LESSONS

I’ve really got to learn more about food because the food database in my head is rubbish. Seriously, if you ask me what I want for lunch or dinner, then only a limited amount of options pop into my head. Chinese, Indian, pizza, KFC, lasagne, spag bol, cottage pie, steak, kebab, chilli, McDonald’s, fish or anything else with chips (Honestly, I’m not joking). I’ve been reading about how a change of diet and healthy eating can help people with cancer. Problem is, everytime I think about healthy eating I come up with a complete blank. There’s been a lot of things said about acid and alkaline in your body and different diets that you can adopt. I’ve seen lots of mentions of a vegan diet, a plant diet or even just a nut and fruit based diet, but every time I try to read up on it I just zone out. Plenty of times I’ve read that sugar feeds cancer and helps it spread quicker and that some people who have switched to a different extreme diet have seen their cancer more or less dissappear, but these have just been on forums and not official publications. Sometimes you have to wonder how much is real and how much is fake so that someone can make money from vulnerable people. I’ve really got to sit down, do some proper research or even just start to experiment more with food. This way we can all change our habits as a family (that’s the theory anyway).

The PICC line procedure went ok in the end (although that easy for me to say because I was just watching from the sidelines) . The nurse sat us down and explained to Sam what she was going to do. She was going to insert a piece of wire into her arm (called a tracer line) and feed it to just above her heart. She would use an ultra sound machine so that she could find the correct vein (and not an artery by mistake) and then she would use it to help her find the way to her destination. Once she had reached the correct position she would then get a hollow tube and feed it into her arm (around the tracer line) and then use this as a guide to get it to the same place. She would then pull out the metal tracer line leaving only the tube in place. It took her 3 attempts to get the tracer line into her vein so it was slightly painful for Sam and it left her arm pretty bruised in certain places. After the procedure was done we then had to go to x-ray so Sam could have her chest x-rayed so they could check everything was in place. Apparently in rare cases the tracer line can take a wrong turn and go into the jugular instead. Luckily this wasn’t the case here and all was fine. She’s now got this block of tubes and lines on the inside of her right arm which, although uncomfortable, will mean no more needles from now on.

While we were at the hospital we found out that we’ve got another important result that we’re still waiting for (we thought we were all done with these). This result will have massive repercussions on the treatment and progression of the cancer. On Wednesday we should find out whether Sam’s cancer is either HER2 positive or HER2 negative. Basically (I’m going into teacher mode here), HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) is a gene that makes HER2 proteins within the breast. These are known as receptors and they tell the cells in the breast how to behave. They help control how a healthy breast cell grows, divides and repairs itself (you still with me?). Unfortunately, in 25% of breast cancers the HER2 gene doesn’t work properly and it makes too many copies of itself. This makes the cells in the breast grow and divide in an uncontrolled way. The result of this means that any breast cancer that is HER2 positive tends to grow faster, is more aggressive and is more likely to spread and come back than if it was HER2 negative. If it does come back as positive then this would mean another year (on top of this year) of treatment would be needed. There is a drug called Herceptin that can be used to treat it and it would need to be given intravenously once every 3 weeks for a year. That’s not exactly what you want to hear when your world has already been turned upside down.

Hopefully it’ll be one hurdle that we won’t have to jump.