Update.. 10p drug could treat breast cancer.

I made an appointment to see my diabetic nurse within an hour of reading about Metformin. I was already under discussion on how to control my sugar levels because they were peeking during the evening. So once my nurse had read the article there was no question asked she wanted me to trail it? Her words were Sarah you are going to be our guinea pig. She said that the actual drug suppresses the pancreas from burning body fats. This prevents an over flow of sugar in your blood stream. This in turn prevents or controls cancer by starving it. Even though I do not have cancer I still qualify to test the drug out because of my sugar levels. On my starvation blood test my blood sugar was 6.7. This is just below the threshold for treatment on other diabetic drugs, but how Metformin works means it does not cause your blood sugars to drop in other words it is not insulin based. You still have to eat your meals on regular intervals, but I can now eat responsibly without sugar level counting.
I personally would advice others to research this drug and ask a lot of questions. Do what I did and photo copy the article and take it in to your doctors. This drug does not just treat diabetes it is used for other health issues. My nurse has started me on 500mg once a day for two weeks and will up my dosage as needed. (Check the following link below picture.)
  

Click on these links to know more about metformin there is new hope for BC sufferers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-13098092

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8081311.stm

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10p Drug Could Treat Breast Cancer.

10p Drug Could Treat Breast Cancer.

A fellow BC sufferer on my FB page placed this article or link on my FB (link below). You now can somehow understand the growing fear that grows inside me. That the very people who are treating me are dismissing me like an attention seeking child. That they are not working together to treat and prevent. Rather than they are playing a dangerous waiting game where they are treating two conditions separately. The lack of direct communication could put me at risk if both conditions are not being monitored as a whole. The words you will be monitored closely are now ringing out loud in my head and will not abate from the crevice they sit in. My fear is very real the questions I must ask are ready to be thrown at my oncologist. And now I understand this beast that grows inside me more they are validated. If I do not get my diabetes sugar levels under control this bastard can return.

Believe me when I say I am not on the phone constantly pestering my consultants. I wait until my appointment is due then I speak out. When I asked two years ago is my diabetes related somehow to the breast cancer it was dismissed. Now two years on it proves my question was very real. Just like when I asked the diabetic consultant back in 1996 is diabetes link to pre  eclampsia? And that was dismissed.

My GP decided last month I did not require medication for my diabetes based on my blood results unlike my diabetic nurse. My blood test still showed I was border line in requiring medication, but what if that is false. What if my treatment should be based on two conditions not one at a time? I know I will be taking this article to my diabetic nurse and discussing it at depth rather than my GP. She is more open to a discussion than my GP. Like I keep saying on my post I hate taking tablets unnecessarily, but this is important it is not an anti depressant or pain killer.  

I am not on any medication to protect me from my type of breast cancer from returning, but this article gives me hope unlike the carrots. My cancer was not hormone receptive it was HER 2 +++. It was pre cancer, but an aggressive form of cancer. My breast was removed and reconstructed in one swoop of a scalpel. With no other treatment required because the pre cancer was in situ. So any thread of hope that can say it can be controlled permanently is a thread I will grasp with two hands and not let go.

I can understand people reading this thread saying well here she goes again. Jumping ahead rather than waiting and seeing, but I want to know. I demand the right to know and I will not go away and ignore the fact that waiting is not a choice for me. Unlike many other women my cancer could be controlled at the cost of 10p. Do you think I have a right to shout? Would you not shout or at least question?

The fact that my diabetes falls in a loop of no real answers is baffling to all involved with treating me. They argue all the time at what type of diabetic I am. Personally my treatment to me has too many holes and I do not want to become a statistic where the damn system fails me. So I am on guard and the little robin is back to kick arse!

I just hope this link/article gives answers to other diabetic suffers with breast cancer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8450489/10p-diabetes-drug-could-treat-breast-cancer-patients.html

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What about pesticides Doc?

So I have to eat carrots to reduce the risk of breast cancer. F*** me what next! (Excuse me swearing) I don’t want to burst bubbles here but I ate all my bloody fill of fruit and veg. Did not protect me! Why? Because the amount of damn pesticides spray on the vegetables now that reaches my plate. I feel I am constantly repeating myself on my blog about diet, but I am bloody angry. I want those so called advisors to come check me out. Check my life style and my parents and how they taught me to eat and exercise. That sat on my arse on a bus or in a car in traffic is not the healthy way of living. If you can save a pound or dollar and loss a pound in weight bloody walk my dad would say. You don’t need these fancy exercise tapes it is free to all. I now pound the pavement in anger for every article I read about breast cancer. I want a cure and I know about vegetables and fruit. I am not thick!

