Hi everyone!
Well, I have been absent rather a long time, but it has been a pretty rough ride for me. Let me see... I spent the whole of lockdown from March 2020 in total, solo, isolation. It kept me from any risk of infection, but had a terrible impact on my mental health. Just when things were looking up, and I was getting vaccinated - in the first round, as my GP is very good - I had some awful symptoms. I ended up spending two weeks in February back in hospital, with all sorts of nasty symptoms. The thought was it might be cancer returning, possibly in my stomach. As it turned out, it was a terrible infection, which caused my lungs to swell up. This in turn put a lot of constriction and pressure on other organs, and my gall bladder started to discharge into my stomach. It made me terribly sick. However, antibiotics finally fixed it. I was discharged.
Half an hour after returning home, I had a bad fall, and broke my hand. And was whisked right back to A&E. The upshot of this is that the doctors think my bones are breaking far too easily, and are going to be investigating me for osteopenia, or some other bone condtion, to explain this. Fun!
And since then, my insides have been rebelling. I now have back a LOT of the symptoms I had with the original cancer. Cramps, pain, urgency, feelings of blockages in my bowel, grey mucus, blood in stools... they're all back. I did have a colonoscopy in October last year, which was clear, but I am very well aware how quickly a tumour can grow. And my fatigue has rocketed again, and I just feel generally ill. So I have blood tests on Monday, screening to clear me for colonoscopy and CT scans. I know that I will be seen as quickly as is possible, but I am also very well aware that there is a HUGE backlog of cases thanks to the lockdown, and it is a major issue for cancer patients, because it means there are so many people needing immediate help, that even very urgent cases are experiencing long delays.
On top of all this, my father died earlier this month. It was a difficult time. The funeral was not too bad, but his flat was in a shocking state, and since he was totally incontinent when he was taken into hospital, and nobody went to his flat in two months, the inside is a reeking mess. Clearing it out is huge work, and I have not been able to contribute much help, as I am far too ill. In addition, it seems that despite him being executor for both my mother and grandmother over the past few years, he did not do much of the necessary work for that. So that now falls to his children. And the time period for registering deaths has expired for them, and it will cost us THOUSANDS to sort out their estates. And his estate is a total mess. He owes a LOT of money. Some can be written off - I do not believe we will be liable for the many thousands he has run up on credit cards. However, he didn't bother paying council tax for a very long time, there are debt collection agencies howling for blood, and he may well have been collecting the pensions for himself, my mother, and grandmother. And possibly spending them. All of which will have to be paid back by his inheritors, as those debts cannot be wiped off. In short, he has probably left us with many thousands of pounds worth of debt, and it is going to take far more than I or my siblings have available right now to clear it all. So we have all that landing at this time, too.
I am not doing well.
And I really need a holiday. Somewhere quiet, warm, and a very long way away from any of the stress that is trying to gnaw through what remains of my willpower.
Robin
