It would seem in these days of technology where everything is instant - emails, instagram and texts, that the simple pleasure of writing a letter has gone out of fashion.
I used to love getting letters from my Mom every week or so an so miss them not popping through the letter box anymore since she died at the end of 2013. Occasionally I will come across one of the notecards that she used to send me tucked away in a drawer an it makes me cry when I re-read them, knowing that I'll never get another on.
Think of all the love letters that have been exchange by couples over the years; some kept for decades as a reminder of lost love or of happier times. The letters of condolences after a bereavement. The letters tucked inside a Christmas card with an update of the previous years family activities etc. an who can forget all those letters written to Santa.
We often get letters from friends and family when we are ill wishing us a speedy recovery and these sometimes arrive if we are in hospital for some length of time an help keep us in touch with the outside world.
Being diagnosed with cancer can be a difficult time and also a lonely time as our everyday lives are suspended as we go through cancer but those around us, family, friends and work colleagues, move on without us.
I recently came across a lovely website which encourages people to write a letter to a cancer patient. It's as simple as that. For the cost of a stamp, you could make a real difference to the life of a cancer patient.
Please check out From me to You and if you don't feel like writing a letter then they are always looking for donations of lovely notecards that they can use.
Make someone smile today and write a letter.
OK, so I wrote a blog post on Sunday about how I was going to be taking a step back from the vast amount of awareness raising that I try and do for womb cancer. You may have read it, according to the stats around 400 people have!!!
Anyway, Sunday was a bad day for me. It was 8 years since I went into hospital for my hysterectomy - 4 days early due to being severely anaemic and needing 6 blood transfusions before the op could take place.
Also the depression was creeping back in so I wasn't really in a good place. As I said in the previous post, I had been mulling over taking a step back for some time but had never actually bitten the bullet and done it.
However the past 48 hours have changed all that.
I received so many comments via social media about my decision and some of them made me realise that I couldn't leave what I had started with the job only half done. One thing I am not is a quitter.
So, I've decided that I'm not going anywhere. The womb cancer awareness will continue. I am not about to walk away from something that I have devoted the past 7 years of my life to.
What I will be doing however, is taking a good long look at how I do what I do and structure my campaigning activities in order to achieve the best outcome.
One thing that has come out of the past couple of days is that I care too much when others don't.
WCSUK has never been about me. I don't like the attention it brings me and I don't like the fact that I have to keep talking about my cancer experience in order to try and raise awareness.
I do it though, because I think its important that we as women talk more openly about our gynaecological health issues, that includes things like periods, hysterectomies, menopause and cancer because there are so many taboos around these subjects and that is not good for anyone.
It's often said that these things are "women's issues" - I believe they are everyone's issues - men and women. Men have Mothers, Wives, Sisters and Daughters. Surely they care about them and want the best for them so we all need to be talking a lot more about these issues and I for one do not intend to stop talking about them.
Using the platform of WCSUK as well as my personal social media I will talk about the issue of womb cancer awareness, and other gynaecological issues as well as women's issues in general for as long as I have breath left in me.
We all, women and men, have to talk more openly about these issues because they affect all of us.
I hope I can count on you to join me and help raise awareness, smash taboos and stigma and generally make the world a better place for all of us.
Heck, if we're going to aim for anything lets aim high.
Kaz. xx
Eight years ago today I went into hospital to have a hysterectomy. The operation was scheduled for 25th January but at my pre-op appointment I was found to be severely anaemic so had to go in 4 days early so I could have some blood transfusions, ended having 6 in all, plus 1 during the operation itself.
I was having the operation due to womb cancer, although I had initially been diagnosed with several large fibroids & had turned down the hysterectomy that was the preferred treatment option of my gynaecologist. Then the cancer was discovered and it seemed like I had no option so into hospital I went to have all my reproductive organs taken out.
Plunged into immediate menopause at the age of 46 I thought I'd be able to manage it all until I heard a few weeks later that, despite being told by both my gynaecologist and surgeon that I would probably not need further treatment, I discovered that I did indeed need chemotherapy AND external radiotherapy.
The surgery was supposed to give me back my life, after living with extremely heavy bleeding that had controlled my life for around 35 years. What it actually did was become the start of something that changed my life forever.
The long term side effects of the treatment for what is the most common gynaecological cancer and the 4th most common cancer to affect women has left me with several chronic health conditions that rule my life far more than the heavy bleeding ever did and that's saying something.
Unable to do even the most mundane of things for the past few years, even showering or getting dressed in the morning requires a huge amount of effort, I have spent the last 7 years running a national online support and awareness organisation called Womb Cancer Support UK. When I went looking for specific womb cancer support when I was first diagnosed there wasn't any. I wanted to talk to other women who were going through the same as I was and Facebook seemed like the ideal place to do it so I set up a FB page and the rest is history. The organisation has grown to almost 3,000 likers and the website has around 1,000 hits a week.
In the absence of a national womb cancer awareness campaign we do what we can to spread the word and raise as much awareness as we can. It's shocking to think that over 9,300 women were diagnosed with this cancer in 2014 (CRUK) yet many like myself had never heard of it. It is certainly the poor relation of cervical and ovarian cancer which many women have heard of; although they may not know all the signs and symptoms they will most likely be aware of these cancers.
We are very much a grassroots organisation and rely on the women who have been diagnosed and come to us for support to help us get the word out. They have helped us distribute over 11,000 of our womb cancer awareness leaflets up and down the country but that still not enough to make sure that all women know about womb cancer.
For the past 7 years I have devoted my life to WCSUK and at times it has been tough going but I have always continued with what I do because it's a cause I believe in.
But, there comes a time when things have to change. My health is not getting any better and the effort I put into what I do doesn't seem to be achieving much, or at least not achieving what I want it too.
I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall at times and the time has come for me to take a step back from all of this, for the state of my mental health if nothing else.
Obviously I can't just walk away from what I do but I shall be taking steps to pull back from the full on 7 days a week I put into running WCSUK and all the social media work and effort I put into trying to raise awareness. However, the support side of things will continue and the private support group we have on FB will continue for as long as there are women out there who want or need support from other women who know, an understand what they are going through. That side of things will always be there.
I had intended to do it quietly and just slip away un-noticed but I feel I owe it to the people who support WCSUK to explain what will happen over the coming months. I have no timescale as such, other than I know I don't want to be doing this for the rest of my life.
As for the future? Well, I can't turn the clock back to a time before cancer but equally I can't see a future where the effects of that cancer diagnosis doesn't play a significant part in my day to day life.
Que sera, sera.
