Things you wish you had know!

Just wondering if you've gone in for your operation yet? I hope all is going well and that you are recovering comfortably.

This is a great thread,  I've just got a few extra points:

• The hardest thing I had to do in this ordeal was to talk to both my kids (then 8 & 13yrs) about my diagnosis. The Cancer Council's book, Talking to Kids about Cancer was invaluable and helped my husband and I to work out how best to tell them.
• Both my children's schools provided practical help (meals, hampers, child-minding) as well as checking in regularly with both kids to see how they were going. This was a great support, especially during those tough months of chemo and radiotherapy.
• Learning to accept help is difficult but was the best lesson learnt and now I can pay it back.
• Learning to pencil in eyebrows is a new skill which unfortunately I still need to practise as mine are still pretty much AWOL even after 18 months of active treatment.
• Deep purple nailpolish hides all sins.
• Chemo stole my brain so am much more forgetful these days and sometimes struggle to find the right word for something. Am doing crosswords, puzzles, reading and writing to try and find it again.
• I found the Encore Program to be helpful after treatment as it gently improved my movement through water and other exercises, gave me an opportunity to talk with others in the same boat informally about bc and was done in a private session at the local hydrotherapy pool at the hospital so I didn't feel self-conscious about my lopsided swimwear.
• Weird side effect: iris colour has gone from "polluted blue" to "murky green". My eye colour always went green after a couple of wines, now they seem to be permanently that shade!
• Despite our best efforts, crap happens; eg after my first chemo I was hypervigilant about hygiene, temperature checking, sanitising everything etc only to have my son come home with chicken pox and so I landed in hospital for a week!

Jane x