Breast Cancer

[Mr Green]

Mrs Green has just been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer and faces a long, hard fight ahead. She also had leukaemia 15 years ago, so she's really had it tough...

For any words of encourage/advice of how to juggle care for my wife, a heavy workload and two crazy children from anyone who has gone through it themselves would be greatly appreciated.

Please email me at mr.green@fantasyleague.com

[quizking]

Good luck sir - might be able to offer some practical help re support/services etc. (or others here may know of similar) if you could give an idea of which part of the country you are in. All the best.

[Spinynorman]

Not much in the way of practical advice but I would say that I know two people who have had a couple of very serious brushes with different types of cancer and they eventually pulled through and are still doing well.

Best wishes go out to all of you.

[Mr Green]

Good luck sir - might be able to offer some practical help re support/services etc. (or others here may know of similar) if you could give an idea of which part of the country you are in. All the best.

Thanks for that - we live in Harpenden (Herts.) and the hospital we're attending is the Luton & Dunstable. The wife seems to be less in need of support than I am, but it's early days...

[Matty B]

will email tomorrow when I have time to think carefully what I want to say but the single most important thing to know is that you can come out of the other side and get to a place where you rarely think about these dark times.

was in a similar place to you .. young kids etc when wife was diagnosed with agressive cancer and remember wondering just how we would get through a really tough 18 months of treatment but we did and only 2 years after finishing treatment the tough times feel like a lifetime ago.

[WilBert]

Very sorry to hear about your news. Looks like you've taken a big step by realising the challenge facing you. A lot of people stick their heads in the sand.

Accepting help is the hardest, especially for us pride fuelled male types.

Consider every offer of help genuinely. Accept slightly more than you're comfortable with, be that at work or at home. Even if this support seems selfish time for you to have an hour out a week to recharge the batteries.

[UPS]

Puts moaning about dreamteam into prospective

Very sorry to hear your news.I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma 15 years ago when I was 29.Being given 50/50 for positive outcome was a real shocker,but I stayed positive throughout treatment and ,touch wood,still fighting fit now.Obviously my advantage was my wife was at home to look after kids so I could rest when necessary.

Like someone else said take help when offered and try to stay positive thru difficult times

[stevejtr]

Very sorry to hear about your news. Looks like you've taken a big step by realising the challenge facing you. A lot of people stick their heads in the sand.

Accepting help is the hardest, especially for us pride fuelled male types.

Consider every offer of help genuinely. Accept slightly more than you're comfortable with, be that at work or at home. Even if this support seems selfish time for you to have an hour out a week to recharge the batteries.

+1.

Email sent

[Mr Green]

Wow. Thanks to everyone who has replied, be it via the forum or by email.

It's early days after diagnosis, but from the various responses, it's clear we need to:

a) Stay positive - I've historically been a realist (largely basing opinion on fact, where possible - although wholly aware that "facts" can be distorted), so a slight change of mentality required.

b) Take one day at a time. There will be good days and bad days, but there's no point thinking about "what ifs" - both in the past and going forward.

c) Take help wherever possible. I'm sure there'll be plenty of offers from fellow mums/dads of children in our daughter's class at primary school.

d) Avoid coughs/colds - this could be difficult seeing as pre-schools/schools are breeding grounds for such ailments, so the children are bound to pick these up.

Anyway, we'll just have to see what the next few weeks of investigatory ops, consultations and chemotheraphy brings and take it from there...

[toffeelover]

So sorry to hear your news Matt, my thoughts and best wishes are with you & your family.

[polarbear]

Keeping everything crossed for you and your family Matt.

My mother had breast cancer back in the eighties and survived.
Every month there always seems to be a new treatment or drug available, and my understanding is that as long as there are no 'complications' the odds are on your side for the 'all clear' after a course of treatments.

You have already received excellent advice so there is nothing more I can say. Just want you to know that all your friends on FISO are thinking about you and wishing your family all the best.

[Mr Green]

Just a quick update...

After nine months of endless appointments, chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy, Mrs Green has now been officially declared as having "no evidence of disease". This is more positive than being "in remission" - the definition of remission is "a temporary diminution of the severity of disease or pain" and therefore suggests that it's likely to come back. There's obviously still no guarantee, but it's about as promising as it gets.

She's still got injections every three weeks and regular consultations until October, but fingers crossed for the future...

Thanks again to everyone for their kind words shortly after she was diagnosed. It definitely helped.

On a slight (but very relevant) aside, some of you may have watched 'The C Word' on BBC1 on Sunday evening, starring Sheridan Smith. It was only during the closing credits that it clicked that the real-life husband of cancer blogger Lisa Lynch may have been the former Fantasy League employee, Peter Lynch, who worked for us (European sales) in 2000/1.

After some investigatory work on t'internet, I'm 99.9% sure that this is the case. My heart goes out to Pete (more than two years after he really needed it), who is a real top bloke.

If you haven't already watched it (as 4.2m did), I strongly recommend it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... the-c-word

The book of the same title has since leapt to number one in the Amazon sales chart on the back of it.

[Backlash]

Great news , I can only imagine what you'll must have all been going through for the last 8-9 months.
We also watched "The C word" it really was a good program which showed how devastating the diagnosis and the following treatment is for all concerned.

[Spinynorman]

Fantastic news. All the very best to all of you.

[Surprised]

Good news that she is on the mend. The last few months must have been hell for you all.

[Tricky Tree]

Missed this first time round but great to see the good news now

[paisleypark]

Coming to this v late and so pleased to read the positive outcome.

We had a friend who suffered from this disease so have had some experience of the devastating effects it has on family and friends.
Also watched the C word and felt every emotion possible but kept with it to the end.

I tweeted about the program and got over 100 retweets and 210 favourites - my norm is 1 retweet and maybe 1 favourite so it shows what an impact the program had.

Hope all continues to go well - it is only when health fails that we realise it is the most important thing and that money etc is irrelevant.

[stevejtr]

Great news Mr Geen and Mrs Green.

I am so pleased for you both