"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. " Anatole France
First of
all, I want to thank everyone for the calls, texts, emails, messages and
positive thoughts from around the world. It really is amazing to see your
circle of “people” in action and how many people you can call friends. I am
lucky.
So
yesterday good news came a week early and was so unexpected and of course
positively wonderful. This is why I am struggling with my later reactions once
the shock of it all and the relief had worn off. Many of you might be puzzled
by what I am writing here so bear with me – this cancer business is complex.
A few hours
later, I started to feel exhausted and this heaviness was pressing down on my
chest that I couldn’t explain at first. Then the tears started to flow over
dinner and my appetite just wasn’t there. Where was the champagne? Where were
the happy giggles and smiles of relief? To be honest I felt depressed and lost
and I felt like there was something dreadfully wrong with me for feeling so. I
can try and explain it to you and maybe it will become clearer even to me. I
compare it to an old man who is finally let out of prison after serving a life
sentence. All the life he has known happened in that place and suddenly he is
thrust out onto the pavement to face the world again without knowing where to
go or what to do. I kind of feel like that old man right now. We had prepared
ourselves for the cancer to be back. We had made plans and come to terms with
that reality. The evidence was all there weighing heavily in cancer’s favor and
I would have had to have some real casino luck to dodge this bullet. But
somehow I did much to the surprise of my doctor who even said he had not
expected this result. This is something amazing and so great. But in having earlier
accepted that my cancer was back and doing enough background research to
understand the serious implications of it, I had asked myself the tough
questions that would terrify most to contemplate. I came up with plans and
strategies to deal with the what ifs – I planned a book that I would prepare
for my daughter to remember me by and the letters I would leave behind for my
husband to read on special days every year. I imagined losing my hair again and
having life put on hold again. I even came up with a blog title for the
delivery of the news that the bitch was back. You can say I spent a lot of the
last few weeks contemplating all of this. Yes this sounds morbid and even crazy
but it wasn’t. The survival curve for a relapse like this dropped off
significantly to almost 0%. I wasn’t being dramatic, I was being realistic. I
always tell my doctors that I never want to be naïve about my situation and be
unprepared for news like I had been the day I first found out. But suddenly the
game had shifted and it is an entirely different playing board. So I also need
to shift and adapt to the changes as well.
I also maybe need to grieve the past 2 years of my life that were dominated
by cancer before starting to build a new one which can be scary too. Acknowledgement of your feelings is the best
way to get past them so I cant just pretend I am not feeling the way I am. I
have to own them and then let them go. My life is no longer dominated by this
beast and that might feel weird for awhile but it will be great once I get used
to the new me.
As I will
be rejoining the working world shortly, following this change of events, I am questioning everything. Will I be
successful? Do I still have what it takes? Will my body keep up? It really
comes down to fear of the unknown – a different kind of unknown this time
round. After being traumatized by life recently and thinking that things hadn’t
gone my way for a while, you can be lead to believe that the odds will never be
in your favor again. But what my family and I have learnt this week is that
they can be beat and that life can be one hell of a rollercoaster. My story is
far from over and there will be more tests, more dreadful waiting times and
more unknowns over the next few months and then years but I will start slowly
rebuilding my life brick by brick with a few good cries here and there.
I want to thank
you for coming along on this wild ride with me. My life is so much richer for
the friendships that have been tested, the new ones that have been formed and
the family bonds that proved they were built of pure steel. I also want to
thank my dear husband for being a rock through everything – I couldn’t have
come out the other side of this a better person without you by my side. And
Captain AC – thank you for listening…to everything and for being strong enough
to never let me see that you were ever afraid. Having people believe in you is
what makes you believe in yourself even when things seem bleak. And little monkey – you have grown into a
little person before my eyes – into someone who feels my pain, treasures my
love and tells me, “Mama, it will be okay.”
Here is to the end of one chapter and the beginning of another...
A very
loved OBB
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