Breasts

Hello friends.  I have been writing this blog now for almost four and a half years, both on earth and here in Piggy Paradise.  Something has happened this week that will change my staff's lives for the foreseeable future, something that means my spirit will be too busy looking after them to continue writing a regular weekly blog post.  My beautiful, smart, sweet, kind, funny female staff has been diagnosed with invasive ductal cell carcinoma - a form of breast cancer.

Tomorrow - Monday - I will travel in spirit with my staff to an appointment with a surgeon who we hope will outline the way forward from here.  The good thing is that we have been told that it is a low grade cancer, but we won't really know for sure what the prognosis is until the surgeon has whipped out the nasty lump and the pathologist has completed some tests and then stir fried the lump with some shitake mushrooms, garlic, chilli and coriander.  We just hope that the surgeon can operate soon so that we aren't left in this horrid, scary limbo for too long.  All my staff and I want is to know what exactly it is that we are confronted with.

What should concern all women who are at the age when breast screening is advisable is that only three weeks ago my female staff had her biennial breast screen and was told it was clear.  Just a couple of days after that she visited her GP for her regular pap-smear, which I understand is an annual, highly ritualised meeting between two women. (I don't like to ask about the details.)  Anyway, the GP said that while my female staff was there she'd feel her breasts. (Probably another part of the woman meets woman ritual.)  She found two lumps in the left breast and sent her immediately for an ultra sound scan.  This found nothing sinister in the left breast, but a suspicious lump in the right one.  A few days later a biopsy of this lump was taken and was found to be the fore-mentioned ductal cell carcinoma.  So, there you have it ladies.  Do not take it for granted that your boobs are lumpless just because your regular breast screen gives you the all clear.  Actually my female staff's GP was very upset that the breast screen didn't pick anything up.  She says she's always writing to the big knobs at the top of the health system, telling them that ultra sound scans should be done too.  But do they listen?  Apparently not.  It must be too expensive for Medicare to cover. Short-sighted bunch of bastards! Imagine the money (and lives) they'd save if they picked up more cancers earlier rather than later.

My staff had hoped that 2015 might be a better year than the last few.  The last four years have seen my male staff spend a week in intensive care with a deep vein thrombosis which showered blood clots into his lungs and the passing away of my male staff's mum and both my female staff's parents. Of course Badger, Boris and yours truly all waddled off over the Rainbow Bridge too. My staff had just put their proverbial feet up and were celebrating the rapid sale of my female staff's mum's house with a bottle of proverbial French bubbly and thinking "Phew, thank God that's over.  We can get on with the rest of our lives now."  Hah! Fat chance.  So, this is the next adventure and my staff and I are determined to survive it in good order.

Thank you all for faithfully reading my blog every week for the last four and a half years and I promise that as soon as my female staff is better I will be back to irritate you all with my weekly doings again.  Meanwhile, I will keep you informed as to my female staff's progress on this new and rather frightening journey.  Who knows.  It may even help someone else.

So, there you have it.  This isn't goodbye.  It's just that I won't have time for a lengthy post each week, but when I have something important to tell you I promise to post it here. So, please, watch this space.

BACI"S BALONEY

So that's it!  I was like wunderring why Uncal Billy's staff have bean sort of distrakted laytly.  It's all down to Uncal Billy's female staff's boobs.  Larst time my Uncal Billy's male staff cleened owt my kage I thort it was like funny that he tipped my noo kleen bedding into my cage withowt bothring to tip owt the old stuff with all the poo and wee and uneetun veggies.  I woodunt have myndid so mutch but I wuz in the cage at the thyme and got berried in Hi-Sorb bedding and had to like dig myself owt like a bluddy mole.  I wassunt amyoozed.