I’ve been away from this blog thing for a long time and what was here I’ve just deleted; I felt it was what I wanted to do. All that’s gone now, there’s no point to it, to who I was then or anything that happened.
I have had cancer, which looks like nothing when written down but in 3D, real, non internet life was quite something. Actually I had cancer x 2. In fact I am one of a very tiny percentage of people each year who have 2 unrelated cancers at the same time. Mine were uterine and kidney for which I had quite a long and major operation to perform a hysterectomy and nephrectomy at the same time, which was quite fascintaing to watch according to my gynaecologist.
It is a long tale from then to now and I’m not going to tell it all. It’s as though words are just not effective enough to describe how I felt, to describe what the cancers were doing to me in the month before they were removed. After the op I came round in intensive care and, although I was very out of it and having breathing problems, I felt that the cancers were gone. It’s a feeling I couldn’t even begin to try to sort out into words, before the op I could feel and knew I was dying, after the op that was gone. That doesn’t seem enough but that’s the only way I can put it, I felt I wasn’t dying anymore.
My recovery has been just that… a recovery, scars knitted, skin and nerves rejoined, mountainous pain slowly ebbed away, the body repaired and left with nothing to show for it’s efforts but one very straight and well hidden lower abdomen scar, a healed upper hip kidney exit site and small keyhole entrance areas that my kidney man described as looking like machine gun fire on one side of my torso. Nothing ghastly, unsightly or disfiguring in any way. I am still suffering twinges and some pain as everything inside rearranges itself and fills in the empty spaces, I’m a little tired from a full day after only being able to manage 4 hours a day awake pre-op, but I’m getting there.
And now I have told of my physical healing I reveal my mental healing and how cancer changed my life! Or I don’t because it didn’t. My life bumbles along the same as it always has; I am not about to climb K2 whilst carrying a yak, discover God and become a nun, start my own business selling toe warmers, abscond to the Scilly Isle to raise bees, or turn into a vehement anti-smoker and campaign to have all smokers fired into the sun. I have had my hair cut, lost some weight and stopped smoking, that’s about it, none of them were a great effort on my part.
There have been small changes but no great blinding light. I see some things differently, there’s a lot of ‘what’s the point’ but good what’s the points, what’s the point in becoming mad/angry/upset/sad at certain things, I can’t control them, they happen no matter what I do, it’s easier to shrug/smile/take a breath/sort it out as best I can.
I realise that it only takes small things to create happiness, and that you should try to create these small things as often as possible. I realise that it is easier to be kind than to cause upset. I realise my world and what I affect is smaller than I thought and I am satisfied with that. I realise that I am enough. I am enough for myself.
I have not participated in the internet since I became ill, little in the few months before my diagnosis and after hardly at all, mainly due to the physical problems my cancer caused. But also my life was filled with hospital visits, tests, scans, x-rays, sharp pointy needles, doctors, nurses and waiting for results that seemed to be heading towards an inevitability I could see as clearly as I see these words now.
There are things I have missed a great deal from this lack of internet participation but I’m not so sure I will be leaping back into the wide world of webness. I am trying to sort out the feelings this has caused me, distrust… shame… a little anger… a great amount of distress. All of these together are overwhelming to me; and I am still amazed by how even the smallest amount of stress and upset just exhausts me for hours at a time.
I still have not resolved exactly how to handle a huge chunk of my life disappearing, apart from feeling lucky to have a life for something to go missing from. I am trying very hard to turn it into a ‘what’s the point’ shrug/smile/take a breath/sort it out as best I can moment, but so far it isn’t happening.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer only days after I had the operation to remove mine. She has had her own op and is now going through chemotherapy, I’m not going to talk about that, it’s too here and now. Today is her birthday.
The world has shrunk to my own back yard and that is enough for now.
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