Janet's blog

STOP PRESS. Covid measures take over cancer blog. Following requests from a few people, I'm going to set out how I make the Mark III mask - tada! Original instructions came from the US CDC website - I have tidied up the sewing  of this double-layer mask and added a face shape. The basic design (Mark I) seems to do fine for husband and grown-up son but soon comes off my nose - not the only case of basic design for personal protective equipment not fitting women.  https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html    1. Find some new or old material - close-woven cotton or polyester-cotton. I've been using dress material scraps and bits of old shirts.  If the material is new, wash it to remove fabric dressing chemicals and pre-shrink it. Press it so it's nice and flat. NB. There is another (non-sewn) design on the CDC site for using t-shirt type knitted material. 2. Choose your fabrics for an inside and an outsi...

12 May 2020 It's been 25 months since I got the definitive diagnosis and staging of my ovarian cancer. I've been in pretty good shape recently. My immune system should be up-to-scratch if Cov-SARS-2 comes knocking, and in the wake of the Avastin treatment, joint aches and pains have slowly receded. I'm not as cardio fit as I was beforehand but that's laziness for you. I've continued Pilates as that really helped with the joint problems, have re-started cycling and am at the allotment most days for a few hours. And after six weeks of Covid-19 lockdown, I have more hair than is entirely comfy. But I've just had news that the 'something or nothing' from my scan at the end of January is now two somethings. I had suspected that the news wasn't going to be great when I was asked to come to a face-to-face clinic rather than having a phone consultation. I'm writing this quite quickly - to get it straight in my head, to generate supplementary question...