Hello and welcome to my first ever post. I have about 30 tumours and lesions that are in my brain lungs spine and liver or at least that’s what they found so far.

I am terminally ill and these motherfuckers are gonna kill me. Fact. Could be 18 months could be years. I’m not here to harp on about what you should do with your life. But I am going to give you some helpful tips and tricks I have gleaned from my experiences. I had breast cancer seven years ago and now I have secondary breast cancer basically all over. And here’s a few things I wish I’d know back then.

Anyway.. let’s get down to the good stuff. I’m gonna cover in this post some social ideas, some medical ideas, and also some life hacks. Dammit as well I love list-ical. I hope you do too.

Let’s start with the first thing and that’s flowers.

Flowers and Gifts

People are going to try and send you a lot of flowers so get ahead of it. Because no one owns 15 vases. And babe what the fuck you gonna do with all those flowers?! One of the first things I did was post on my social media my update of Cancer and include to it a Amazon wish list of things that I would like people to buy for me. Things that I use and enjoy anyway and also things that are useful for Cancer.

Lets get medical

For Manchester people : St Annes hospice who are palliative care workers ave been really helpful for me, getting me the right medication prescribed , chasing things up and being really proactive for everything: rangin from physio appoinmnets, fatigue, and ive joined their art classes. Theres loads of things to make and play with and you keep everything you make! Whhopp whoop1 I love a craft time!

Therapist

Get a therapist. This is kind of enough said you won’t realise how useful having a therapist is until you have one. I think it takes three or four sessions to really benefit from it because your therapist needs to get an understanding of who you are and what you want from them. It could be something as simple as lending an ear that is unbiased and that you can say real shit to and not have any judgement or any response like “ you’re so brave” “You can beat this” “ your outlook is really great” “ I am so sorry this is happening to you” “keep your chin up”

Benefits

Check out all the resources available to you and never feel bad for claiming benefits that are owed to you. I’m going to go a bit deeper into this and a lot of it is UK based.

Go to your Maggies centre and find out your rights for work

If you are working you will be able to get sick notes that will cover your pay and your statutory sick pay. You have workers rights they cannot pressure you to come back early or

to come back during treatment. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen and it’s discriminatory.

Friends and Family

You’ll find a lot of people will try and throw you some pity parties and that’s okay they love you but you need to tell people what your boundaries are and what you need from them because ultimately you just don’t wanna be treated differently. At least God knows I didn’t. It’s great that some people you may have lost touch with and want to see more of will come out of the woodwork and want to visit you. Take this opportunity to rekindle friendships that may have fallen on the wayside. But at the same time don’t try and cram everything in an exhaust yourself especially during treatment.

Be selfish.
Again, quite self-explanatory.

Say no.

You don’t owe anyone anything right now.

Say no schedule things as you are able to do them. Don’t feel bad about cancelling they will understand.