It's part of the Celtic bloodstream.

I am through it. I am out and it is gone. I needed the catharsis of that day of anger to finally lay it to rest. The serenity is amazing. The melancholy has lifted; I am alive and all is well in my world.

I have recently been astonished by people's capacity for caring. I thought within the human heart that to care for someone else and their circumstances, to feel empathy in some way or compassion, well... I honestly thought that was limitless in all of us. I have realised that it is not true of everyone.

I find it hard to understand how a person can pick and choose who or what they will care for; how they can look at their friends and decided to care about those 10 but not those 3, that their heart is full enough with the 10 and there is no more room for the 3 that are left over.

Perhaps I don't explain that right, I think that's because I am not like that and therefore cannot comprehend how a mind can work that way. I don't believe that the human heart, that a persons capacity to care is so appallingly limited. I am sure this is because of my family, whose hearts have never been closed to anyone, who have again and again gone that extra mile for friends, for family, even for complete strangers. I was not raised in an environment that limited caring, even with the little things, the small things that can make you smile, lift your heart and let you know without a doubt that you are loved.

I had an amazing support network during the months I was ill, they were my family; my parents who love me and show they love me constantly, my sisters without whose love I would be lost, just simply lost; and my husband whose all encompassing love, understanding and care just astounds me each day.

I was not lonely, they were around me constantly, there was a lot of laughter and love and hugs; how could I ever have been demoralised with them surrounding me. I was never scared, not when I received both my cancer diagnoses, not when I was in hospital, not before the operation or during my recovery after; there was no reason to be scared; I had my family.

I can only try to understand those who close their hearts to others, as alien and disturbing as that seems to me. However I was raised by people who have limitless love and caring in their hearts; they passed that on to their children. I believe the heart is infinite. I believe that the ability for care is illimitable.

An old friend's cancer fight ended a few weeks ago; she died peacefully. I have know her since I was 18. She loved and was loved in return, that is the greatest gift of life.

Kiss me goodnight and say my prayers
Leave the light on at the top of the stairs
Tell me the names of the stars up in the sky
A tree taps on the window pane
That feeling smothers me again
Daddy is it true that we all have to die

At the top of the stairs
Is darkness

I closed my eyes and when I looked
Your name was in the memorial book
and what had become of all the things we planned
I accepted the commiserations
Of all your friends and your relations
But there's some things I still don't understand

You were so tall
How could you fall?

Darkplace

I am angry. Angry, angry, angry, angry, angry. January. February. March. April. May. June. July. August. September. Angry, angry, angry, angry, angry. You nasty, nasty people. Compassion my arse. Shame it doesn't extend as far as your fellow man.

You made me feel ashamed that I was ill. You made me feel ashamed that I had cancer. You made me feel I wasn't worthy of one single thought, word or dead. You made me feel abandoned. You made me feel bewildered. You made me feel alone. You made me feel idiotic. You made me feel worthless. You made me feel embarrassed. You made me feel sorrow. You made me feel grief. You made me feel like nothing. You make me feel anger.

I resigned due to my ill health. Why did you resign from me?

January. February. March. April. May. June. July. August. September.

I am trying very, very hard to get through this. But they have scarred me. They have taken my trust. They act as though I was nothing; am nothing. They have hurt me beyond my capacity to deal with it. Beyond belief.

Snoring

August was a bad month. I spent part of it in bed crushed with depression; I think a throwback from the cancer months that I repressed until it was all over, and some of it to do with things I've blogged about, a sense of abandonment and a touch of bewilderment at such.

When I did finally crawl out from under my quilt the pains began. They’re in my left side at the front and back, horrendous pain, doubling me over pain, scaring me pain. The top of my abdomen is swollen, I feel a little sick now and then, the underneath of my fingernails all turn bright yellow for periods of time; I’m tired and feel just awful.

I cry at the slightest thing. I never used to be like that.

