Been feeling a bit gloomy the last couple of days. It all started when I got an email from work telling me that they are taking me off full pay from the beginning of next month. I wasn’t surprised, I have been expecting it for weeks. I’ll have been off work 6 months then and I’m only entitled to 3 months full pay, so they have been more than generous. It just got me to thinking again that by getting cancer I have let so many people down. I’ve let my employer down, my absence has caused them a lot of problems. I feel I’ve let my husband down because now I’ll be going onto SSP we are going to have to make big changes to our household budget and dip into our savings. I keep thinking I have let my parents down. When my Mum’s health took a turn for the worse a few years ago I encouraged them to move near us. I promised I’d always look after them but I haven’t been doing much of that lately. Mum says I mustn’t feel bad, she feels just as guilty because she’s not well enough to help look after me.
I just feel so helpless sometimes though. My elderly neighbour lives alone and has just been discharged from hospital. If I was fit and well I could be out running errands for him. A good friend is in pieces at the moment because her daughter-in-law has just been diagnosed with bowel cancer. I would love to be able to give them some comfort and support but I can’t ring her up as I’m still temporarily deaf.
I’ve not been helping myself by getting impatient about my recovery. It’s only 3 weeks since I was given permission to start eating and drinking again. There is progress but I started to push myself a little too hard and ended up getting upset when I tried to eat a larger amount of food and couldn’t manage it. I also had a mad moment when I decided it would be a good idea to eat some Pringles. I managed it but I was very disappointed as they had the taste and texture of cardboard and kept getting stuck to the roof of my mouth. I don’t know what else I was expecting, I am well aware that my taste buds and saliva glands have been damaged and have not come back yet.
I had also been looking forward to watching some tennis over the next few weeks. This activity has got me through a lot of difficult times this year. Unfortunately there was news yesterday that Andy Murray is going into hospital for an operation next week and won’t be playing again for months. It doesn’t stop me watching tennis but it does mean that most of my friends on the internet tennis forums will disappear until he is better. I always look forward to all the chat and banter, it’s my special place to go to get away from my cancer for a few hours. There are times I need to be with people who don’t know about my illness. Get well soon Andy.
I have decided that the main reason I am struggling with my recovery is that it is nothing like I expected it to be. I had 7 weeks at home after my neck dissection operation and it was a reasonably enjoyable time. I thought the recovery from the chemo and radiotherapy would be similar, I just imagined I’d be more tired, sick all the time, and in pain. Well so far I have been less tired, I’ve never been sick, or needed one painkiller. However after the operation I was eating normally and I could hear and speak properly. So life seemed pretty OK then. I was well enough at that time to feel I could have gone back to work, but I promised the Doctors I’d stay indoors because of my immune system. My recovery now from the radiotherapy and chemo is something completely different.
I have worked out here are three main hurdles to get through now in my recovery. The first is to get my hearing back. This should hopefully happen naturally over the next 7 weeks or there will be an operation. Then the next step is to be able to eat full size meals so that I can get rid of my feeding tube. And the last most important hurdle is to get rid of all the swelling and radiotherapy damage to my neck so that the hospital can scan me and tell me hopefully that my treatment has worked.
