Hi All,

Sorry it's been some time since I've been on due to full-time work and 2 local cancer projects I'm involved in and 1 I'm setting up.

Just a bit of an update, I'm still stage 4 breast cancer (obviously) but following my last chemotherapy I have 7 sites of isolated cancer cells in my body, they haven't formed tumours yet. My Herceptin and Perjeta every 3 weeks seems to be working brilliantly keeping it all at bay and my heart is currently holding up to the treatment, long may it continue.

We had a big fright some months back now when my identical twin went for her prophylactic bilateral mastectomy. She had been scanned by ultrasound, MRI and mammogram and, from this, they proceeded with her surgery. During the surgery they were shocked to find that she already had quite extensive stage 1 breast cancer. Unfortunately they hadn't asked for permission to take lymph nodes out so couldn't then take them out be 100% sure it's stage 1 but they are fairly sure it is. Because she lives in a very remote island and needs two overnights and lots of travel (boat and car) to get to her specialist in Glasgow they have shown her how to check her own lymph nodes and are adopting a watch and wait strategy. She will still get annual MRIs as already agreed when I got diagnosed.

They asked for a copy of my pathology report as only half of my large stage 3 tumour showed up on scans, and my mum's second breast cancer only partly showed too. So please don't anyone worry, it wasn't a situation they had seen before in all their years of treating cancer patients. They are considering that this is possibily something very specific to our BRCA2 mutation and are hoping to research it further to see if they can learn from it.

I recently had a COVID-19 scare, although my symptoms were also indicative of a DVT. My leg has since swelled so it seems it is a blood clot after all. They put me on blood thinners as a precautionary measure over a week ago so as to hopefully avoid any hospital admissions. Thankfully our hospital here is still coping and there is little alteration to oncology services so far. Hopefully that continues to be the case.

Hope everyone is well? I've missed out chats.

LJxx