56. The money

As of today, Sunday 23rd September 2018 the Dare to Bare Ball has raised £12,300 for the Primrose Foundation.  This is triple the amount the the ladies of the Real Full Monty: Ladies Night raised.  If you would like to contribute the Just Giving page is still open:

Just Giving Page

A group of slightly batty women, of various ages and dispositions, have… with a great dollop of help from Shelley, put together an event which will hopefully help fund the clinic where all of our beast cancer “journeys” started.

We are all at different stages of that journey and we all keep a weather eye out to ensure that the cancer doesn’t return.

I’m on the road to reconstruction and this week received two letters from Derriford Hospital.

The first arrived on my birthday and made me very wobbly (if you have seen a great video on Facebook which features a Scottish Grandma reading a book about a wonky donkey you will understand the next sentence).  So this week I’ve been a Wibbly, Wobbly, Honky, Tonky, Arty, Farty, Fancy, Dancy, Teary, Weary Teacher as it was a very busy week and I have an oncology appointment on Monday.  I’m 99.9% sure it is a check up and to see how I’m getting on with the new medication I’m on – Exemestane, where the side effects are not as bad as Letrozole in that I don’t feel completely and utterly fatigued but my joints are shot.  So much so that I’ve had to take all my rings in to a jeweler to get them to move over my knuckles!

The second letter is a pre-op assessment appointment for October to ensure I’ll be good to go for the DIEP reconstruction.  So I’m off the dance floor and back on the NHS conveyor belt.

I was given a book recently by a very dear friend.  It is called “She believed she could so she did” and it is full of inspirational quotes.  If anyone had said to me 12 months ago, approximately 3 weeks after I was told I had breast cancer,  that I’d be Daring to Bare in front of an audience of 190 people including friends, family and fireman I’d have told them they were bonkers.  I have been incredibly moved by the kindness, love and pride people have shown in me.  Good friends and my children have told me this weekend that they are proud of me! My lovely husband who has been with me at every step of this path told me I that I really should bare all, especially as the other girls intended too.  He has said he is proud of me too.  That means a huge amount… because at heart I’m still the girl who doesn’t think she is quite good enough – but maybe, just maybe,  I am and this weekend I’ve been involved in something remarkable with a remarkable group of women.

So I’m going to end this entry with a quote from the book….don’t let anything, anyone or any disease hold you back because you only get one chance.

“Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement”.  Golda Meir.