Emergence

I am emerging from room cancer..My head is slowly peering around the door to see what is going on outside.. Whilst I am still inundated with hospital appointments, (10 this week alone), I am also able to start focussing a little away from the beach in front of me out to the horizon.

I have started dating again, slowly, gently and very, very hesitantly, I am out there in the big bad world. I may add that it is incredibly scary. I feel naked, ugly and bereft without my hair. Minerva is making her way again but without her great coat of self-possession. I went to a party this bank holiday weekend and felt self-conscious and shy, rather like a teenager on the brink of adolescenthood at her first 'social'.

It is so hard not to look back, so hard not to look at the photographs of myself, glamorous last summer and feel huge pangs of regret. I don't like the 'new' me on the surface. I have put on weight due to steroids, my hair has fallen out and has been replaced by ordinary stubble, and even my eyelashes are stumps...

But still, I stumble on, like that first butterfly who knows that the sun beckons somewhere beyond her safe cocoon. It is hard, it is difficult, but I am still peering around that door...


Minerva

Black humour...

I was told today that I had another tumour..and I laughed... When you have had cancer, the most beautiful word in the English language is the word 'benign' and that is what I was told today..Mind you, I did have to get the doctor who told me to repeat the 'b' word three times just so my addled shocked brain would understand that it wasn't a repeat of the scenario a mere 9 months ago...

Do you remember dear reader that I have had awful pain in my hips since the 7th chemo? If you are new, you probably don't and in deference to my regular readers I have tried not to go on and on about it, but usually failed.. Since late chemo, I have had trouble walking and standing for long periods. As I am a school teacher of adolescent boys, I have been concerned that a return to work where standing and walking around is de rigeur would be difficult for me and hoped that this was a temporary situation rather than a permanent side-effect of chemo...Remember I am but a youthful 39 not in my later ages where a condition like this, whilst just as unwelcome, would not be as surprising!

I had a bone scan where changes in the bones were noted but that it wasn't either cancer (phew!) or arthritis..Then another xray to check for a condition where the blood vessels to the joints start shutting down and then, nothing, nil, zilch from my doctors..But, I was still in pain...
Off I went again, and asked for another test. Another xray from a different position and hey, presto, it has appeared. I have a hemangioma on my spine or as the doctor put it a 'benign spinal lesion.'

And I laughed...I laughed because I had pursued the source of my pain, I laughed because the tumour was benign and I laughed because I am not destined to walk like a nonagenarian for the rest of my days....

And I laughed..because with cancer one never knows when one will laugh again....

Minerva

A Day at the Beach.

A day at the beach. The air full of mist like a smoky bar, heavy horizon and waves, waves that continue to crash against the pebbled beach. The promenade, sodden with rain, streams with water across our path as we, two, only walk across the shingle. The ochre of the pebbles contrasts with the milky aqua of the water which turns to deeper blue towards France.

And still the waves crash against the pebbles, relentless in their quest to strive further up the shore. They know in their 'waveness' that they won't achieve it today, they may not achieve it tomorrow, they may not ever achieve their goal of submerging the shore, but that isn't the point...No, the point is that they are forever trying to achieve it. That despite outstanding odds including Nature herself, they will continue to strive, continue to try to grasp the next slope...

We are all like those waves. Whatever happens to us, whether it be an enemy of the body like Cancer, or an enemy of the mind like depression, hundreds of thousands of us still get up every morning, still take children to school, still go out to work, still put ourselves out there, up that next slope, beyond that next layer of shingle, back to the promenade of normality...

Raise your glasses Ladies and Gentlemen to the indomitability of the human spirit.....

Minerva

Regrets

Tags: breast cancer, regrets, materialism

We all have regrets. I have always admired people who say they don't have any. Strangely enough I find mine are about relatively minor things. I don't regret my divorce or spending nearly £1500 on my cat's broken leg to repair it... But there are small things that I do think upon at night, that I beat myself up about even five, ten years afterwards.

For example, when I first arrived in England having lived abroad for many years, I sold a 10 bedroom house in the country to move to London and not having the time or energy to arrange a sale of the furniture in London, I arranged for it all to be auctioned in the country... Pieces of furniture which were very sentimental or really quite valuable went for minor amounts. My grandmother's piano sold for three pounds - it was probably not worth very much more but the point was that it was to me... Just that I neither had the energy, time or space for it...

