hello and welcome

I'm sitting here with a thin blue tube disappearing into my arm ready for tomorrow when it will be hooked up to a chemical designed to stop my body from replicating cells -something it has faithfully done for me for the last 57 years giving me ever regenerated hair, nails, skin etc. The story of how this thin blue line  came to be where it is is already quite long.
Last October a young woman who wasn't looking where she was driving pulled out of a side road and knocked me off my bike. A few days later because my neck felt funny I went to the doctor who referred me to the hospital for physiotherapy. While I was at the docs I mentioned the recurrence of some bleeding when I went to the loo...and I guess because I am the age I am the doc played safe-anyway this March the other referral came through and I went for a sigmoidoscopy. Not particularly pleasant but a bit of deep breathing (ante natal class styley) was getting me through having a camera up my arse. Then  biopsies starting being taken and I was freaked -they had found something they didn't like the look of. Afterwards i listened while they called the cancer hospital and  they made me an urgent appointment while I sat and had my poor you cup of tea then I cycled to the sea and stared at the ocean  for a bit and went home. The results came back two weeks later. Cancer. I got given a card-the stoma nurse available to me anytime...I went home and started reading about colostomies and anal and rectal cancers .Very quickly appointments came through for a CT scan and an MRI (you lie in a tube for 25 mins with earplugs in while they say what sounds like 'wwwanoth5minuteswellduh' I closed my eyes and journeyed in my mind to somewhere I had been very happy). Lots more research -I made myself look at a Youtube video on how to empty a colostomy bag-I tried to imagine getting to a stage where I could be that person. I read books on how to eat to beat cancer, a directory of cancer resources, found the Penny Brohn clinic website and borrowed 'anti cancer a new way of life' from the library-all these resources are BRILLIANT. I started drinking green tea, roobosh tea, eating Omega 3 mix from the health food shop. Another appointment another doctor another nurse. This time she was a 'we are going to fry your pelvis front and back' nurse. The prognosois was brilliant-They found the earliest cancer they have ever seen-it doesn't show up on the scans, it's microscopic, hardly there at all . They are 95% certain that I can be cured. It's anal cancer-it's rare-they can't say why I have it-it was just bad luck. Bad Luck? There must be a stronger term  than that for such situations? Astoundingly bad luck at the very least.

The treatment for bad luck anal cancer ...takes the form of a chemical and radiation  attack on the site of the malignant cells and nearby lymph nodes ....unfortunately because the cancer cells is  me it will hurt me too-and it starts tomorrow.
4 days chemo 5 weeks radiating my pelvis, four more days chemo at the end-standard procedure -no need for the dreaded colostomy but the radiation comes at a price-side effects could be horrendous. The temptation to not do it is quite high-maybe if I ate enough oranges it would go away? Perhaps some meditation would still my hidden stress and the cancer would retreat and disappear? I've read some fab books ...eating well, meditating may work. Thing is I already have a healthy lifestyle-I exercise I cycle I swim I eat real food not processed, I have had a lot of people say it doesn't seem right i should get cancer when I do all the right things so...reckon the thin blue line will have to start feeding chemicals into my body tomorrow.

So this blog will be the story of my treatment. Sometimes it will be about how I feel sometimes it will include gory medical bits. It will include the things I add in like meditation, making smoothies with the juicer Rowan has lent me, my attempts to find an attractive plastic bath to sit in when the radiation burns are so bad I'm on morphine (yep it gets that bad)-why are british Sitz baths ugly old person medical applainces when in America you can buy these pretty ones (silly I know but it would be a happier Jen sitting in this one rather than this one
I guess this blog  will interest fellow sufferers mostly, hopefully some doctors, perhaps some strong stomached friends and relations...

• website that best explains anal cancer is the Macmillan site
• Joni Mitchell's beautiful song about wild and impossible dreams Amelia