Pondering

Its a little before 10.00am Tuesday morning - the last day of my last ultra long weekend over the Christmas / New Year period and I am lazing in bed with some toast and a cuppa. The house is as quiet as a mouse, except for one of the cats who is prowling around trying to find the ideal place to lie down. There are even very few vehicles driving passed our place...normally it’s a fairly busy road.

The girls and I decided to go for a drive yesterday. I desperately needed to get out of the house. While I enjoy staying home for the two days of a normal weekend,  up to 3 or 4 days gets a bit much. So we ended up driving down to Waihi Beach, which is a two hour drive. We left home close to 12.30 so spent the afternoon down there, leaving to come home at 5.30pm...so really only 3 hours down there but it was really enjoyable. I don’t really get to spend too much time with my little girl anymore...what with her working retail, her shifts are erratic and then she works all day Saturday. In between all that, she is off out with mates and boyfriend. She often makes a point of jumping on my bed for a chat when she gets home which is lovely but sometimes I am so tired, I can hardly keep my eyes open and I fall asleep on her. So yesterday was most definitely a treat and I loved every moment of it even the slow crawl to the motorway coming home at the end of the day and the rain which fell randomly at various places.

Hubby has been away for two nights now...the first night I found it hard going to sleep even though I was quite tired and woke intermittently until I finally fell into a heavy slumber at some ridiculous hour. I am ok during the day although he is often on my mind...wondering what he is doing, wishing I could see his 3 person tent up with his airbed made up etc - his little home for the next two weeks. I hope he has a wonderful time and gets in lots of fishing which is one of his passions and doesn’t get much of a chance to partake in.

While he is away, I have a couple of appointments coming up. A CT scan this coming Thursday morning - at 7.30am at North Shore Hospital for goodness sake!!! They must be trying to squeeze me in, as I have an oncology appointment on Monday 8th January. They like to be able to give me the results at these appointments. There’s always a bit of anxiety at this time. Even though there is no evidential reason to be...I feel as well as I have all the way through to date so there is no reason to believe that anything has changed. But anxiety is very much one of the major symptoms of having cancer. It hangs over your head constantly - you are constantly filled with fear because you know for certain that one day you will be given the news, your cancer has spread and I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do for you. But when? when will that day come? And so we spend the whole of the time we have left, even the good, healthy time - wondering when we’re going to die...how will our families cope and probably coming to terms with the biggest hurdle of all for me, I won’t be here to console my girls...hubby too of course but my babies, god that truly hurts my heart.

Sometimes I even wonder if this blog is a good idea because I know my babies read it...so they get to read my fears and I don’t know that I like that...it was a comment my baby girl made to me the other day. I had said something about how the fear hangs over you most of the time, and she replied something along the lines “I know exactly what you mean”. Sometimes I am so consumed by my own fear and being wrapped up in the unfairness of this that I forget how it affects those around me. Do I make it worse for them by the things I say? I often make inappropriate jokes about having cancer but the way I see it, is that I am being open about it...its never a taboo subject...it is very much a part of our lives but do I make it too much a part? But it can’t be a serious subject all the time...we have have a bit of a laugh about some aspects of it...on Christmas night my baby girl also asked me “do you think we will have many more Christmasses?” It breaks my heart that she even has to think about that...

For now I am well and even when you compare how I was this time last year, I am much better. Last summer we hardly did any drives so a year later, I have my driving mojo back again. To me that is definitely a sign of progress! Maybe last year I was still recuperating from all those surgeries I’d had 12 or so months earlier. So shouldn’t we be making the most of this healthy time? But feeling anxious is very real especially when a scan is coming up and then waiting for the results. None of us involved in this journey gets away scott free. My loved ones get to worry about me...and to see the changes in me. For me, I have to cope and deal with those changes. And I struggle fiercely with them. I talk often about my tolerance or rather, the lack of it. I gave a family member a bit of a telling off the other day on the phone...I often have to think before I speak and this happens more often than not at work. The constant aches...even walking down the back steps the other day...theres only two of them once you step out the back door! But I had to step sideways down them, one at a time. What I didn’t realise was that son in law was out there, he could hear me groaning with each step and asked if I was ok...I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it...plodding my way down two steps, you’d think I’d walked a few levels down or something. But actually, it was really nice to hear him ask...often hubby just ignores me. He’s probanly so used to hearing me because every time I get up out of an arm chair or get out of bed, its no easy fete. I have to psyche myself up to do it...and actually that is what I really hate. Cancer has taken away my freedom of movement - with ease I mean. But hey, as I have said many times before, if this is all I have to endure, then I need to be grateful. But I do think about me pre-cancer and am envious at those memories. But I am alive and well and therefore am grateful...

Coming up two years metastatic...with many more to go🙂

Tuesday 2nd January 2018 - 11.00am