Cancer Support App

Good morning everyone. Just thought I'd come on and say hello and give you a little update of where I am. I've not really got a lot to say to be fair. Nothing much has happened. I am four and a half weeks post my surgery now. I'd like to say it's gone fast but it really hasn't. It really hasn't. I'm feeling so much better. I think week four, the beginning of the week before the beginning of this week was a bit of a turning point for me. I started just feeling better. I previously had a really bad time with sleeping and pain during the night. Which is something they don't warn you about. So a lot of my pain has been during the night, not through the day. So through the day I'm managing fine with no medication at all. The odd paracetamol. But night time, that's a whole different story. I've had a lot of pain. It must be nerves and muscles. So this is my FUB side. So a lot of pain here and here. My uplifted side has been a little bit painful as well. Just sort of around here. I gather they're just moving everything aren't they? So lying down and you've got to lie sort of sitting up has caused me so much pain. I still can't lie on my side. I did try a little bit last night. But it's still too painful for me. But the pain radiates around my back. Right the way across my front. Or it's like wearing a vice. It's all I can describe it as. It's like wearing a vice on me so tight. So I actually phone my doctors. I've had a couple of phone calls. They tried to give me cocodamol. To help me sleep and to numb the pain. But it really wasn't doing a lot. Because it was more nerve pain. So they have at last given me amitriptyline. Which is what my mum had said that I needed. So I asked them this time. The second time that I went. And I just said you know can I just give it a try. So I'd already tried it. Because my mum had given me some. So and it did help. So that is what I'm taking now. And that is really helping. So just in case you're having this operation. Be prepared for the pain. When you're sleeping. Yeah. So my tummy wound is healing okay. There's still a distinct difference. Between my. Where the scar is. And the lower bit. And the upper bit. Looks like I've been cutting off. Which I know I have. But it's not. It's not loose. It's connected to whatever is underneath. And the skin is still not moving freely. So I have a lot of swelling. Up here. And then a…

Good afternoon. I hope we're all well. I am on to speak about this amazing company, Advocat. So Advocat have created an app that you can use when you go to your medical appointments and it will record the whole conversation. It will also summarise it. It'll give you your keynotes. It'll give you your next steps. It also sends you links so that you can do some more research if you want. And it takes like words from the conversation. And like if I was to say to the consultant, I've got endometriosis, it would then reference an endomet riosis document to the discussion that I can then go in and do some more research. And this is what it looks like. So this is your front page. And as you can see, I've used this app three times and it gives the appointment a name. It comes up with a topic. Obviously it shows you your date. It's tried to tell me who the doctor is, but it's got the wrong names. It mustn't have picked it up quite right. So that is how your front screen looks. Then you have the actual conversation that happened. It looks like this. This is how it looks. And as you can see, you can go into detailed, simple transcripts or notes. At the very top, you can play back and listen to the whole conversation. It gives you your summarises it by giving you your reasons for appointments, your summary. Then further down, it shows you your next steps. And anything that you need to do or they need to do. And it is an amazing app and it's free. It's completely free. And everything is saved to your phone . It doesn't, it's not saved anywhere else. And it's all within your control. And I have had, since my first video that I did, I have had so many people reach out to me and tell me how impressed they are with the app. As am I, as is my husband. And he is so sceptical about these things. And I can't tell you how many times I have went back into the app and referred back to the conversations that I've had with the people in these meetings. And that's what's really good about it. You can go back and it saves all. You can go back and look at all the conversations you've had just to refresh your memory. And like I say, it's free. So it's a win-win. You'll never, ever forget. Because I know what I'm like. I take in absolutely nothing when I go into these meetings. I take in the bare minimum. And my husband probably doesn't take in that much either. So trying to piece…

Hello everyone, welcome back to this little TikTok. My dog's barking already, it's been two seconds. Let's ignore that. Maybe. Welcome back to the TikTok. It's been a while, hair's grown a little bit. Look at this now, I've just washed it. So look at that, I'll give you a little spike up. Oh yeah, it looks good. I'm not expecting it to stay with the stem cell transplant and stuff in the future. But it is what it is, it's growing at the minute and it's fantastic. Anyway, I'm here for an update. I need to stop yapping on. I'm here for an update. I'm going to speak a little bit quicker on this one for those that usually put it in two times. You don't have to put it in two times for this one. You're welcome. So a little update for you. I've just finished my fourth cycle of immunotherapy, which is what I was going to be put on before they do the next scan. My next scan is actually next week on, what day are we on today? Friday. It's on Tuesday next week. Woo, fantastic. I did have a haematology appointment on Monday, but it's been cancelled because there was no updates that they could give me until this scan. So, hopefully, fingers crossed, four rounds of immun otherapy, three months worth of immunotherapy has hopefully put me into remission. That's what we're hoping for. That's what the scan is hoping to say. And then I can go for my stem cell transplant. We don't know yet. I will update you as soon as I get those results. But as I said, we don't know. Secondly, before I carry on with any of that, I want to just do a little bit of free promotion for an app that I've been using recently. And it's, you know, the founders, the co-founders of the app approached me and asked me to test it out. And it's something called Advocat. It's just here. Little square box. Hello. There we go. It's called Advocat. And what they do is you can, for people like myself and other people with like chronic illnesses, cancer, any type of illness or anything, you can document your appointments on it. So I'm very forgetful. I get my mum to come to all my appointments because I don't remember anything. Okay. And with Advocat, what I do, I put, let's say my mum can't come to one appointment. Me and my mum sit there. Advocat, I've got the appointments in a list, future appointments, past appointments. And within that appointment that I put down, not only can you write the name of the doctor…