Once upon a time you could go to a farmer’s field pluck a carrot from the ground and eat it. Now you are advised to wash it and peel it before consumption. When will we actually own up to the beast of cancer. It thrives on our greed for a rich easy life style and we are at its mercy until we correct the damage. The facts that we little people rely on cheap vegetables to stabilise our diets which are covered in pesticides. So we feel we are eating the right foods is not even addressed. Some of us cannot afford organic because our budget don’t stretch that far. (Especially in this current climate of tightening purse strings). It is ok for people in a position to advise those less well off, but the fact that fast foods in London work out cheaper than healthy grates me.

Once upon a time the poor ate far better than the rich. Whilst they ate white bread we ate the rougher pieces of the grain which now makes whole grain bread. While they ate the juicy centres of the vegetable we ate the healthy dark green leafs left over. Now those very bits of roughage cost the bloody earth to buy. The very stable diet the poor had got sucked up by the damn rich with a price tag to boot. I listen to the old people talk about how they had the best of the best. This is so true because they are reaching grand old age’s of 100+ and have all their faculties’ intact, but what is going to happen to me? Will I reach the grand old age of fifty let alone one hundred?

OH I would love to look like a fluffy rabbit shouting what’s up doc every five minutes, but I am me. Not a bloody fluffy tailed pet.  Whilst people are looking at prevention like it is so easy. They are jumping the blank spaces like the fluffy tailed critter.

When reading this article your heart skips a beat and you pray that what they are saying is the hands on truth. But as it stretches down the page of the Metro paper it is full of maybes. When you see a maybe it covers their arse from being sued for displaying misleading data. 

At least cancer research in America is backing it this time and it isn’t any herb company jumping on the band wagon of breast cancer.

‘The research centres on the role of a gene called RAR-beta, which the experts believe reacts with retinoic acid when the two come into contact with each other, resulting in retinoic acid's anti-cancer capabilities being activated.’

http://www.mydaily.co.uk/2011/04/06/carrots-reduce-breast-cancer-risk/

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Follow Your Dreams No Matter What!

Making of Baby Love ~ Mitch Hiller

I had a fabulous time on the shoot for ‘Baby love’. The song is a jazz version of the old ‘Baby Love’ that was sung by Diana Ross to be released in June/July 2011. We had our makeup and costumes checked and done. Then I had to sit at a table and pretend to drink wine with a fellow Extra. He was a good looking Grenadian man and yes we were pretending to flirt. Apparently we had to give off the impression we had known each other for more than the fifteen minutes. The couple behind me and at the left of me were actual couples. I was just the odd one out along with my now new partner. Other Extra’s on set kept saying you two look to convincing pray your husband is not watching. I said that’s the idea! We all laughed at my response and I smile further at my video partner.

We were all complaining the apple juice and blackcurrant juice should be real to help us relax. The men had soda water mixed with apple juice to portray whiskey. We all had to pretend to drink as we gazed at a white board smiling occasionally glancing loving at our partners. The white board made your eyes go slightly out of focus though.

You would hear the words Take 1 and a title then the clap of the board in front of the camera. Then the words action as the artificial smoke in the room circulated round our ankles. Every now and then I would drift onto other things clogging my mind, but my on camera partner and I would chat nonsense once the camera stopped rolling. I had him in fits of laughter with stories I had to tell. We would listen to the instructions of the assistant director and play them out like a couple of serious actors which was so funny. I would say Ok! So how you going to unfold your arm from mine without stumbling? Two attempts and it were smoothly done. Once they had finished the front of the club scene they had to film from the backs of our heads. This is when we got to meet Mitch Hiller and his band members. Mitch Hiller has worked with Chaka Khan and many others composing and writing music. His career and band members go back years in the music industry. They thought my story of a guitar and posing for a calendar a bit of a fib so they called my bluff and could not believe the image was me. They said they would check it out later on their computers and to follow them on my FB page. We were in the Jazz/Salsa Club in Streatham for four hours, but to me it felt like just an hour.

Mitch Hiller

I and Mitch Hillers Band

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Do Not Judge A Book By Its Cover!

Do Not Judge A Book By Its Cover!

