My cancer story – part 2

My previous blog post I had left off where I had just been seen by a different GP who asked lots of questions and thought it was advisable to have a chest X-ray. I can’t remember if she told me what she was looking for. I still had my 11 week old baby with me, so I went home and rang my husband to come home too so I could easily go and get this x-ray. I had never had anything majorly wrong with me, so I wasn’t overly concerned.

As I was waiting in the waiting room for the results to come back, they called me back to get another x-ray done. I’ve never been good at just waiting, so I opened the results. It mentioned there was a shadow and the doctor recommended a CT scan, yet I still wasn’t concerned. I rang my husband to let him know I needed to go back to the GP to discuss the results so I might be an hour later than expected. He mentioned that the doctor had already called him and they were waiting for me. She was able to get me an appointment for a CT scan that afternoon.

I am still surprised at how much detail from that day I can still remember 4 years on.

My husband, my daughter and I went to the X-Ray place to get the CT scan. This was a little scary as they needed to put in a canula to inject some dye during the process. The scan didn’t take too long and the dye was interesting – a hot flush all the way through the body. The GP said as soon as I get the results to ring her no matter what time of night it was. The results said multiple tumours most likely lymphoma. Strangely enough I went home and cried, and cried and cried.

More soon 🙂

Sorting out why I am here!

Ok, now the reason I started of all this was to document the process of starting a blog and subsquently my own website. I haven’t gone very far yet. I think I need to work on either 1 or 2 directions for my blog, rather than just being a diary entry. I will be splitting the blog into categories, 1 for me in general, and 1 for the blog journey so people can easily track my progress.

This post is going into the latter. I am having difficulties in getting people to follow me on twitter and also to come to my blog on a regulat basis. This is going to be my next step this week. Focus on one thing at a time. I will be doing this by doing at least 1 blog entry a day, following more people on twitter, and also researching how blogs are effectively advertised.

In regards to twitter, I have approx 300 followers after following 600 people. Unfortunately you just can’t keep going on twitter you can only follow 2000 until you get more than 1800 followers yourself. 

Off to get more followers!

Sunday – procrastinating

Here it is, Sunday of a long weekend and I am typing away on the computer. Admittedly it is cold outside and I’m not too keen on putting on more layers. I have been reasonably good with the cleaning this morning and have sorted out some of my Phoenix products to sell at the Pregnancy, babies and children’s expo next weekend to raise funds for Mummy’s Wish. I have also been very successful at avoiding cleaning the computer room. I swear paper multiplies when you don’t look.

Hubby and munchkin have gone over to the Mother-in-law’s to fix something. Not sure what, but all I know is I get to have an hour or so to myself. I have, however, tried to advertise and promote the Sex and the City fundraiser night that is happening on the 25th June at Portside – Brisbane, with some success! We need to get over 100 people for the night to be profitable and so far we have 35+ booked. I’ve also replied to some emails in my volunteer role at Mummy’s Wish. I do however have way too many more to reply to. We (Mummy’s Wish) is always on the look out for committed volunteers who can help with our administration remotely. It makes our life so much easier if someone else can do the day to day emails and responses so we can focus on providing the support to the mums that approach us for support.

Back to cleaning…..or procrastinating!

Day 3 of my brand new blog!

Here I am at Day 3 of blogging and I am still very keen. I seem to run out of time, or get very distracted before attempting to write anything down again. I am averaging 50 hits a day so far on the blog but I would really like to make a concerted effort to increase this over the weekend. My twittering seems to be going very well, but facebook is at a bit of a standstill. I want to take notes on some of the actions that I am doing, and I haven’t really found an outlet for all the tid bits I accumulate, other than on the discussions tab on my facebook page. Any hints here would be gratefully appreciated.

The last couple of days haven’t been too busy, and I have had some time to reflect on what I am going to be doing over the next few months both personally and in business. I need to become very streamlined in my efforts with Mummy’s Wish as I won’t have as much time to focus on the charity when I start my new job. Luckily we have taken on a business coach to help us out there as well as taking on more volunteers. I also need to streamline my household. I am not exactly the neatest person around, but we are making an effort this weekend to clean and tidy the house.

I am sure I will have lots more posts over the weekend. When I clean I think – probably too much.

Cancer update – it’s all good

I had my 6-monthly check up with my haematologist today and the news is still good. Not that I was expecting anything bad, but it is still the expectation whenever you see a specialist. I haven’t gone into too much detail yet about my cancer experience so here goes.

My daughter was born in April 2006 and was a great baby. After 6 weeks she slept through the night, although she didn’t sleep long during the day it didn’t seem to matter. So I decided to do some casual work from home which was easy to do remotely. This shouldn’t have tired me out much at all but it did, immensely. I am an extremely loyal person and believe that I should do not only what is right for me but for those around me, so I resigned from job. I went to my doctor’s a couple of times in the previous weeks and had low iron levels which was always put down to just having a baby. I knew something wasn’t quite right when I had a funny cough whenever I spoke or laughed.

