Hi Moonshadow, I would love to hear if The Cancer Council of Victoria has any support services/groups ect in place specific for Young Adults? Cheers, nikki ... View more

Hi Raul, in the future, will there be a place on this website, or better still within our own profile that we can add and share things like our favourite photos, videos, music, books etc? if so how long before such features will be available? cheers nikki 🙂 ... View more

Hi Raul, thanks for the update. its very interesting knowing the stats of how much this new site is being used and what for etc. would love to keep hearing such updates and i look forward to being a part of this growing onlone community of cancer support. thanks 🙂 ... View more

good idea for changing the font colours you outlined, as these colours are a little hard to keep focused on for a period of time 🙂 ... View more

Butterfly, it is interesting to know that you would still love the choice to have more children even after already having 2 beautiful boys. I remember wanting a sister, as i had 3 brothers. I am sure I will better understand all this when i become a mum. I would not have realsied this unless you said so. So thanks for sharing this with us. Hope you get to bed early tonight or a sleep in tomorrow 🙂 Sleep is good mmmmmmmm ... View more

Hi misti, thanks for your reply to my topic and your congrats. I certainly do feel really fortunate to have things work out for me the way they have and thats why i want to share this with others like you who are at the stage in life where having children is a key time. It is good to see that you have some postive fertilty stats for your future. I agree with you that raising a family is even more daunting for those who have gone through cancer, and it is hard to find the right health professionals to talk to about this. I see that you are 1 year post Dx and still on Tamoxifen etc... do you currently have a fertility specialist on your treating team? do you have any counsellors that you or your husband can to talk to about your fertility issues? Having to front to any follow-up scans, tests and appointments is an unfortunate and continual reminder of having had cancer. These apponitments for me got easier as time went on, as I got more informed and gained confidence to ask questions. I would always take either my mum or relative with me to all these appointments. we would have a list of questions that we would not leave until they were answered. hope this helps 🙂 n ... View more

I can not begin to imagine what it must be like to have such young kids and do cancer at the same time. thank god for the family support you had! Like you said, it must be absolutely tiring for and single mums or dads having to do it alone. I think you also hit the nail on the head, in that your kids gave you the "extra push" to keep going. That was one thing I used to think about when I thought I was infertile.... that i would never experience that connection and love that only a mother and father get from becoming parents. Did your kids pick up on your cancer? did they get upset or scared? if so how did you handle these situations? How did you handle the fatigue? was it hard to ask for help at the beginning so you could rest. Do you still ask for help when you feel tired now? Do you tell other parents what you have been through, so they understand why you feel so tired, as I am sure you are having to deal with more fatigue than the average young parent after all that you have been through both physically and mentally. :) n ... View more

Hi again Butterfly, yes it is such great news... thanks 🙂 I have my 20 week scan coming up next friday, and to tell you the truth, i have been waiting for this scan before I go fully public with my pregnancy. I just want to make sure everything is OK. If it is, I hope to cover my preganacy journey through the Young Adult blog I will run here on this website. My doc told me straight out that I would be infertile from my treatment, as I did not have time to harvest eggs ect with my chemo starting 24 hours after i was Dx. But the docs never talked to me about fertility options at that stage... they did not explain anything other that "you will be infertile". A year and a half later, I was having 30 hot flushes a day and was on HRT. My cycle started again after I got some herbs from my TCM doc. My cycle and hormones where all over the place for the next few years and the western medicine docs could not tell if i was releasing an egg or not. When the time came in my life last year, my partner and I went on a pre-conception health plan for 6 months before we tried to conceive. We read the book "The natural way to better babies" - by Francesca Naish & Janette Roberts, and followed the many suggestions within this book. Amazingly, we conceived in the first month of trying!! :) n ... View more

a funny little story to share..... when I was in hospital, I suffered mucosytis from the chemo (ulceration and shedding of the lining of mouth, stomach and right through to the bowel). It was very painful, infact I could not eat nor drink for 2 weeks. swallowing even my own spit felt like a lump the size of a football was sliding down my throat and back. OK this is not funny, you are thinking.... ...well during these two weeks I became dilerious and had daily, vivid dreams of drinking freshly squeezed pinapple juice from a tall glass with heaps of crushed ice and a cocktail umbrella (its funny where the mind takes you when you are traumatised!) I later found out that pinapple juice heals mouth ulcers! The body is an amazing thing, it often tells you what it needs. My recommendation to you is to take in as much organic, freshly juiced vegies and fruit as your body allows. ie: you can also over do juicing and give yourself the runs. dilute your juice with filtered water is also good. nikki 🙂 ... View more