Well hello lovely bloglets,
It's been a while since I've done this and have quite a few things to talk about, but I seem to be overtaken recently by a melancholy. And spend a fair amount of my time feeling rather tearful. I don't know if it's because I've discovered that a Teenage Cancer Trust unit is being built at the hospital I was diagnosed at in Edinburgh. The change that will make is phenomenal So due to this, memories may have been stirred from my diagnosis and my shit consultant and the pain that I apparently wasn't feeling..... I think of how different my story may have been if the TCT ward had been there in 2007, but then my story wouldn't be mine. I'm a firm believer in that everything is meant to be no matter how shit it is at the time. Maybe I've adopted this because of what I went through. I had to believe that there was a bigger reason for those dark months of being ignored and feeling like I was over exaggerating and feeling guilty phoning my consultant telling her how much I hurt and that I was interrupting her day and using up her time that should have been spent with someone else. Maybe it's because I have carried that around for 5 years and only recently found out that I am the only person to have reacted like that to the drugs. She should have listened to me. I was right. The relief of knowing that is huge, but the anger is bigger.
Anger. Once of my modules is about the therapeutic relationship and one that I really enjoy, but fucking hell it drags up some big stuff that I need to deal with. I've just written an essay with a plan of how to start to deal with my anger and to own it. The time has come to stop distancing the feelings linked to my diagnosis that are not positive that I have put in a box for so long. It's time to accept how furious I am and have been. Not only at the twat in Edinburgh but everything I've had to give up and what I continue to give up. My life was stolen from me at 22 and I am still working to get it back. And the guilt. Felling guilty for feeling like this when I am still here and so many aren't. Am I allowed to feel like this when I am still alive? I am able to do what I want most of the time. I am not hindered by severe side affects that mean I have to live with my parents or have a carer. I feel like I am grieving and in mourning for the life that I had and lost, but then feel so lucky to have learnt and experienced everything that I have only because of my cancer.
This is the first time I have called it mine. This is part of my plan to do with the essay just written. To process and accept and embrace it, my cancer has to be mine. Distancing cancer is not going to help me move on and ultimately forgive it.
And I'm so tired at the moment. I was knocked out by a virus for 2 and a half weeks and I think it's still lingering. This term has been full on in terms of work, and there is still half of it to go. And the drugs. I was hoping to have started the trial by now, but there are funding issues.... There is also the possibility of another, but my consultant is not sure that I'm on the right drugs for it. I wait to find out more in January.
Waiting, I seem to do that a lot. It links into my living in limbo land. The end of it is so close and yet so far.
A friend of mine had brain cancer and a new tumour was discovered at his 6 month scan. His surgery is tomorrow to find out of it is benign or malignant.
A guy I was at school with also had a tumour in his brain and said that my blogs kept him going in his dark times... How I don't know, either whinging about taking two pills a day or showing off about the celebs I've met through TCT and being indulgent with ranting on here to those of you who read it. Feel selfish. How can I be like this when they had a have a fucking tumour in their brain?
I only had 9 hours sleep last night, and admittedly sleep started at 2.30am, which may be why I am feeling like this.
So after this emotional vomit I think it's time for me to have a bath and go to bed. I had a list of things to talk about which were without a doubt more positive than what this has become. And part of me wants to apologise for that, and another part knows that I have to acknowledge this as without it, there is no moving forward and forward is where I want to be.
So with my head up high, a tear rolling down my cheek, I go. Until next time,
Love, laughter and smiles
XXX