This phrase I use on a regular bases. Whilst my exterior is all positive and let’s raise awareness deep down sometimes I just want to explode. After my post ‘I Am Not Perfect Anymore!’ It strongly highlighted how the general public’s perception of BC can be tainted if taken in the wrong direction.

My outburst of emotion could easily be twisted into an excuse of your just bitter, but really my words are the realistic truth of a true account of BC. Sometimes you must speak out to be heard for others to try and even develop an understanding.

Whilst some of us laugh at pink wigs and say there is no harm done, even me? The few that sit in the wings watching silently have a right to disagree.

We are not sheep!

We live in a democracy where those with a different account of events should not be muted. If you mute a person they can become withdrawn within society and that is damaging. I understand certain organisations want to promote a positive and not a negative account of breast cancer. But the positive and negative sides go hand in hand to develop a true understanding of this disease. BC women should be able to express their true inner thoughts on BC for them to try to move forward. This any BC organisations should understand and take on board before setting up. That some BC suffers may not be acceptant of their policies and promotional material.

 If society was not so built up on visual perfection maybe the scares would not run so deep on a women’s way of thinking.

My dignity has been given a serious knock, but the fact I am smiling means I have moved on.

That is a total lie!

Like so many BC suffers out there my journey with BC stretches out into years rather than a week or a month it is far from over. Every time you enter an office with a consultant your heart misses a beat with an inner ache. The smiles are there just to reassure the few that my sanity/humour is still intact.

Promoting a false security blanket!

I cannot knock the pink camouflage of BC it is what raises cash for research, but I do knock the fact that certain scrupulous companies use BC to promote their products i.e. Schwartz. To promote their products as a possible preventative of BC or cancer to me is ludicrous. There is no evidence that can back up a dried herb as a preventative of cancer. There are anti-toxin properties in freshly grown herbs which are still being researched.

So Schwartz get of the band wagon of BC please! Keep your dried herbs where they belong on a supermarket shelf. Let cancer research decide where a cure/preventative can be found they are the experts.

Anyway my rant is done for now until next time that is. Now onto a more positive note and I love positives. I have been invited to take part as an extra in a music video. It is a jazz number and a very well known song. I have a lovely little black dress to wear. Even though you most probably will not see it in the video or me, but I am just pleased to be concentrating on something else other than breast cancer ;-D

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I Am Not Perfect Anymore!

Read another blog today that appeared on my FB page. The need to express can lead to deletion of posts even FB expelling you. Whilst we believe FB is an open forum to express we can be put in the naughty corner for stirring up emotions. One blogger felt the strong need to speak out on her blog about the distasteful comments put on a FB page she had been following.

What worries me about her whole experience is it has trivialised a very important need. Those needs to express not all people agree to what others are encouraging.

Humour has a place, but to what ends?

Breast cancer and its emotional scars both physical and mental leave the none BC world treading on egg shells on how to approach. Yes whilst we BC survivors want to prevent BC it can lead to anger just by approaching it insensitively. Those that have survived its ugly grasp are still coming to terms with the path they are now on. We hide behind a smile or joke trying to ease the intensity of a subject such as breast cancer, but BC is not a forgiving laughable nor joyous. It is tormenting and cruel with no forgiveness for those it affects.

The FB page was setup by a young person affected by BC, but how does a young person deal with BC, but with humour.

I remember being nineteen and coming out with cheeky comments to hide my discomfort about a subject. I would argue black was white and shout get a life so easily, but something changed and when that change occurred was nearly losing my first born.

When you are young everything is simply solved unless it encroaches on your day to day way of living. Then you have a big reality check and a once self opinionated brat becomes an adult over night. I have heard time and time again well be thankful you are alive there are others less fortunate. Like it is a duty to bite my lip when I come across something I disagree with. You are seen as being frigid like some inexperienced virgin. Your opinions have become a casualty of BC and the explosion of confetti approach is more accepted.

Whilst the none BC community latch onto the pink bomb shell like a suckling infant needing comfort. There are women being driven to despair on anti-depressants to block out the painful images that remain. Yet what worries me is what if by putting a pretty image up we are giving a false perception of BC. That we are trivializing and saying it is ok to have BC because you will survive. So feel your boobs is one more step to encasing the reality.

Before my mastectomy/recon my husband would want to jump my bones every day, but after the operation was done he would lose his erection midway through the love making act leaving me rejected. That is my true reality of BC and something people do not want discussed. BC changes everything and yet I must remain silent. Do not get me wrong my needs were satisfied, but his he would dash away. People’s reactions/opinions shape how we see BC and the recovery process. The disfigurement is not just external, but internal also.

