We all have them, even when we’re fit, healthy people but when you have cancer, the bad days are evil. Having leukaemia has not only invaded my body but my whole life.
At first the bad days were easy to handle.. I could talk my brain into believing that everything was going to be ok.. that there was life after cancer. I honestly, maybe stupidly thought I would get through this and go back to my old life .. my job, my friends, my social life BUT one by one that life was cruelly snatched from me and the bad days are harder to get through.
I don’t have a partner/husband to help support me, I have my daughters but there is only so much they can help with and if I want to talk about my feelings they recoil with fear, the thought, that mum wants to talk about the truth.. the facts of how serious my illness is, that even if I make it through the stem cell transplant, my life will never be the same.. if I mention the word death they look at me with their beautiful eyes begging me to not say another word. I understand completely what hell this is for them too and because of this I stay quiet and try to be the happy, funny mum that they love.... the good memories are more important to them and me at the moment.
Its ironic that due to my full time job a lot of my friends and social life evolved around it... when I lost my job, the rest all seemed to fall away bit by bit.. my friends had their own lives to get on with and with my health not being brilliant the social life stopped too. Out of all of this my one close friend has been my rock and unfortunately my sounding board for all the macabre thoughts that go through my head on really bad days. The last conversation we had, upset her and I will never forgive myself for that but at the same time, unbeknown to her she snapped me out of it... I told her about all the debt I had accumulated since being ill, how the arrears on my mortgage had got to the point that if I don’t sort something out they might force me to sell my house, that all the bills were piling up, all the phone calls to these companies explaining my circumstances and being told they were sorry but I need to pay something or they will take it further... I’m sorry too but my benefits dont come anywhere near what I was earning .. they can only stretch so far. Anyways, I told my friend, and this is what upset her, that if I stopped fighting and just died all of this would go away... my life insurance would cover my mortgage and debt, my pensions would help my girls with some future security and no one would have to worry about me anymore...
...This is the lowest I have ever hit... I actually said out loud that I wanted to die OMG .. the look on her face was one I will never forget.
As the words left my mouth and I saw the hurt in her eyes and imagined it in my girls ... It hit me like a ton of bricks, I was prepared to give up my life .. why? Because I couldn’t cope with losing all the material things I had built up around me.. my little safe haven where I could hide from the outside world .. how utterly, utterly stupid!! So what if it’s all gone tmrw.. let them take the lot...I still have the love of my family, my friends... I still get to cherish every day extra I have with them .. Jeez I might even get to fulfill my dreams of travelling this beautiful country and seeing places I’ve never been, listen to music as loud as my heart desires, sing my favourite songs...
My health will never be the same but I will never wish I was dead again.. whether I’m living in a cardboard box or a luxury hotel, I intend to fight ... my dreams and the love that surrounds me will keep me going... they are and will get me through this hell and all the future bad days to come ...
HERE’S TO LIFE, LOVE AND DREAMS xx
