Oncology assessment cycle No 1.

Oncology assessment yesterday Friday 1st April 2010.

To each and everyone other person who were born on April Fool's day, so help me God another person who bites the dust, and ages gracefully?

Like every other day my friend Mandy Paku arrived from Whangarei and stayed with John,husband number two for a few days, so I invited her for lunch at the house. At 12:30 pm Mandy arrived with dumplings, delicious apples, followed by home made shortbread cookies, yummy too! I prepared lunch as well with salmon, Maori potatoes, kumara, brussel sprouts and pumpkin, served with apple crumble, cream and of course hokey pokey ice-cream. For all of these weight conscious, waif eaters, forget it, calories is the agenda I had in mind, since I had lost weight from this killer disease? Mandy arrived with delicious fattening dumplings, warmed and ready to devour, so much for the lunch I recently prepared, tomorrow is another day to eat for breakfast, lunch and tea, bugger! James had to teach at 1:00pm so he had to leave, busying us with plenty to talk about, eating this food and forcing ourselves with a bite here and there, before being stuffed by eating to many calories. Quenched this with apple cider and honey hot drink, refreshing and satisfying too. Mandy's son died of Leukemia about 26 years ago, followed by her husband Greg died of a brain hemorrhage as well, so this was a grieving time for Mandy and father and son's ashes in Te Awamutu many years ago.

Roslyne arrived at the house promptly at 2:10pm expecting us to leave asap, introducing each other, and wearing my waka blond wig, looking like a MCQ (marathon cancer queen) in full regalia, prancing around with my nose in the air for two seconds and back to normal the ageing queen.

The team Roslyne, Mandy and myself drove to the Auckland hospital Oncology area ready for my assessment with Reubin Broome, Oncologist, smart individual and has a great sense of humour in a nutshell. Went through the process, weighed myself and found that I hadn't lost any weight, still 68 kilos. I believe the scales are wrong, with the amount of weight loss something is obviously wrong with this picture. My clothes are smaller than usual, my legs are skinnier too, svelte and looking like a 25 year old again, bugger!

My white blood counts were fantastic, another cycle of diahorrhea and vomiting temporarily,

besides the loss of appetite, fatigued I am on the road to recovery and survived another of drug induced toxic chemical poison, that plagued my body over a period of three weeks, and I can hardly wait for cycle to commence on the 6th April at Oncology Day Surgery at 9:30 am on Tuesday morning. The reporter Julie, photographer Nathan and Vicky Styliss will be present while I am being interviewed and photographed by Nathan, Roslyne is definitely going to be in this article in the NZ Women's Weekly if I have anything to do with this. This woman has been with me since I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so she has a right to and include me while I am eating this strawberry ice-cream. The more I eat this medical food the more I detest while forcing myself to eat without any convictions or reservations, this ice-cream I will eat without protest from my husband, who reads the right act to me about the purpose behind part taking in this clinical study, so I have no other choice to eat this bloody ice-cream and enjoy this as well. After 9 weeks of eating this medical food, I will eat this for another 10 months on a daily basis, recording the daily intake and checking on my bowel motion(s) and any other products to help me with bowel motion, that sucks too! Eventually I will detest eating another bloody strawberry ice-cream as long as I live and no more ice-cream PERIOD.....

What an exciting day with the gals, lots of laughter, wearing my fashionable waka blond wig, people commented how lovely the new style has done for me, makes me look younger by 20 years (I lie a lot too) not a figment of my imagination so be it! My out look, new bra and prosthesis, wig what more can a woman want, more chemotherapy over a period of 4 cycles, followed by Herceptin for the rest of the year so help me god.

My dream is to live a fruitful life without any more problems to my health, I want to live and travel the world talking about my experience to life, so if anyone or other businessess who will welcome a Maori woman as an guest speaker to the world, contact me asap.

Ka kite ano (see you later)

Violet Lawrence