I’m afraid this isn’t my most thrilling or funny blog of the year but felt the need write so I did.
This time last year I was trotting off for my second dose of chemo. “You’ve got this!” or so I thought. I would come home and get straight in to bed and Spence would see in the new year on his own, as would I but I was asleep so no big deal for me. I couldn’t have cared less about missing it as i’m never a huge fan of it anyway. I had no way of knowing what 2021 was going to have in store for me, none of us did. To be honest at this point in time years, days, weeks meant nothing to me. All I wanted was the bloody cancer gone and the treatment to end successfully.
This year is a bit different. I’m going to be pulling up my big girl pants, getting dressed up ready to have a few friends over for drinks and preparing one of my famous beige buffets. In the anticipation of welcoming in a, hopefully happier and healthier new year.
Things have been pretty hard recently and I’m not ashamed to say so. From September onwards I’ve been hit with several “first anniversaries” and have found myself saying all the time “Can you believe this time last year this was happening?” and “It was a year ago that this happened” I’m sure my anniversaries mean nothing to other people and I totally get that, why would they? but I have these bloody dates ingrained in my brain. I know as time goes on the anniversaries won’t feel so painful but for now, they are very raw and dates that I don’t wish to celebrate.
When I think about it, I can still taste the chemo now. I can smell the rubber of the cold cap and the antibac spray Spence used to have to clean the van with. I can’t even have that stuff in the house now. Just the thought of it makes me urge! So the best thing to do…try as best I can not to think about it. I try and think about where I am now and how far I’ve come. It will always be with me and be a trauma that I will need a lot of support to come to terms with but I’m totally OK with that. Everything that has happened to me has made me the person that I am now and taught me some very valuable lessons about myself and life.
My mental health takes a battering on a daily basis which is fun. But I’m managing to get myself through it and still keep a positive mindset despite the shitty scenarios my brain conjures up. Like everything, some days are better than others. I just need to remember that those negative thoughts and fears and bad days wont last for ever.
Something that I have really found has helped me recently is going to the gym. My tablets make me ache all over, all the time and make my bones very brittle. I’ve been advised that exercise helps prevent this so i’m trying my very best to do what I can and i’m really enjoying it. There isn’t much that I can do to prevent a recurrence but exercise is one of the things that is proven to reduce the risk so id be crazy not to give it my best shot.
I love seeing what my body can do after all it’s been through and best of all I get to stick my headphones in and listen to my music as loud as I bloody like. I get totally absorbed in it all. I’m amazed and what I can do when I really put my mind to it and strive to push myself a little bit more and lift a little bit more each time I go. Hit my PB on a dead-lift today! woop. Nearly killed me but feel so good for doing it. I am limited to some of the exercises that I can do due to my expander, but I just need to be careful or find other things that I can do instead. Sian has been joining me and even managed to get me there at 7am some mornings. She has given me so much motivation and its always good to have someone to stop and put the world to rights with between squatting.
Recap
I’ve tried to think back at what has happened since my last blog but I’ve managed to squeeze so much in in that time that I can’t cover it all, mainly because I can’t bloody remember it! My memory is nothing like it used to be. “Chemo brain” along with my medication, has a lot to answer for. I’ll wait for Facebook to share my highlights with me, or for Instagram to bodge together a random selection of filtered images into an unrealistic reel of my past year.
After my radiotherapy finished, you may well remember that I emerged from it all and went hell for leather! The world was my oyster and I wanted to make up for months in lockdown due to covid as well as the added fun of having cancer. Even writing that now seems so weird to say “I had cancer” who saw that coming?! I often used to look at our huge group of friends and think that stats would imply that some of us are, unfortunately going to get it, but I don’t think I ever thought it would be me ending up taking that one for the team!
