Sunday 8 April 2012

It's been a while...

so I thought I would catch up.  We have been so busy getting on with our lives which is really nice.

I have been to see my gp who was happy to give me metformin to start on.  There have been lots of small trials and currently a really large one on the use of metformin in preventing mets/recurrance.  It has shown so much promise that the big trial has been able to skip one of the steps in proving efficacy, and go straight into a double blind, randomised large scale human trial.  I would be able to participate according to the criteria but we would like to have the opportunity of thinking about more children and the trial is for 5 more years yet.  But I talked to my gp who has heard of metformin as being hailed as the 'elixer or youth' in the UK at the moment, and the side effects are minimal so he was happy to prescribe it for me.  One of the problems I'm finding with it is that it decreases your appetite - it is marketed as glucophage for weightloss purposes.  So I need to make myself eat sometimes.  I need to loose my extra weight so that I am well within my recommended BMI (I can't really afford not to have a healthy body), but through exercise and healthy living not through drugs.  And other than some really lovely diarrhea it's been fine.

We have had a lovely family holiday.  Charlie calls it our cancer holiday :-)  We went to stay with my brother and his family while my husband did a week of nightshift.  It was reall really nice.  I had a great time and it was so cool spending some time with Russell and Cara.  Especially since there wasn't anything on (like weddings,funerals etc) and not heaps of other people.  Just us and the kids, hanging out.  It was awesome.

We then went on to Wellington - and we flew which the kids thought was so so cool.  We went to the zoo, met a Red Panda, ate too much good food, sat on the deck overlooking Wellington and the airport and drank wine out of the bottle with my mother-in-law!  It was such a nice way to reconnect with my family and spend time just enjoying the little things that they love - like going on the bus a thousand times :-)

I have finished doing my IV vitamin C and have been looking at liposomal vitamin c as a replacement. I have also been looking into making my own.  The more i look at ascorbic acid the more I find that amazes me, like the link between deficiency in mothers and sids.  It's incredible to think that such a simple, cheap and effective vitamin can be key to health for so many.

The boys also went back to preschool in February.  This has been weighing heavily on me.  They don't get excited about going and most times Raife says he doesn't want to be there, but once he's there he kind of settles in.  Charlie has been doing ok there and has made a little friend called Leonardo.  They hang out together and are great friends - it's so cute :-)  I think since we have been picking up one of the boys who goes to playcentre too, it has been better for them.  But it still doesn't sit well.  If I hadn't had cancer to do, they would never ever have gone into that kind of care.  To me it feels like daycare with a pretty name.  I don't like daycare, I don't like what it represents.  The research says it's not ok for under 3's - and even after 3 it's not that great for boys.  It makes me feel like a lazy, uninterested parent.  And I do not want to be lumped in with the mothers who leave their babies at 3 months old in daycare until they go to school, every day.  I don't agree with it, and it's not how I feel mothering should be.  I do wonder if I feel so strongly about this because I have been influenced by my situation - but does that matter?

Anyway, February rolled around uneventfully.  Except for one thing.  I got my genetic screening results back....

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