I went back to the doctors, but I couldn’t see my regular GP and decided I would see someone else that day (I call it “that day”). She went through the previous doctor’s notes and asked all the right questions.  To be continued!

My Blogging Journey so far

I must say I am thoroughly enjoying blogging and working out the best ways to get my blog out there into the world. I have received some great feedback on how other people have set up blogs, what they like and what they don’t like. So for those of you new to the scene I decided to blog my journey through blogging and how I can attract people to my blog.

Step 1 was to work out how to set up a blog. Not necessarily the easiest step as a decision had to be made on which blog to go with and whether I have my own website. I decided against option number 2 as this would have cost money to start with, which I don’t have. I turned to a forum of mums who I trust and gathered information on what blogs they use. I’m not very arty or creative so I liked the look of wordpress and loved the ease of setting up my blog. So here I am. Step 1 very easy.

Step 2 is to get people to visit my blog. Strangely enough the saying “build it and they will come” is not true when it comes to blogging or websites. I have set up a twitter account, a facebook page and I am discussing my blog anywhere and everywhere I go. Twitter has been very successful in getting people to visit the blog. So I would highly recommend to people setting up a twitter account. I have linked the blog to facebook and twitter as well, so all my blogs get automatically sent to my twitter and facebook accounts. This saves alot of time.

Off to build up my twittering following.

So far today

What a huge day and it’s only 4pm. I went to the Mummy’s Wish storage shed this morning with Bernadette and Kylie to sort it out and to work out what we are selling at the Pregnancy, Babies and Children’s Expo in Brisbane from the 18th-20th June. This was a mammoth task and took over 2 hours as we sorted through the amazing donated products businesses have given us to put in our treat bags or to sell to make a profit. We have a whole heap of nivea products that have been donated, some cosmetics and lots of other things we will be selling. If anyone has some spare time – we still need a few more helpers at the Expo!

Today I had a job interview. This has been a huge decision for me over the last week as I was approached by someone I used to work with to see if I was interested in a part time role with the business she now works for. I went for the interview knowing that if I didn’t like the role or the business it didn’t really matter, as I hadn’t applied for the role directly. I was asked lots of questions about my role in Mummy’s Wish, what I liked about the role on offer etc etc and in the end we all decided that I should come back next week to meet the team and make final decisions on the role over lunch! I probably should let my husband know!

What this means for me is cleaning. I need to clean my house, my computer room (most of the job can be done from home), and hopefully then cleanse my mind to focus on the extra hat I decided that I will be wearing in my life.

Here I am back home after a huge decision writing in my new blog, and I am loving it.

Hat number 2 – CoFounder of Mummy’s Wish

This morning I am off to a meeting with Bernadette Vella the Founder of Mummy’s Wish Inc. Mummy’s Wish was her inspiration while in hospital recovering from a stem cell transplant as treatment for Hodgkins Lymphoma that didn’t go away after 8 months of chemotherapy. We had met a couple of times in 2003-2006 through a mutual friend, so we were very surprised to end up in the same hospital with the same cancer with the same doctor in July 2006.

I was diagnosed with Stage 2b Hodgkins Lymphoma 11 weeks after my gorgeous daughter was born. Bernadette was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma 14 weeks into her pregnancy. She already had a 2 yr old son. She decided that with all the information that we had found and collected through our treatment, we could set up a charity to support other mums going through treatment to make their lives easier. So that’s what she did, from her hospital bed! She formed the incorporated association, got approval to become a charity, got taxation approval etc. We had discussed this a couple of times  when I had visited so it wasn’t a huge surprise to me. So in September 2007 all the paperwork was approved, however the bodies weren’t quite ready for a few more months. In June 2008 Bernadette rang me and said she was ready to get the charity going and would I like to help. My gut, my heart and my head all knew this was right so I have put all my heart and passion into making Mummy’s Wish a successful charity that supports mums with cancer.

This morning, we are off to the storage shed to pack some treat bags for the mums we support, pack a hamper to raffle off at the Pregnancy, Babies and Children’s Expo in Brisbane 18-20th June, and then we are meeting to strategize! Where do we want to be in 5 years, 1 year 90 days? How do we get there? Who do we need to get there? Big questions!

It has begun!

My first 2 posts to encourage people to join my facebook page have already started to get followers! It may not be huge yet, but they will come.

Support a WAHP on facebook is a reasonably new page, from what I can tell, but they put in a HUGE amount of effort into their page and website to promote other people’s Work at Home businesses. I have been very impressed with the amount of effort they put in! http://www.facebook.com/supportawahp

My Facebook Page

I have decided to journal and blog my journey through beginning a blog and brand new facebook page. Let’s see how successful this is going to be. Check out the Facebook progess at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Follow-My-Journey/133247113359140?ref=ts