One of the worst things for me about November is going to work and coming home in the dark. I am sure teenagers these days have a vampire-ness to them when they complain as I open the classroom blinds – my feeble attempt at seeing some daylight hours. I love the weekend, doing a few jobs in the garden and taking the dog out without needing a torch, just to see the daylight and feel the occasional ray of sun on your face, it warms the soul. Getting back into the garden, even just for a bit was a big mood changer this year. Going through diagnosis and treatment had left it all a bit abandoned. We’d managed some tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse but the veg plot had a fallow year. Taking the secateurs to the fruit bushes and re-taming the grapes started to bring some semblance of order to it all. The puppy had tried to dig to Australia too at times, so we fenced some of the garden off to her, which would hopefully stop her digging up anything we planted too. The one aspect that helps to brighten the commute home is the gradual increase of coloured lights everywhere as people decorate for Christmas. We go for some simple white lights outside and on the trees in the garden, but there’s something magical about everyone’s different take on it, something hopeful in the spectrum of coloured lights. Last Christmas had been completely overshadowed by my diagnosis; at times I had even thought it might have been my last. The Christmas Day walk with my granddaughter was very emotional. We hadn’t seen her on her first Christmas Day, but I really needed to see her last year, so that we could say we’d had one with her, to get some photos to remember it. Due to the high levels of Covid and needing to shield so that I didn’t miss any appointments a walk on the Chase was the only way to manage it without having to ask them to shield for a week beforehand. Driving in to work one morning I just started to cry out of the blue, it was the lights, the anticipation of Christmas and the overwhelming gratitude that I was going to see another Christmas, one I hadn’t dared to hope for a year earlier. I had to make a presentation at work later that day, at the end I was asked whether I had enough support with some of the challenges my team faced, I struggled to get the words out, cried a little and thanked them for everything, I later explained to my boss about my drive in – bad timing had caught me off guard a little.
We woke up on the last Saturday of November to snow, lovely when we don’t have to dig ourselves out for work, so I decided to go for it and put the tree up. Decorating the Christmas tree had always been a family occasion as a child. I remember the happiness of dusting the delicate glass baubles as we passed them to mum for her to position them on the tree. Each year that I pull the box out I remember these happy times, I miss her dearly every day, especially on such days, but am grateful for the strength she has given me to get through this year. Once decorated, I privately raised a toast to her, albeit with a cup of herbal tea this year! A few days later it was the ‘first of the firsts’, 3rd December, the day of the fateful call that turned the world upside down and inside out. I’d had my latest oncology check-up a couple of days earlier and all was looking fine, so physically I was good and mentally knowing that my remission was fine. Thankfully it was Friday, so I had a slightly later start and a nice class in the afternoon. That being the case, the day passed fairly uneventfully but those around me knew my mind was elsewhere and gave me the space I needed, sometimes that’s all you need – and a hug from hubby and fuss from the dog to welcome you home. Next up was the anniversary of my biopsy, duly recorded with a re-post on social media of the great big plaster I had on my neck. I am fairly certain, and somewhat hopeful, that one this first year has gone by all these ‘little’ dates fade into normality and it is just a couple of the ‘big ones’ that remain.
One such anniversary that I will never be able to forget is the confirmation of cancer. The timing of it means we won’t escape that one. I had hoped to go to the Christmas Eve carol service. It is a really special part of Christmas for me, I spent my teens as a practising Catholic and attended midnight mass, delivering the readings a couple of times. My faith has lapsed somewhat over the intervening years, but Christmas is the one time I still like to attend church. There is something magical about a candlelit family nativity service, and our local church does it with a real community spirit. We last went pre-pandemic and I’d misread the times, so we had to sneak in for the last twenty minutes. There was a lot being said about hygge at the time too, and nothing embodies this for me more than a church full of candlelight to sing carols by. I wanted to capture this, but Covid levels were high again, and I still need to be careful due to the immunosuppressants I now need to take for the rheumatoid arthritis. We debated attending lots, I wanted to be in a happy place for the time of last year’s phone call. Eventually I conceded to my husband’s sense and didn’t go, my stepdaughter was working so we went to collect my granddaughter from her dad late morning and had an afternoon of grandparent cuddles, playing games in a room covered in every toy from the box and watched Christmas movies. Yes, I had a little tear around 4pm, but a huge cuddle and enjoying time together is what this battle has been fought for, so I loved every minute of it. We opened the Christmas Eve box, enjoyed a meal, and put out mince pies, carrots and sherry for Santa before they all headed home. Once we had popped over for present opening on Christmas Day we came home, poured a Bellini or two and I cooked us lunch (the one guaranteed day of the year I get to be in control of the kitchen). I was tad merry by lunch time and yes I did post a video of me dancing in the kitchen on social media, with the caption “1st bonus Christmas, don’t care how ridiculous I look”. That is the liberating aspect of surviving cancer, I have a very carefree attitude to what other people think of me now, I honestly don’t give a fig! I have come through worse than other people’s words or thoughts, I know who I am and why I am who I am, like it or lump it.
