Time to update the blog, it's been a while. I've just been plodding along and working my way through the last phase of the treatment alongside looking after the holiday lets, visiting family, and family visiting me. Generally just living life.
Yesterday was a big day for me, it was the end of the treatment for my breast cancer. I had the last of fifteen radiotherapy treatments. Throughout the last session I was watching the machine like a hawk, I don't know why but I think I was savouring every second because I knew it was the very last session, then the radiographer said it, she said "That's it all done, are you going to do anything to celebrate?" I said "Yes, go home and clean three holiday lets and plough my way through a tonne of linen." I guess that's the reality of it all, there is no big fanfare, no certificate or medal...life goes on and we try to get back to some sort of normality. Even now looking back now at the earlier part of the treatment and the scans it almost seems like a dream, I have the evidence of the chemotherapy every time I look at my nails and when I look in the mirror at my fluffy hair, but it seems so long ago and almost like a dream. I suppose the radiotherapy will seem like that soon. I had been staying in the hospital accommodation during the three weeks of treatment and coming home at weekends, it went really quickly, I met some lovely people also going through radiotherapy. I actually had a good three weeks despite being away from home.
But now it is time to move forward and try to put the last eight months behind me, try to forget the terror I felt in November, try to forget the absolute desperation I felt when my life was totally out of my control. Try to forget the paralysing desolation I felt when I thought I might die. Now its time to enjoy visiting my lovely family, friends and new grandson without the restrictions of appointments, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. When I look back at the times I visited them, and the worry I had about infection, the stomach injections I had to do and antibiotics all over Christmas and New Year, it was awful, I can hardly believe I'm free to go whenever I want now. I can remember visiting my Grandson a few days after he was born, I felt so rough, but also so happy that I had made the visit. Now I can start to make up for all the lost time.
So I realise that I had to go through all that, the appointments, scans, chemotherapy and radiotherapy just to have this chance of survival. People say I was brave....I was NOT brave, I just had no choice, I was scared, I was terrified, I cried, I cried a lot. But I went through it all and I've come out the other side, I'm not going to waste this chance of a longer life I've been lucky enough to have been given. I'm going to take the time enjoy all the silly little things I was always in too much of a hurry to enjoy before. I'm not going to worry about things that really don't matter or spend my precious time with people who bring me down. This is a new start for me, however long or short it might be, I'm going to make sure it's more important to put 'life' into my days and not worry about the amount of days there'll be in my life, because none of us knows the answer to that one. Easier said than done, but I'm going to try my very best.
Well it's time for the end of my blog, and in the nicest possible way...I hope I never ever have to update it here. If you've been reading my ramblings I hope I haven't bored you too much, and I wish you all the very best of everything, but most of all I wish you peace.
So that's it, it's time to say....
STOP THIS RIDE....I'M GETTING OFF!!!
