Breast cancer – Up cancer creek

In a few weeks, I will be making an oral submission on the need for Pharmac to be reviewed. Does Pharmac already do a good job? I don’t know, and I am obviously biased as I am currently paying $6,000 every four weeks for drugs that in other countries are funded. What does a review even mean? Personally if it becomes a general pat-on-the-back-fest then little will have been gained. But if it is a well considered review of how we can improve the survival rate of stage four cancer then it can only benefit the country, too many women are dying of breast cancer – with a median life expectancy of only 16 months.

Below is the current draft of my oral submission. It is meant to be 5-7 minutes long and is slightly longer than that at present so any thoughts welcome! At this stage I’m relying on nerves making me speak faster than in practice lol.

Continue reading “Submission on Pharmac”

So yesterday my hair started to fall out. Maybe 100-200 hairs during the day. Today I’ve filled a small bag. I still have over 50% of my hair right now but it looks weirdly flat to me. And it hurts! I never knew it would hurt. I can see that the chemo has melted the follicles away so I guess my hair is just quietly stabbing me in the head. Fun times.

I don’t want to be bald. But I also don’t want to die of cancer. Bald trumps dying, right? But, man this is not much fun. I’ve had weeks of wondering when will it start? Now that it has, how long will it take? What will I look like? How will I cope with a wig? When will it grow back? And gosh, I did not expect it to hurt. I found out this week that for my particular chemo drug, there’s actually a real chance my hair won’t ever grow back. Like up to 15%. Let’s just not think about that…

Continue reading “Today my hair fell out”