I've been rather quiet lately, mainly because I've managed to get pulled in a million different directions with work, family and the such; people I think we are gaining some routine!
Anyway, we're now a couple of days shy of 6 months of the knowledge that my body is a factory of cell mayhem and it all seems rather far away now despite still being a part of me now. Very odd!
I turned 27 nearly 2 weeks ago and am about to have a 3rd birthday celebration! If you'd told me in April I'd be shouting from the rooftops that I'd just got another year older I might have thought you'd lost it but frankly that's a ridiculous point of view and I'm now very aware that every year is a victory and an honour.
So what's happened? I'm FINALLY back at work full time. We had a month plus of struggling and then it seemed to lift gradually to a point where now I'm back to my normal hours. I'm still enjoying the tail end of 'cancer brain' and I'm still tired but I've gone back to dancing and I've started seeing people so there's a level of normality that had been missing for quite some time.
Wedding planning is still slow. I want everyone I love to be there but I refuse to pay a fortune just so people can witness the marriage and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it plays on my mind that there's no telling where I'll be with this lumpy bumpy lark by then. I refuse to let it stop me I say, then I find myself thinking of contingencies if I'm having RT again (I'll be knackered) or Chemo (I'll be sick and somewhat hairless). I know they never want to say to you 'yes you're fine' or 'don't worry, you've got a good couple of years before it comes back again' but it means it's always there.
Of course people who see me still insist on telling me how well I look....err that's because I am well but cheers! The sympathy squeezers have in the most part moved on to their next victim and I get to bustle around work and my friends just being Lottie for large parts of the day between being asked how I'm coping and whether my health is OK. I swear people think I must just spontaneously combust if they're not careful, so they just want to keep tabs...I suppose you never know!
Hairy and I are in a much better place. It's taken him a while but he's started to deal with the stress it put us under the last few months and I've even overheard him telling people 'they can't cure it but she'll be OK, she'll just get treatment when she needs it' and he sounds as though he believes it which is reassuring! I hated worrying him and I hated him being so grumpy - a happy Hairy is a wonderful Hairy!
I went back home for a few days after my birthday (another family member had a bit if a health scare so it was timely too). Quite a lot of the people had home hadn't seen me since I was last down at the end of May, still completely terrified that I was definitely going to die so I think it was nice for them to see that actually as weird as it's been, everything's getting there. My grandmother gets first prize for most dramatic reaction, after she grabbed me (at my birthday meal) to announce that she hadn't dyed her hair the whole time I'd been sick and the day I called her to say the haematologist had seen me and said he was happy to leave it for a few months because the RT had killed off everything worth targeting at the moment she'd gone straight out to get her hair done and book a holiday!
I've promised to try not to develop any other incurable diseases so as not to interrupt her hairdresser's schedule!
As for current cancer watch, it's very much the same as it was last month. There's something that might be cancer again but it's growing slowly and so I'm not in a hurry to get it looked at. My new found attitude seems a bit of a revelation but it is what it is. If it continues to grow really slowly I might get away with getting married before they zap me again though so fingers crossed!
