Hot barmy days

Picture me – it’s seriously hot, Mary and Chris are doing bath time upstairs, I’ve got a G’nT, a Best of the Eighties CD is playing (loud), I’m in a very scimpy red dress (worn with trousers of course) and I’m happy, so very happy.

I saw Sarah my Consultant this afternoon and she said all looks good and has sent me off to play for another 3months! The blood marker is up a bit but clearly the ‘patient’s symptoms’ indicate little reason to move to the next (inevitable but not pending) stage of the fight.

I feel SO PLEASED with myself!

Funny, how I still managed to get her to give us nearly an hour! I guess we knew before we saw her that we needed to talk a bit more about the global picture… Obviously she can’t and won’t even try to be drawn on how long I might enjoy this respite. That not-knowing-madness is still clearly mine to live, but we did do some good talking about how far we’d come.

To be honest, 9 months, on and the mind can play tricks on you. Maybe it wasn’t that scary after all… Maybe I wasn’t as sick as we thought. How deadly is this rare cancer anyway? Well, today I know that when Sarah first saw me, my life expectancy (according to statistical averages) was 6 to 12 months. We’ve never actually been told this before but she has to write something in the Occupation Health Report and we knew that – so we asked.

As she said, this doesn’t take into consideration the other factors like peoples’ age at diagnosis or alternative practices such as the mistletoe or religious beliefs.

That inner place, where the soul and the mysteries of faith hide - smiles at this point.

One thing that has puzzled me for a while is, why wait? Why if she knows and I know there’s more chemo on the horizon, what’s the delay? I’m obviously ‘over’ the toxic side effects of the treatment. I’m fighting fit (as I keep telling everyone – sorry) so what are we waiting for? Today the penny dropped a bit. Sarah said the chemo was to make me feel better and so we’ll only do it at the point at which my quality of life is impaired. This might seem subtle to you but to me something became clearer. The chemo is not curing me. God might be healing me but treatment won’t ‘heal’ me. Hence the ‘incurable cancer’ bit. It will kill some of the cancer cells and in doing so, it will buy me time (precious time - months and months, even years of it hopefully) but it won’t cure me. Sarah was at pains to tell me that the more they do, the more harm it might do me. Hence they don’t do anything quicker than you have to.

Sounds bleak perhaps, but I’m honestly feeling so much joy at being given a hot, long, precious summer full of plans do lots and live lots, that I am not at all sad. Sarah did say at one point, I can tell you whatever you need to know about the physical stuff but there’s very little I can say on the psychological battle. She acknowledged it’s a sort of limbo living. It’ll do for now though. It’s a whole lot better than being a statistical average!!

There’s lots more to tell you about, including some of our reflections on the time away in Devon, but we’ve just ordered the curry - so it’ll all have to wait.

Just to say – 23 comments!! Nice one! I know it’s traumatic writing something but - what can I say - thank you.