A year later, I went to a boot sale or a yard sale as you call them in the States. I was selling quite a lot including a saxophone which I sold for around £100 and now I realise it was worth a lot more...

Why? Why do I insist on still beating myself up years later about relatively minor things? Why can't I leave these incidents in the past where they belong?

A friend today, though, gave me an idea. She told me to put my regrets in a boat, a billowing sailed boat and metaphorically push it out to sea. By writing today, I want to do that, I want to entrust those regrets into the arms of the sea...Take what I have, and make it yours....

Minerva

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A new Year

I know that the New Year conventionally begins on the 1st January. Every year, between Christmas and January we assess the old year, we take stock of the lessons we have learnt over the past 12 months and we think about our regrets...chew over them like teenagers on their gum and decide how, this coming year we will do it differently. How, this year, we won't fall into the same traps we did the last, we won't fall into the same puddles or trip over the same stones. This year, we will learn from all our mistakes, we will add up all our blessings and appreciate them as they come along and make resolutions for the future ahead...

All these things I am doing now. Any time we go through something catastrophic, an unforeseen divorce, an illness from out of the blue, or an event which hurts or harms a loved one, a reassessment begins of all we hold dear and , if we are lucky, we re-emerge from this cocoon stronger, bolder, healthier in both our minds and our hearts than we were before....

I think people often see cancer as a destination but one of the things that I have learnt over the past year is to enjoy the journey. And as I transpose that to other areas of my life, it becomes even more apposite. It is important to revel in the process, wallow in the mud of reassessment for only that way is the final goal so appreciated...

Minerva

The Future...

I didn't think for a minute that I would be starting to make plans for the future: I don't think I even anticipated this happening, or at least, not for a long time.. Inured in 'Room Cancer', as I have been, I have felt cut off from the outside stream of life. That my previous existence, career, school and all have flowed all around me like a river whilst I, still in my tiny island, am strapped to a very different rock of reality...

And now? Suddenly, I have woken up and am slowly building my raft of normality. I have made an appointment with the GP (or primary care physician) next week to organise both my sick note from work and the way in which I should return. I have decided to call work this week and organise a plan for me to come back into the maelstrom that is the modern secondary school. I am, my friends, preparing for lift off, and it feels wonderful.....

Minerva

Parting of the Clouds

The clouds have opened and like the most dramatic landscapes where the clouds part like waves allowing the sunshine in, the dark fog has lifted from my mood. The garden, steeped of the moisture of the last few rainfilled days, is starting to bloom again and I feel revitalised. This morning I had radiation unseasonably early, before breakfast even and as I lay, again, on the hard bench with my arms up in the air and the machine whirring and beeping through my treatments, I thought how lucky I am that there is an end in sight.

I realised too that it is not the radiation or even the tiredness per se that is getting me down. It is the unending nature of cancer and its treatment. The final lap of this current race is over on June the 7th and it was the end of July when I found the lump for the first time.. That is 11 months - longer than a pregnancy, six times the length of time required to move and exchange contracts on a house in the UK, a long time by anyone's standards.

It is easy, comparatively, being brave for a short amount of time. How I remember the shrieks of the fellow girls at my school when a bee or wasp flew in the window in our sleepy lessons and the admonishment of 'hold still' was shouted in one ear. As the whole of your body screamed to run, the calm head said to stay still as the wasp, growing tired of tangling your hair buzzed off to its next victim... Staying still for a minute was difficult, but being brave for 11 months is impossible... It is a wonder that I have made it this far..but I have, and believe me, I am counting down to June 7th...

Not long my friends, not long....

Minerva

Forget cancer....

Forget cancer, self-pity is the real enemy and it has its claws deep into my flesh at the moment. I am miserable, tired, lonely and utterly fed up to the back teeth of cancer and its treatment dictating my life at the moment. I have been in bed nearly all weekend, so very tired because of the treatment. Every time I change positions whether sitting to standing, lying one side to the other or standing to walking, my hips and bones ache as a result of chemo. I am a thirty nine year old woman living the life of a octagenarian and I have so had enough.

