Plenty of people have a problem with moles, but it's usually in the garden. Mine, unfortunately, are on the body.

As I type, I am trying not to think about the amount of pain I'm in. Yesterday I had two moles removed from the sole of my left foot, and next week I go back to have another one taken from my little toe. 

I did not know - as I find many others do not - that moles on the sole of your foot are inherently dangerous. This is a prime site for melanoma, as the sole of the foot is so vulnerable to injury. 

It was my podologist who spotted them and ordered me to see a dermatologist. It was a long wait for an appointment and I put it to the back of my mind until the actual day. My huge relief when she said they were not (yet) cancerous was replaced by apprehension when she warned me that the operation would be very painful and the anaesthetic can give you heart palpitations. 

When it comes to putting myself into other people's care, I am nervous at the best of times, so yesterday was quite a bad day. And having convinced myself that she was only covering her arse in telling me about the pain, I was taken aback by the unbelievable trauma of the injections. 

The reason, I suppose, is that the sole of the foot is well supplied with nerve endings and every one of them was jangling. It felt like the surgeon had put a spear in my foot and was crunching it around in the bones. Later, I discovered, grunting in pain, that I'd bitten a section off the inside of my cheek. 

All went fairly well then until some six hours later when the lidocaine wore off, to be followed by ten hours of searing nerve pain from the tips of my toes to my knee and, consequently, very little sleep. Luckily that has now reduced to a bearable level of 'ordinary' pain, so all that remains is for the wounds to heal. 

I have been ordered to walk on the foot as normal, which is no picnic. If I don't, the scars won't heal properly, as the natural tendency is to curl the foot up and keep weight off it. So, like love's young dream, I am hobbling around with a stick, feeling nauseous with pain and cursing the ineffectiveness of paracetamol. 

Oh la. Well, at least it is done, and it will be the worst of them, I hope. Fingers crossed for next week. 

While researching the beauty industry recently I came across one very worthwhile thing it's doing.

It is something that, like me, you might have been lucky enough never to encounter.

The Look Good Feel Better programme started as a collaboration between the beauty industry,  the American Cancer Society (ACS), and the National Cosmetology Association, a national organisation of cosmetologists, wig experts, aestheticians, makeup artists and nail technicians.

Its aim is to help women with cancer learn techniques to improve their appearance. 

Being diagnosed with cancer is a terrifying time for anyone, but the change in their looks is an added factor that distresses many female patients, right at a time when they need all the positive attitude they can muster.

Chemotherapy saves lives but losing hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes; skin flaking off and becoming tender; and developing a sallow, hollow-eyed complexion are just some of its side effects. Many women describe its ravages as looking at a stranger in the mirror. 

Look Good Feel Better is completely free and exists in 20 countries worldwide. It's UK arm holds sessions weekly, fortnightly or monthly for up to 12 people in over 50 locations throughout the UK, in hospitals and cancer care centres.

Women are given a 12-step skincare regime, taught make-up application and are shown techniques for using wigs, hats and scarves. They also leave the 2-day session with a bag of free goodies, donated by the cosmetics companies.

The uplifting effect this has on women's self-esteem and confidence is humbling: "I can't tell you how it helped me...I can now make myself look lik the me I used to be"..."I look like me again"..."knowing I can still look my best has really helped me get through it'. Log on to the video on the US site and I guarantee you will not have a dry eye

So successful has the programme been in the past two decades (it recently had its 20th birthday) that LGFB has now branched out into services for men and for teens.  

If you would like to donate, or you work in the hair or beauty field and would like to give of your time, the organisation, in every country, is always looking for volunteers.

So, it would seem that yet another pleasure is being taken away from women - even moderate drinking, it appears, increases your risk of cancer.

I assume I'm not the only one fed-up with all this. Can't screw around (AIDS, herpes, hepatitis...), can't take drugs (even cannabis seems now to be linked with psychosis later in life), can't smoke (yeah, we all know why...), can't get pissed (I'm sure most of us have cut down to our 14 units a weeks or fewer) and can't eat yummy delicious food either. 

Now they're telling us that even our 14 units a week is 14 too many and that ALL alcohol is bad. Shame that booze is so very pleasurable then, isn't it?

I have to admit that in my own life it's the last thing I'll be cutting out. I never did get to shag around, being too fat and shy for that sort of thing, and drugs always terrified me because I suffer from depression. I LOVED smoking, but I gave it up for good five years ago and haven't been a daily smoker for nearly 20 years. But wine will be the last to go. They will have to prise it out of my dead, cold hands.

A meal without wine, to me, seems a pointless exercise, rather like a cup of tea without a digestive biscuit. Switching to camomile tea breaks the biscuit link, but how is one to break the link between wine and food? It is age-old, celebrated in almost every literature. Eat, drink and be merry, for tommorow we die.

Nothing else complements food the way wine does. I've tried water and it's rubbish. I've tried orange juice and it just doesn't GO. It goes with breakfast but not with lunch or dinner. I'd already cut out spirits years ago, and reduced my wine intake to red only, a single 110ml glass, but being asked to cut that out too seems a step too far to me. 

Well, I guess something's got to kill you - and it looks like in my case, it's going to be the drink.

Lingerie company Janet Reger has teamed up with Eloise, the post-mastectomy lingerie designer, to design a range of high-class silk lingerie for women who've had one or more mastectomies.

The range includes an underwired bra that can take one or two prostheses. The bra wings and straps have been adapted for a better fit while carrying the weight of a prosthesis; the underwire is wider and higher; the lace at the front has been strenthened and widened to offer more support; and both cups have been pocketed - this enables you to wear a full prosthesis if surgery has left you with a hollow in the chest cavity.

So you can match your entire lingerie outfit to your special bra, there is also a tanga, a brief and a camisole as well as a short nightdress that has also been pocketed on both sides and is accompanied by a short sleeve robe.

The collection is available in three colourways: Lavender Rose, Nougat and Aurora, prices start from £38.00.

Available from March 2009 from Eloise, which is a British firm but delivers worldwide.  

With cancer survival rates improving dramatically, more and more people continue to work through chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but the working world takes little account of their special needs.

Over 90,000 people of working age have cancer in Great Britain, but the world of work hasn't altered its perspective from the time when a diagnosis of cancer was a death sentence.

Cancer sufferers naturally get very fatigued, partly due to the illness, partly due to the treatment, and require shorter days (the British work the longest hours in Europe, which doesn't help). They would also benefit from working fewer days a week and a long, gradual return to full-time working. The article highlights the case of one woman who, in the absence of a personnel department, devised her own schedule for returning to work but quickly overloaded herself - she ended up signed off with depression and only now, three years later, has she returned to full-time working.

It is indicative of how the male-dominated world of work still doesn't actually take account of how real people live - of the fact that women get pregnant and give birth, that people have children and need to pick them up from school or stay home to care for them when they are sick. There are few job shares available in the UK, and the provision for working from home remains paltry, despite study after study showing that people who work from home at least one day per week are more efficient than their full-time colleagues. The majority of part-time workers are women, and they have no right to equal pay. There is no national provision for childcare.

Still, at least the issue of cancer and work is now being raised, which is something. Though given the attitude to work and the materialistic culture in the UK, heaven knows how long it will be before there are any guidelines implemented.

For more details, read the article here.