08/02/19
Well I’ve done it. I’ve informed the man cub and the parentals of my decision too officially postpone my birthday. I don’t want to celebrate when I’m not my best like I’ve already said. Remembering my last big birthday (god, it really doesn’t feel ten years since my 30th!), I had the loveliest of days. I had a lovely meal with twenty of my nearest and dearest. We went to a small rural pub, had a lovely meal, then (after the parentals were dispatched home) I watched the end of the Six Nations as its always falls that weekend and might have had to be carried into a taxi home. A perfect day and night.
I know it’s another milestone in my life, but I just don’t feel like there is much to celebrate at the moment. I am tired. I am feeing like this isn’t the celebration that I anticipated or want. I’ll be like the Queen this year and pick another day once this journey is over to celebrate properly. I’ll do all the cards and presents then, so it feels like a celebration. But I just can’t focus on anything else but this journey at the moment and I’m parking everything else in my life. I am also sliding full on into another cold and cough, along with a spectacular taste in my mouth that is rendering all food substances to be in the yak category.
09/02/19
So this new drug – Docetaxal – is a real treat. Who would have known that where FEC took my head and bodily body hair, Docetaxal would take my eyelashes and eyebrows. It has made me so sad again. After a look in the bathroom mirror, properly, for the first time in a while I realised that I have one lonely eyelash left on my lower right eye. My eyes are puffy (steroid aided) and I am feeling the most unattractive version of myself. I’m no supermodel normally, but at least I looked well. I now look like the roughest version of myself and its not great.
All of this is not helped by the fact that I have the migraine from hell, helpfully assisted by the hacking cough. It’s a fully blown migraine that I haven’t dealt with the likes since being a hormonal teenager. By 1pm I have begged the man cub to go and find me any drugs that will alleviate this. I have been on the chemo line with it being Saturday and because of my temperature being ok, legal drugs seems to be the only way forward. This wallowing self pity is tiring.
11/02/19
So my second appointment today with my clinical psychologist. Still feels weird saying that out loud. We did some meditation today to try and centre my thinking on just breathing and shutting everything else out. This kind of mindfullness can be used to recentre my thoughts and can be used at any time. It was the most bizarre experience, and again – while my pragmatic head ‘gets it’, I just really struggle with this. I am so far out of my comfort zone and it feels strange that while my body is fighting something it never thought it would have too, my mental health is having its own internal fight.
Old school me would have ran a million miles from a bit of meditation, ran out of the door of a clinical psychologists, laughed in the face of anyone who suggested I might need mental health direction and scoffed at the idea that I couldn’t ‘cope’. Coping with the challenges of chemotherapy and side effects that it has caused (regardless of knowing pragmatically that it is short term) I have understanding of how meditation could be helpful (not sure how effective I will be with that!), I have stepped twice in through the door to meet CP, I won’t laugh in the face of anyone who suggest I need mental health support (I promise), and seven months into a cancer journey I never anticipated I would have – I might finally say I’m coping a bit less well than I ever have been.
That doesn’t sit well with me though. I’ve never been one to admit I don’t cope. I am stubborn and under stress I shut down, shut help out and soldier on. Nine times out of ten I will succeed in whatever it is I’ve set my mind too, and I don’t think those odds are bad especially since I am now getting old!! Problem is that, while I have ‘coped’ externally so far with the diagnosis of cancer, the operations, the recovery, and three doses of FEC drug which caused me to lose my hair; the latest round of Docetaxal has brought me too new lows and as my body feels like it is submitting in the fight, my head and thoughts are also submitting in the fight. It’s harder to be positive, to say out loud that I’m coping and to believe it.
But deep down I still have this. And I will keep going.
Northern Mama Bear 