The next anniversary will be remembered by much of the world for a very different reason. I had my tonsillectomy on 7th January. I will always remember sitting in the waiting room watching news footage of the riots on the Capitol in America. But the op went fine, and it was the start of ridding my body of this intrusion. Don’t get me wrong, the pain was acute, but thankfully short lived. I still find it a little strange looking in a mirror to check on my throat and see the shape of it now, tonsil free and slightly scarred from treatment. I was a little worried recently that it is rather lopsided but was reassured on my last check up that it is all fine. I guess the radiotherapy might have killed off a little more on one side than the other. Walking into the hospital on my own in floods of tears was honestly one of the lowest points of last year. Hopefully post Covid people can have someone with them for that part. It was isolating and I was full of fear, which contrasted with my absolute delight when I saw the nurse in recovery and made a mental note that I was alive. I am hoping in the future this day just becomes a fleeting memory, although one I doubt, I will be able to forget. That will be secondary and down to the ‘where were you when’ aspect of a global incident though rather than what happened to me that day.
Thankfully there were that many appointments as I had my planning scan, mask fitting, PEG operation and started treatment that they all kind of merge and don’t sit in my consciousness. I marked that time in a way this year by completing the Katherine Allport Hamper March, raising funds for a fantastic local charity that provides care hampers to Staffordshire residents undergoing chemotherapy. The pooch and I took our time as my arthritis was bad, so we managed at least a mile a day, with a little more on a weekend. We managed to raise enough for three hampers which, at a time when bills were rising, I was very happy with. We finished at 9.45pm on 21st March. On that last evening walk I was crying, honestly, I never used to burst into tears so much, some of this was the pain as my metatarsals felt like they were being crushed and my right hip wasn’t great, and some was completing the walk; mostly, it was reflecting on the past year and a bit. I just remember the daily trek to Wolverhampton, the relentlessness of treatment, and marvellous support from loved ones and the wonderful NHS staff who got me through it. 2nd April saw the end to all of that, the bell ringing of the Mary Celeste on Good Friday and the sheer relief of it being over. Although, all of us who have worn that t-shirt know that isn’t really the day it is over, it takes another 3-6 weeks of dropping further into the abyss before we start to see the light. The next day was the first I had been unable to eat but is also our wedding anniversary. Now it will always be X years since we married and Y since the day I couldn’t swallow. It was a much happier day this year and thankfully we were able to share a meal together, we had booked to go out but changed venue as there was a limited Sunday menu where we had originally planned and sadly that is part of the legacy that lingers, dry mouth and unable to eat spices can restrict where you eat out. Hopefully this is another of those dates where our anniversary will be the main focus again with the passing of time, I guess we just need to make that the case.
So, with a year back at work and a year since the PET CT scan under my belt too it really does start to feel like I am moving on. Like is pretty good. I’ve had some additional support form speech and language as my vocal chords were struggling a little, I have to stretch my jaw daily or the trismus takes hold. Eating is 80% normal, mechanically fine so long as I have a drink to hand. There are some foods I still don’t like, that feel hideous in my mouth these days and some I just can’t handle, but I am fine. I have one more anniversary to go, confirmation of remission, but that’s a funny one as the fact of being in remission must have been before the scan, so is that actually an anniversary as such?
