Gaynor Leech Guest Blog September 2021
"August is a quiet month and I always take a break usually for the whole month, but ongoing commitments meant that I scheduled two weeks and managed three. For L-W-O Community it has been a full-on year and I hadn’t realised how tired I was.
My family organised a surprise 70th birthday party which I had not a scooby doo about and I now know why my youngest grandchildren and great granddaughter had not been visiting quite so much.
Then I organised my 50th wedding anniversary in our garden with the help of my grown-up family. Not the party that had been talked about a couple of years previous but 33 closest family and friends got together to make some fantastic memories, and the weather was kind to us.
The third week I binge watched TV box sets not something I am used to doing in the daytime, but it helped me relax have time to rest my weary body, clear my head and remind myself to take care of me. I spend a lot of time talking about self-care to others, every now and then I need to remind myself that I need to look after me.
GREAT NEWS
In July the joint initiative with the British Lymphology Society #getmoving_everybodycan proved to be very successful and L-W-O’s YouTube channel reached another level. So please subscribe as there are several videos being created for September and October.
At the end of July, I was privileged to receive the Comfiwave Breast Band organised by Natalie Phillips from Haddenham on the understanding I would write an article on the Breast Band. Read about my experience. For people like me who live with Breast Cancer Related Lymphoedema (BCRL) this really is a game changer. In addition, I have made a video for Haddenham which hopefully will go out in October. As a direct result of my article other cancer organisations have reached out to do a blog and a company in Denmark has asked to use the article.
Mid-September L-W-O Community will have been working for eight years towards supporting those living with lymphoedema. We have provided information and raised the profile of lymphoedema to anyone who will listen. In the beginning, community engagement was just a pipe dream. We have a long way to go to get lymphoedema recognised and understood by the medical community but now the brick wall is beginning to slowly tumble. I am thrilled that community engagement is now becoming possible.
There are lots of things being organised in the background and September is designated as a month for planning for the events taking place in October and November.
On support group, we are seeing a very mixed picture of members who are able or unable to get treatment at this moment in time. The backlog with clinic appointments appears to be anything from six months up to two years. While most members seem to be getting their compression it would appear that MLD treatment is being cut back. I will be writing L-W-O Community support group’s comments up in due course.
The new website is coming along nicely with the latest topic on how weather affects our lymphoedema with tips for the Autumn has just been completed.
LWO COMMUNITY
