became my new best friend. I can now boast of being an expert in its use – for both treatment and prophylactic purposes.

While it didn’t spoil our recent holiday in Jordan it was, as I said euphemistically to the oncologist, most certainly “an issue”. I could only look longingly at the all-you-could-eat breakfast buffet at the smart beachfront hotel where we stayed for the last two nights of the trip. That felt most unfair. Also, I bet I’m one of the very few people who know the location of all – and I mean all – the public conveniences in Petra.

Anyway, the good news is that this cycle so far I haven’t been troubled anywhere near the degree to which I was in the first two cycles. It’s usually at its worst in the first two weeks – and at its very worst in the first few days – of the four-week cycle. Fingers crossed things are settling down.

Finally, the charity Breast Cancer Now has chosen to feature on its website an update of a blog post of mine that I wrote originally last November after a lovely summer and a trip to the US to visit two much-loved aunts. The fact that it’s had lots of positive feedback from many, many women with breast cancer makes me very happy indeed.

As I said, it’s been a lovely few weeks. Indeed it’s ongoing. At a ridiculously early time tomorrow morning, I fly off to the French Alps for my annual ski trip with friends. I’ve stocked up on loperamide but I do feel very fortunate even to be in a position where I’m able to  go. It’s from Friday to Tuesday, and the aim is to ski on each of the five days we’re away. I call it a long weekend; my husband calls it a short week. He is technically correct, but don’t tell him I said that.

Here’s to 2020. Let’s hope it’s kind to all of us.

Relax, honey, you’ve passed

This post is in praise of the man who is still making me laugh after some 35 years of partnership.

My previous post was about how a diagnosis of an incurable, progressive, disease gives you an opportunity to reflect on life. Well, this is me reflecting on my relationship with my husband and best friend.

Like any couple who’ve been together for a long time, we sometimes drive each other nuts and bicker over silly things (or is that just us?). On our recent trip to Jordan, we’re wandering round the incredible Roman ruins of Jerash in the north of the country, and I jokingly tell him off for some ridiculously minor infraction.

Jerash

In response, he quips that sometimes he feels he’s still on probation. He smilingly says he’s worried that one day he’ll find out he’s failed and I’ll tell him, as we say in my native city of Glasgow, to “sling his hook”.

This has me doubled over laughing. It makes me laugh every time I think back on it.

We’ve been together essentially since we were 21. We survived living in different cities and indeed in different countries for several years early on. We got married two children and 20 years into the relationship – almost 16 years ago – and he was the one who joked in his speech at the wedding that it had taken him nearly two decades to be sure he’d made the right choice!

The idea that I’ve yet to decide whether he makes the grade is hilarious. As he knows very well. At least I think he does. Just in case, though, I’d like to say for the record that this man who is still making me laugh out loud 35 years on has indeed passed his probation. What’s more, he’s done so with flying colours and deserves the highest distinction going.

Reading Unsheltered in the Dead Sea

Part of the trick to a long relationship is being willing to say sorry quickly after a falling out. It has to be said that it took both of us some time to learn this – and I confess it took me longer than it took him. On holiday, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Unsheltered. In it, one of the main characters says that sorry really is “the word that could never be said enough in the space of one marriage.” I think most people would agree.

Now bear with me on this next part, there is a point to it.

Recently, I’ve increasingly taken to making sure my boobs look level when I’m wearing tight-fitting clothes. When I had my right-side mastectomy in December 2015, I had a reconstruction made out of fat taken from my belly area. The radiotherapy I subsequently had robbed the reconstruction of its elasticity – it’s a known risk – with the result that the right one looks pretty much the same now as it did four years ago and the other one, ie the real one, well, doesn’t. Nature, shall we say, has taken its course. (You are allowed to laugh; we do.)

These days, therefore, it takes some readjusting when I get dressed to get that sought-after “in-bra symmetry” look.

That photo!

Anyway, back to Jordan. It’s late afternoon and we’re wandering through the spectacular archeological sandstone site of Petra. The light is beautiful. He takes a photo of me at the entrance to a cavernous tomb. “That’s lovely,” he says, “I’ll post that.” It’s a close-up, and it’s going on social media. I ask, almost instinctively, “What do my boobs look like?”

What I mean, of course, is do they look lopsided or uneven in the photo? He, very deliberately, looks at my actual chest and replies with a smile, “under the circumstances, not half bad”. We both know what he means and, again, it has me laughing for ages.

I could have kept all this to myself. Shortly after our holiday, however, I happen to find myself listening to the first album in 17 years from Tanya Tucker, one of my favourite country singers from back in the day. There’s a song on it called Bring my flowers now (while I’m livin’).

You may not know this, but I am a huge country music fan. With song titles like that, how could you not be?

Anyway, the song is basically about how if you’re fortunate enough to have people in your life that you cherish, you should let them know that you appreciate them while you have the chance. Because guess what, folks, as Tanya Tucker tells us in the song, “We all think we got the time until we don’t.”

She sings: “Bring my flowers now while I’m livin’. I won’t need your love when I’m gone. Don’t spend time, tears and money on my old breathless body. If your heart is in them flowers, bring ‘em on.” Fantastically schmaltzy, even for country, but a great sentiment. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how those lines hit a massive chord with me.

I’m the one with the incurable illness – secondary breast cancer – and you might think that my drawing attention to this song is to encourage those people who cherish me to let me know they do. In that regard, any of you reading this are indeed very welcome to “bring my flowers now” whenever and in whatever way you want. This post, though, is for my partner, who reckons that under the circumstances, we’re doing not half bad. I couldn’t have put it better myself. This is me bringing him his flowers now. I’m lucky to have him.