1. Time for a Catch Up

Well it seems this has been going on in my life for ages, and its only now I have got my shit together and decided to 'BLOG'. I considered Vlogging on Facebook and even created a separate ID for my cancer news but I have taken the regrettable decision this weekend to create a Blog Web page. Which has been a quick sharp shock in web design recap as I haven't done anything on the internet like this for over a decade. My old and tired brain filled with painkillers and cancer facts have to now try and re learn web page editing.

I have read loads of cancer blogs whilst researching my type of cancer, and some were...... ok, and informative, some sparse, a few a brief diary of events that were over before they began. Weekly paragraphs of treatments, any symptoms with a couple of post scripts months after saying how the page owners were getting on. I definitely am wanting this to be more. I want be open, scared, happy, real, and also that my life is more than just this illness, whilst I am trying to kill it I have a life, not much of one admittedly, but this isn't just HPV cancer, and the treatments you have to endure, this is me and my life.

How It All Started

So lets start where we should, at the beginning.

Last October, whilst in the middle of the house sale process, I got an ear infection, and not only an ear infection, my fingernails all started falling off. I had been going to a nail tech for over 6 months and having manicures every 2 weeks, and she was using Hema builder gel on my nails to strengthen them and yes they were long and lovely and I was so proud. From a child nail biter that means everything, believe me! But suddenly the nails started lifting off the nail beds, I got an ear infection, bad, in bed with hot water bottle and lots of painkillers type bad, and basically I thought the whole 'Mum dying' ( my mother had been dying of frontal lobe dementia and I had been trying to manage it for 4 yrs from 100 miles away) and moving house had run me into the ground, and I was just exhausted. I went to the Dr's, not something I do unless totally pushed to do so, due to my total lack of confidence in the medical profession, and obviously the other reason!

You can never get an appointment!

But I did get one, and I went and asked if the 2 problems could be connected i.e a fungal thing etc. But the swabs came back a staph ear infection and 2 weeks later the ear infection had sort of gone with antibiotics, and the nail girl had switched me to Hema free nail products and my nails seemed to be trying their hardest to re attach to the nail beds. So I thought no more about it and concentrated on house moving and my Mum 100 miles away in a care home.

The Lump

In the following month, November, I randomly noticed the lump. One of my glands on the left side of my neck was still swollen, I couldn't remember it being like that before, and thought it must still be annoyed from the ear infection a few weeks back.

And that's where that thought sat! On the peripheries of my daily thoughts, for months. I knew it was there, I knew I should do something, we moved house the end of November, Mum finally died 6 days before Christmas, have you ever tried to arrange a dead person from 100 miles away over the Christmas and New Year? 2 words...F**king Nightmare!

Then, in the New Year, obviously I had her funeral, her estate to sort out, her partner to help sell their house, and everyday the lump just remained, patiently, silently, lurking at the bottom of my to-do list. There were times when I would drive home from dropping Lottie our dog off at puppy play time, and my fingers would instinctively go to that side of my neck as I drove, and a whispering voice that wasn't my normal internal monologue would say,<<< you know what I am, don't you?>>> This went on for another few months until finally everything was sorted, our house, my Mum's estate, her partner was moved and sorted, and finally I knew I had to take some time for me, the voice, every time my fingers found that lump, were getting louder and now I was starting to wonder if I had left it too long.

The Dr's where we had moved to had quite a wait and although I tried to get an appointment at the end of May 2025, the next available appointment with a Dr that I knew from when we had used the practice before was a 6 week wait. I sort of knew I shouldn't wait, but in my heart I knew, and wanted those last 6 weeks of not being told, so I took the appointment for the beginning of July and breathed out for the first time in 7 months. I'd waited this long a few more weeks before the shit storm started wasn't going to make any difference....Right?

The Dr's Appointment

As I sat in the waiting room that day thinking about all the reasons I needed to see a Dr, and staring at the scribbled piece of paper I'd written the list of prompts on, I happened to stare up at the TV scrolling round patient information. 'DO NOT BRING A LIST'

Damn! I screwed the piece of paper up and put it in my pocket. 'So much for that then' I thought to myself. The Dr was pretty un interested and when I said I had a list but had seen the public information message in the waiting room, I got told bluntly, 'well you have ten minutes so I'll get through what I can'. I was on the spot then. Did I ask about the lower back pain, and was it connected to my fibromyalgia, <<< no its the cancer >>>> or the hot flushes, still very much going through my menopause at 57 I was sick of waking up 5 or 6 times a night, <<< no it's the cancer growing>>>

But the insidious internal voice hissed <<<Tell her about me >>>

So I did, her attitude seemed to change slightly, softened, and as she stood behind me feeling my neck with her fingers. I could hear her voice cracking as she urged me to not get ahead of myself, and these things were rarely an issue, and she would send me on the 2 week pathway to the local hospital head and neck lump clinic. My 10 minutes were up by then, and I left, relieved that at last I'd shared my guilty secret. Over the previous months I'd not even told my husband, and only briefly skimmed over the subject and then immediately wanted to back track and make light of it to a couple of my friends. But now she knew and she was sending me. I only had 2 weeks. 2 more weeks of ignorance is bliss. 2 more weeks until someone told me what the voice had been telling me for months.