Oh boy did we get spoilt, being allowed three weeks off from the dreaded chemo regime and that awful journey to the hospital but reality soon kicked in again yesterday.
It seems silly that one extra week can make all the difference but it was like being 'normal' again for just a short while. Your brain seems to put it all out of your head, you don't get that tense feeling of dread every day because you have to go back again next week. For just a short while you can stop your brain from worrying about what the future holds, the trips to the hospital, the being sick, the bills, the financial worries etc etc. Maybe Christmas has something to do with it as well because you are coming to the end of another year and if you try hard enough you can pretend that a new year is not going to start and that this old year will just go on and on in peace.
But come Thursday night the tension had started to creep back in, the not wanting to go to bed - like a child who has a test at school the following day - because if you don't go to bed the next day can't start. Then when you do eventually get in bed your mind suddenly becomes wide awake and aware of all your fears and stresses and you know the night is going to be a long one.
You watch through the window and see the sun starting to come up but by that stage you are totally exhausted and your body just wants to collapse into a deep sleep but your mind again tells you that if you do you won't be able to get up on time and then you will miss the hospital appointment - are you bothered by that you ask yourself, maybe if we don't go then it will all just go away, disappear in a puff of smoke, then you become bothered, if you don't go you know that you will worry that you may have left it too late, if you miss this appointment after getting an extra week off then maybe the chemo will have stopped doing its job and then what will you do. Whichever one you choose is not really a choice because you don't want to do either. Why can't someone magic a third option for you, a nice option?
Then when you have dragged yourself out of the bed by your boot straps you try and be late any way, what can they do to you if you are late you ask, nothing that has not already been done you answer. Even that makes you worry, because the rebel in you wants to be late, the rebel wants to give you the choice but you know deep down that you will just feel akward and embarrassed and have to come up with some lame excuse. The rebel won this time and the excuse was the snow.
Anyway after being late by about 15 minutes we are then given the news that the ward is behind, again, and the five minutes of chemo will now take six hours of your time away. I want to scream at the staff, I want to tell them that its not fair, I want to shout out why they think we will just keep excepting that another day of our life will be taken off us, I want them to give me the drugs and let me put it into hubbies line, I don't want to have to go to the cafe and drink coffee for six hours not at £5 a go I don't and I definetly do not want to have to drive home down three motorways when its dark and full of ice and snow. But no I don't do any one of these things, well other than spend a fortune on the damned coffee. Why? Because where would it get us? The staff would not understand and think we were just rude and we have to keep going back there so I don't need or want to feel embarrassed when we do.
So eventually we leave the hospital at 6.45pm, our day here started with the leaving our home at 11am, then we face a traumatic journey home which is made worse by the weather and we arrive back in our town at 8pm, then have to try and get some fast food for the kids because otherwise they will not be eating until midnight, so end up in our local supermarket and eventaully walk through our front door at 9.30pm, totally exhausted.
We are now back to that place, the one full of fear and stress. Oh how I wish it could be Christmas everyday!
Ray