So I had my radiotherapy appointment on Monday, which all went really well. I've got my planning scan this coming Tuesday, and then hopefully I'll start radiotherapy two weeks after that, which means I might miss my holiday, but we'll see. I know, look at all my hair growing back. It's crazy. It's grown so much, and I've got little stubbly eyelashes, and even eyebrow hairs. I forgot about all the hair maintenance that a swimmer have to do. My eye is looking very lazy. Not sure what that's about. But yeah, all really positive news. I wanted to talk about an app called Advoca, so I'm going to put a link to it in the spiel below this. But if you have hospital appointments or doctor's appointments, it's really worth having or looking at. It's made by NHS doctors, and it's GDPR approved, and I think it was great and really helpful for me.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to get you onto this little app that I've used today. So it's called Advocat, it's called the Advocat app and it 's by Dr Michael and he reached out and said would you just use it at one of your appointments and see what you think. I used it today and honestly I feel like it's what I've been missing. So I am sick to death of, because I go to three different hospitals across three different trusts and they don't speak to each other, they can't access each other. So one doctor will say one thing and then someone else will say something else and I'm stuck in the middle and I am trying to relay what they've said and I've forgotten and it's a lot. But this app records, so you just tell them, you know, I'm recording, is that okay? And then it literally is like a microphone recorder but then at the end it then uploads your recording and transcribes it for you and it gives you a breakdown of what you said, what they said, it then gives you a simple version or a detailed version, it gives you links at the bottom if you know you're not sure what someone's been like. For mine I was talking about biopsy and and it was like, it sent me a link to Macmillan and then the cancer patient. Honestly, it was actually unreal and I feel like it's something I really needed because of so many miscommunications and I think like last time I had my appointment they told me I was having a PET scan and then they booked me in for a biopsy and when I challenged this they said oh we've got no record of it. I've now got the record of what's being said so it can't be challenged and when I go to my next appointment in a different hospital in a different trust who can't access the letter from my surgeon today I've got that I've got the whole breakdown of it so there is no questioning but I just think if you're someone who likes to keep track but you forget if you're going on your own you don't always take it in or if you're someone who just likes to have the information that like me I think it's absolutely incredible so I'm going to put it on to you at the end and see what you think.

TikTok caption: The new chatbot feature on the Advoca app makes an amazing app even more informative and helpful. Make sure you update it now to take advantage of this new feature.

So today I had an online appointment with a phyrologist to do with the phyrology of pain. It's through a London clinic and yeah it's another step to try and sort out phonic pain issues although not few of them. So it was supposed to be through a video call through their clinic but obviously due to heat wave and she wasn't in her clinic and didn't have access to my notes or to the system so she phoned me up. I took the phone call because I thought she was late for the appointment as I was in the waiting room so I thought okay I'll take the phone call in case it's for her and it was. And she explained the situation and said that she couldn't do the on my meeting I just didn't have access to everything. Could it be done on the phone? I thought first I was like oh I can't do that . And I went to a bit of a room and then I explained that I can't do appointments over a phone like that. I made my personal speech and I knew it was actually quite an involved appointment. I knew there were barriers and I couldn't do that at the moment. I explained everything to her and said it needed to be done as an online meeting for the teams or whatever and I said oh okay. I met surveyed but she was in September and I was like hmmm . So this is how about I did it through zoom. I just need to email. I was like oh I've got that on my speech app. However on my speech app it kept paying too fast. I said is there any way you can slow that down? So I said no but maybe we can work together for this. So behind the days I spoke very slowly and we worked around it anyway. And we did a bit of guesswork. She was very nice and managed to sort it. And we did our appointment through zoom. And I asked her permission to record it using the Avacart app. I explained my reasons behind it. It would help me with remembering everything. It would help explain everything better. And she was absolutely fine. And thanked me for asking her permission before doing it. So that was all good. So I've got to use it for the first time. Because it was not on the normal system we could only do a partial meeting. So I was like to have to have a whole run down of my health history with Project Prime. And my anxiety around that. So it was a whistle top store. A tour even. So I've had to have a whole lot of everything. And loved quite a lot. And about all the barriers I've encountered. When it came to pain. And…