After months of finding it almost impossible to sleep, I appear to have skipped to the other end of the spectrum and now can barely keep myself awake. Call me The Sleeper - defender of beds, pillows and nap times! If there's a doze to be had, I'm there! I'll conquer unconsciousness, one snuggled sleep at a time! We're 3 radiotherapy sessions down, 9 to go and I'm still far more upbeat than I've been for weeks. Isn't it crazy what a whole heap of sleep can do for a person? I bet if I hibernated, I'd probably get an award for happiest person that ever lived! Well, for the few months of the year I'd be awake anyway!
Our friends arrived from home (where I grew up) on Friday afternoon, after I'd had quite a considerable nap and we took a pretty relaxed approach to weekend activities. I felt a little cruel that they'd come 350 miles and saw very little of the sights but I think they still enjoyed themselves. They saw a few things in the local area. I took them to a secondhand book shop in a Victorian railway, we went to the park, we went people watching and saw some of the iconic sights. They were happy not to do too much and so I got a couple more naps in there while they were here. Driving 350 miles will take it out of you too so I think they were glad of it. I'm really rocking my 20s right now with all this sleeping! It was lovely to have old friends around and to be doing something else that wasn't 100% focused on cancer and all the fun of it.
Jam, Hairy and I took the girls on a walk on Saturday night around the city that more or less mirrored the walk I'd done on my first trip up here, when I was still convinced it was just a trip away and not the place I'd decide to relocate to in about 4 days time. I'd made her a farewell book because it looked as though Jam would be moving back up north and I had literally no intention of moving. I had a job, a flat and friends where I was living; why would you leave a perfectly good life?
Like so many novels, this particular chapter in life started with a boy. Not my lovely Hairy; I'd yet to even know he existed at this point. I was 20 and if a person could be addictive, I'm fairly certain he was as close as I ever got before or since. I honestly think it wasa chemical thing; I probably would have torn myself in two if he'd asked me. Not in the least bit healthy as a basis for any kind of relationship and unsurprisingly it didn't last very long at all. I lost myself in my feelings for him for a while and then my father was in hospital and suddenly it seemed like this was the only place I should be. 4 days is enough to uproot your whole life right?
In retrospect it was one of the most reckless decisions I'd ever made. I packed up my stuff, quit my job, rented my flat out and moved 350 miles on a whim 3 weeks after visiting there and it hadn't even been a particularly successful trip. It turned out to be a lasting reckless decision though. 5 years after Jam had taken me on this walk, to show me the city she loved, I was doing the same and I'm settled here. 5 and a half years, Hairy, 2 cats, friends, a career and a house. Every stupid mistake can turn out well; it's what you make of it. Through luck more than design it seems to have been the best thing I ever did. It's nice having fresh eyes here to remind me what it is I love so much about where I've set up my life. A bit of sleep done and I'm feeling very fortunate again. I fully intend to compete in the 2016 Olympics as a champion sleeper. I slept half of today and I'm still perfectly intent on being back in bed by 9pm. The cats are loving their warm life-like pillow. Everyone should have some. They make my heart hurt they're so cute!
Anyhoo, more on a cancer note and radiotherapy is still going well. The last two days I've had it, I've come out feeling nauseated but I can't see how that's possible since the beam shouldn't reach that far, despite it being pointed at my tummy through the arm thanks to the funky angle. Maybe my body is just disgusted with the early mornings. Today was a ginger record. I managed to sleep through 2 cats, 3 alarms and Hairy attempting to drag me out of bed so I wouldn't be late for my appointment. They took an age to set me up again. It's a weird place to point it at I guess, so their insistence that the first go would be the only long one seems a little over ambitious but the team are lovely and it's not like I have to do anything while they prop stuff up, stick stuff down, move angles, beds, applicators and the such. It's all going rather well. I've got localised sunburn-like soreness going on and I think my oncologists theory about the "liquid disease" is only a couple days off coming true (yucky yucky yucky) but in the grand scheme of things it's really not too bad and to be honest I was thrilled to see these small changes because I figure that must mean it's working!
I've got a discernable lump on my right lymph node in my neck now but I'm still convinced it isn't cancer. I don't see how it would jump from an arm to a neck when it'd been growing so slowly before people started poking at it! I've had maybe a 3 minute panic last since Friday about it and that was it. We're making progress on the happy scale! If I could get off my arse long enough I might even be happy enough to do a happy dance, on a table in TGI Fridays with an 'I'm SO happy" t shirt on. Since I am way too attached to my new horizontal way of living, I will instead say that things are looking up. If I carry on sleeping, I might even stop the irrational ranting. No promises though!
Ren decided to get in touch. Jam told him I had cancer and apparently he decided this meant he needed to take time off to come and see me. I enquired whether she'd made it clear I'm not exactly on death's door but I forget what she said in response. Nice to know I'll still be popular in death though eh!
My book reading was going marginally well until I remembered how to sleep and now it's pretty futile attempting to keep my eyes open long enough to read anything interesting. Are audiobooks cheating? I'm sure there's nothing wrong with giving yourself the gift of grown up bedtime stories...or nap time stories...or any time you can't be bothered to keep your eyes open stories!
The even better news is that Hairypants is finally starting to be a little less cranky and crazy. I feel mean for getting so wound up with him but I think I was just so angry that he couldn't be the one to take the emotional baggage for once. He's the one that fixes the practical stuff, tells me how loved and awesome I am and does so much to make my life great that I know it's rubbish of me to expect him to go out of his sphere of abilities just because I can't compensate this time. Normally when things are tough, I play the grown up, sensible role and do the consoling and the keeping calm. I knew when I fell in love with him that he wasn't any good at it and I wasn't surprised when he was so traumatised by seeing me so upset. I wanted to make it better for him and I couldn't but it bothered me. I won't tell him this of course because he'd be even more devastated and I know how much he loves me. He truly is the best man I know. I think seeing me less stressed has given him the confidence to relax too and it's nice to see him smiling a lot more than he was. I think the cats have helped too. For a man who said we couldn't have cats, he's certainly fussing over them enough! Bless his cottons.
Hopefully the smiles and the positivity will continue!