Which would leave me thinking about what his sister had said ‘Most men do not like implants.’

After a while I gave up on even attempting to make love because of the feeling of rejection. After a while you sleep on the edge of the bed with silent tears trickling down your face. That is the true nature of breast cancer. The silent tears and internal screams that no-one wants to see or hear. So the humour is a copping mechanism to mask the truth, but when a BC survivor actually bursts a valve and lets the steam flow on a FB page only to face deletion of posts because it does not fit in with the image. This I strongly question without a doubt.

Yes the true facts that cash raised for a young people’s BC organisation that titillates BC could be better placed elsewhere leaves a question mark. You could also argue the fat cat corporations that line their pockets on our misery could also do the same. For every penny raised for BC is lining someone’s pocket somewhere. Pink or Feel your boobs who cares it’s the money that is important not the tears of women in torment. Let’s all be ostriches and bury our heads in the sand like normal people, but I am not normal.

The truth is whilst sexual headlines like ‘Feel your boobs’ create comfort and titter amongst the young. The titter is getting them to do the obvious and be body aware. The argument is done before you even start amongst the none BC community. I just hope that titillation is not being abused by a sick pervert for a kick.

Whilst we are classified as being over sensitive to people saying we are being over sensitive. Can’t people just understand that we are hurting? Our lifes have been torn and turned with no end in site. I have the comfort of waking up to a mirror that can be so cruel it can send you to the depths of despair. I wish I had a perfect breast like before, but the truth is my breast nearly killed me and I am not so perfect anymore!

Yes the titillation raises awareness and cash, but sometimes even when you are young with BC. You do not want to laugh, but you want to damn well scream!

http://www.uneasypink.com/2011/03/feel-your-boobies-or-else.html

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To Spring Clean Or Not To Spring Clean!

The first day of spring is quickly approaching and so are the usual chores of turning the cupboards out. Yes I could ignore and pretend that it is not important, but truthfully I’m on kick arse mode. A good spring clean can be very therapeutic on the soul and mind. It helps you to dust the cobwebs on your brain and sift through unwanted garbage. The frustrations that you have spent months arguing internally over can easily become very transparent. But recently I have neglected all and now I have to play catch up.

My husband has no interest in the house or its needs. He knows he has a wife who is more than capable at doing DIY on her own. It has all been left to me cancer or no cancer from the minute I moved in. If I refuse he knows with time I will get frustrated and pick up a hammer.

I will have the last laugh though because he hates pink. Now would I dare do that...? Oh yes! ;-D

To make a house smile and not crumble you need the time and money. Both of these are in short supply in my marriage especially when we are constantly replacing things due to neglect.

Yes! I am materialistic, but not a branded person. I like to know when I buy something it lasts for some time not just a week or a month. (That is the single parent/Yorkshire bird in me.) I hate replacing something because someone did not take care in the first place. Yes things break, but a selfish bull in a china shop I cannot tolerate. Everything I grew up with I had to share even gifts that were given to me. So I am very protective of what I own unlike my husband.

If I could honestly sum up the actual mess this house is in it would be the house that Jack bloody built!                                                                                                                                                                      The wiring needs replacing because it was never done correctly. The plaster on the walls and the roof has seen its days. All the flooring needs replacing due to rot in places and not correctly fitted in the extension/kitchen. All the pipes need pulling out and resetting. The list is endless in fact you might as well pull the house down and build a new one it would be cheaper. I inherited this mess from my husband and I have to clean it up to a standard I can tolerate because he cannot be arsed.

So yesterday I spent the day fitting a door and encasing the electrics. There is now a neat cupboard primed and ready for painting. I have stripped the what was left paper on the walls which had been painted over with a blue vinyl matt (LAZY IDIOTS!) for a bedroom. The window in that room has now got a wooden cream blind and I am searching for paper to match. At least my youngest daughter will have a bedroom not a monstrosity of poorly thought out mistakes to go into. I hung my head down in shame when I realised how neglected this house is. I feel people are judging me on a situation I have no control over. I moved in striped back the drapery and revealed a hell of a mess. People can only judge on what they think they know, but the reality is they know nothing if they are not willing to see.

So it is Hi ho, hi ho,

It’s off to work I go,

Forget the lemonade,

I need a man with a spade,

Hi ho, hi ho, Hi Ho....

Humour people... don’t forget humour... may add laughter lines to your face, but adds years to your ticker.

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