Where is my life? When will I be able to escape the constant worry about cancer, about my future and about caring for my children? When will I be able to flirt again, laugh again and be silly with no thought for what may be hiding?

All I have done today is cry; cry for the life which seems to be slipping through my fingers. Please, believe me, I am well aware that I have little to be upset about. I know that there are so many out there who have it much much worse that I do, or will ever, but for today, for this afternoon, this full stop in the sentence of time, I am in a black hole of self pity....

Please, let it pass....

Minerva

So Tired...

I am tired - not just slightly fatigued either, but gut wrenchingly, cell droppingly, achingly, knackered. I get into bed around 11pm and I sleep until 3 or 4pm the following day. Too tired to cook, too lazy to get out of bed, I lie there in a world between wakefulness and sleep, a world where my feet stroke each other in a rhythm of inertia.

Radiotherapy, I have been told, does this to one's body. It is also starting to turn me pink but only on one side of my neck and my chest - the affected side. It looks like I have a mild case of sunburn but as I have only had seven treatments so far and it is already starting, I will look like a tomato after 30!

The sunshine of summer seems to have reached London by now and all around me young men and women are showing their flesh to the rays. I, though, cover myself up in a mac and skulk around the shops. Showing sun to radiated flesh is not a good idea as it makes the skin even worse..so next time you are in Central London in a heatwave check out the radiated ravishers.. We're the ones in the macs.....

Minerva

Moaners...

I loathe moaners. I don't mind those who get angry, those who cry or those who shout but puhleese protect me from those who moan. Today at radio a woman next to me was bemoaning her skin and the way it hurt after five sessions. Yes, it did look a little red rather like a day out in the sunshine but to moan about life giving treatment?

The other day, I heard another woman in the waiting room wailing about chemo and radiotherapy. How she 'didn't know what it was doing to her body' and she was 'so worried' about its poisonous effects on her.

Is there something wrong with me that I wanted to take both these women by the necks and shake them thoroughly? Don't they realise that without treatment they would have an extremely uncertain future and that is putting it mildly?

Certainly the treatment for cancer is like no other in that the majority of us breast cancer sufferers do not feel ill when we are diagnosed. It is the treatment that makes us ill rather than the illness itself - or at least that is the case in the early stages.

But please, to all those moaning minnies out there remember that there is only one enemy out there, and that is cancer. The treatment may be intimidating, difficult, tiring and long but it is ultimately our friend. It is the one thing that will help us live out our years happily, with our families, putting our plans into action. It may force us onto dark roads but those roads do lead somewhere... Cancer's road may begin in daylight but it always drives into darkness...


Minerva

Of Meat and Medicine

So there I was on the hard couch lying with my arms up in the air, splayed out with lasers crossing over me..and there was a query. Radiotherapy has to be such an exact science - just as well frankly with the patient feeling like a piece of chicken in the microwave. Where the ray enters your pody is the ' median edge' and 'post edge' is where it exits. Well, today there was a problem with the 'median edge'as the staff felt it wasn't possibly covering part of the breast area. Fine, I think it is wonderful that people are brave enough to check their own decisions with others. I find it a sign of courage and a quality to be lauded. The doctor was therefore bleeped.

He arrived, reviewed the measurements and was nearly off before I had my say. This doctor had a beautiful view of me, topless, splayed out on the table and he didn't even say hello.

I was shocked beyond belief. Surely we are not SO busy on the NHS that the basic principles of manners and courtesy can be ignored? How DARE he treat me like a piece of steak for his edification?! So, naturally, I spoke up - my exact words were', Don't doctors say hello to their patients any more?' I admit, it wasn't exactly pithy or terribly witty but it got the point over.. A double apology from the doctor concerned and a lot of grinning from the three radiographers around me....

We are patients, not meat. People with feelings, worries and concerns. I, honestly, am not that bothered about him but I spoke up for the sake of the young, the elderly, the frightened and the timorous. Cancer, for most people, is the most frightening thing to ever happen to them. The job of the medic is to soothe not just the body, but also the mind...

Minerva