Audrey’s Blog on living well with disability and breast cancer

I had plans for this year. They were a bit vague but essentially around celebrating the year I become 60. Its another decade that, at one stage in my life, ( after my first cancer diagnosis in my 30's) that I didn't believe I would see, so celebration feels right. Of course my year has started differently, I'm still recovering from major breast cancer surgery and this weeks ups and downs have reminded me of that. The biggest up was confirming no need for chemotherapy although somewhat tempered by the expectation of 10 years of letrozole and following on with tamoxifen. But I thought ok ,10 years, I will take that! My birthday is this week and yet again I'm reminded that I share my birthday with something else. It's world cancer day. OK, that's what I call rubbing it in! Every year it's the same of course, and I have ranted about this before but I kinda hoped they would give me a break for my 60th. Maybe like Easter it could be different each yea

I'm puggled I told the GP this morning. She Irish and I'm thinking she's still trying to find out what it means. Although perhaps my presence said it all. Don't get me wrong I know to expect to be puggled just now given I'm only 12 days post-op but I'm also breathless and needed to check for a chest infection...on which the jury is still out and I'm watching a box of amoxycillin   with suspicion.   It's been strange time; I know I'm progressing, wounds healing and I'm a teeny bit stronger but also life is passing me by and whats noticeable is I'm ok with that. I've finally stopped thinking that somehow I should feel guilty about having needed this treatment. I'm not sure why that's taken its toll, maybe it's some presbyterian guilt about costing the NHS money? Analyse that! But I recognise its deeper too. I've had to tell myself that a mastectomy without reconstruction would have been painful in so many other

Just a quick message before I have surgery tomorrow. I'm packed, I even have the empowerment pants and wonder woman pants at the ready!!! I'm all organised I hope and now just needing to get on with it and I'm  very optimistic about the future. I'm feeling very cared for. My friends and my family have helped lift me up and I feel very cherished. It helps so very much. Thank you all for all you have done and for all your messages of love and support.  I suspect my soundtrack will be Leonard Cohen ( ok I know but he cheers me up...honestly) and especially this song which I dedicate to everyone who has kept me going this past few weeks.  You've got me singing.....

I'm a Scot so New Year has always had a special significance for us. When my mother moved to Scotland 65 years ago she was shocked that my father didn't have Christmas Day off work. It was Hogmanay that was celebrated and as a child I remember it being a special time of community, of friendship, of fun, of music and of course there would be drink taken. The house would be cleaned from top to bottom so the new year could be welcomed a fresh. A chorus of Auld Lang Syne, the traditional song of the New Year, can still always move me to tears. The first day of the year aye had a quiet start, with soup the traditional hangover cure and steak pie and haggis to be looked forward to in guid time. This year has been a predictable mixture of emotions. With surgery now just round the corner, a happy new year is hard to imagine. But the winter solstice has passed, there is more light and after winter, there will   always be spring. A key message of this time of year too. The f