I found myself going out all the time. Meeting friends for lunch or going out in the evenings. There were a LOT of people who I’d not seen. People who had been in touch that I’d not seen, some for years, and a lot of catching up that needed to be done. Luckily, I’d not missed too much as we’d all been locked down, but just seeing familiar faces and laughing, eating nice food, hearing about other people’s lives was so refreshing. It was nice to not talk or think about cancer all the time. I’m sure by now most people were very bored of me “banging on” about the big C! I needed to get back out into the world and remember who I was and that, despite what I’d been though, I was still in there somewhere. I wasn’t a fragile cancer patient anymore but the Amy that you all knew and most of you, loved.
“The alcohols not working”
In June a team of some of my very favorite human beings decided to take part in a 10k trail run to raise money for the breast care unit at the RUH. Some even managed the half marathon having never attempted anything like that before. I was so incredibly proud of them all and very moved by the effort they put in not to mention they raised over £5000. It was a very hot day and a really hard course. We even very nearly lost Paul off the edge of a cliff!
Dave, Hayley, Marie and I had the very important job of staying back at the camp site looking after the kids and drinking pina coladas until the brave runners returned. This was when I first discovered that for the first time in my life, I couldn’t get drunk ….
For those of you who have ever been drinking with me you will know that I can quite easily get drunk on a tenner. I had really been looking forward to having a drink and celebrating the end of treatment, the run and some early birthday celebrations with a few drinks. So a few drinks I had. Nothing. So I had some more. Nothing. So, I tried something else and something else, even having some Jägers thinking that would help. Nope. As hard as I tried, I could not get drunk. This was very annoying and costing me a lot more than a tenner! On the Monday after the run, I rang my breast care nurse. I had a lump under my right arm and thought it best to get checked considering (turned out to be a sticky out lymph node) I mentioned to her about my newfound tolerance to alcohol and she confirmed that a lot of people find this after chemo. My body has been poisoned to its absolute limit so a few pina coladas and shots of Jägers were not going to even touch the sides! And, to make things even better, I didn’t get any hint of a hangover despite the alcohol I’d consumed in my experiment.
Over the next few months and social events, I tested this “I can’t get drunk anymore” theory, and I can confirm that it has now worn off. If you ask my friends Rob and Sammie, I think I tested this theory to its absolute limit at the Euros finals in July when 9 shots of Jägers in I disappeared for a while and was found running around the pub wearing an England flag!
Luckily, I can now get drunk again, but unluckily, the hangovers have come back too. However, I do still have some fantastic anti sickness drugs left from chemo which help with this. Every cloud and all that!
So what’s ahead in 2022?
I am still waiting on a date for my permanent reconstruction and want to be as fit and healthy as I can for when that happens. My foob “expires” in April so would ideally be done by then but due to the current “situation” waiting lists are a lot longer than usual so who knows. I can wait. To be honest the closer it comes and the more I think about it, the more terrified I am about it. It’s a huge op. 8-10 hours, 5 days in hospital, 6 weeks complete rest and then up to 6 months for full recovery. AND chances are I’ll have to have a 2nd op to “tidy bits up”. Not to mention the enormous scar I will end up with. So its not really top of my list of things to rush in to. Already feel a bit like Frankenstein’s monster some days so the thought of being opened up and pieced back together again is something I can do without. I love my foob. It looks amazing and certainly helps with the “you don’t look like you’ve had cancer” look, that I am trying to pull off of a daily basis, but its uncomfortable and cant stay forever.
One thing I do know is there is nothing I can do about it. The op is coming, I have to have it, so I will cross that bridge when I come to it. I could spend the next however many months worrying about it all or I could just get on with life in the meantime and that is what I intend to do. I can’t waste months of my life worrying because as cheesy as it sounds, life really is too bloody short. I don’t like that saying but it’s very true. None of us know how long we have left so i’m going to try my best to make the most of it. In 2022 I plan on making some bloody good memories to look back on. I plan on looking after myself, spending time with loved ones, telling people how I REALLY feel, surrounding myself with positive people who make me feel good and binning off the ones who don’t. Not concerning myself with things that don’t concern me or worrying about things that are out of my control.
Whatever you are all doing tonight, I wish you all a VERY Happy and Healthy New year and hope to see a lot more of you all in 2022.