The doctors have prodded and poked me and blood tests have been carried out to start with, I have to have more done this month. Next month is my 6 monthly check-up for gynaecology, the month after that for my kidney. I have been told it will take a year for my body to settle, to sort itself out and become accustomed to such major changes. I want to believe that these pains are just settling down pains but… well why lie to myself, I know what settling down feelings are like and this isn’t it, this is pain, this is something swelling and pushing pain from the moment I wake until I manage to fall into sleep.

The trouble is when you’ve had cancer you think every little pain or cough is cancer somewhere else. Or do you? Maybe I should have said that’s the trouble with me because I really have no one to talk to who has been through this. Bradley suggested looking for an online support group but I am not going anywhere near an online group of any kind ever again, what has happened there I believe has made my recovery mentally 10 times worse; I will not lay myself open to that again.

I hate the fact that cancer pops into my mind so much; it was physically cut from my body nevertheless I can’t get it out of my mind. My family history is riddled with cancer and yet it never entered my head I would have it. I have had cancer. Sometimes I say that to myself whilst looking in the mirror, when I’m getting dressed, washing my face, brushing my hair; softly, whispering, not wanting anyone else to hear but almost not wanting to hear it myself; a susurrus of awe. I have had cancer.

To just hear the words seems to not be enough; to see myself in the mirror, to watch my lips form the 4 consonants and 2 vowels I feel will make it sink in more. I have had cancer. I still find it hard to comprehend. There I sat in a small, cold, stark hospital room and watched a 3D image of my right kidney rotate before me, 4cm tumour bulbous in all it’s faint, white glory and yet how unconnected to me it all seemed.

With the wonders of modern medicine 2 organs are removed and the cancer is no more, but the thinking organ starts to spin, pondering where the cancers came from, how did they start, will it decided to start up again elsewhere; last time it picked the uterus and the kidney what if now it wants the liver and the lung?

I have 5 more years of this until I am totally all clear. I want to make it there. I want the doubts to stop; I don’t know how to do that.

There was one radiant moment in the month of August. After 13 years I saw my best friend again. To spend the day with her and her husband and dog was wonderful, to hug her was the best thing. The day was far too short, I wanted to do more and say more and… oh just be near her longer, just in the same room as her for a much longer period of time. 30 years, I can’t believe I’ve known someone, other than those in my family, for 30 years.

She has been to me everything a true friend should be, truth be know there have been times I have been too lax in staying in touch and she has always been there, always keeping lines open, always being my friend no matter what. She’s like another sister to me; I love her like a sister. I miss her incredibly; I wish she was just up the road like she used to be when I was a child; just a few doors away when I needed a friend in the room.

Lark Ascending

I’ve always thought that all knowledge is opened to us upon death, a small part of that being that you will at once know everything anyone has ever said or thought about you, good and bad. But the bad won’t hurt you as it would have when you where alive, the bad thoughts, words and deeds will belong to those who have done them; they must ponder on why they did them not you.

Some days I wake up extremely early, either my lone kidney needs it’s 100th wee of the night or I am startled awake by something that has taxed me for the last few months. If the latter awakes me then I know I cannot turn over, snuggle deeper and go back to sleep, in fact I know I may as well get up there and then be it 4am or not.

I struggle with the thought that I have a character flaw so… gods I can’t find a word for what it must be, what do you call a character flaw that repels a large number of people from you? What is it about me that would do that, because I can’t believe a group of people would each have the same character flaw that would cause them to behave in such a way, therefore the problem is with me? What did I do over the years of friendship to that would cause friends to act in this way?

It is the top of my stomach just under the breastbone that feels it, a strange achy emotion that is trapped there swirling around. The heat from it rushes to my cheeks and burns them whenever anyone asks me about them; if I think about them for too long the pain from it appears behind my eyes and makes them begin to fill. I change the subject as quickly as I can for I have no answers, how can I when I don’t know the reason.

I know that when I die I will have to look at and answer for every single one of the bad thoughts, words and deeds that I have done; I know I will have to face them, accept what I did and apologise, I am more than willing to do that. In life this has made me realise that there is no need to add more to what I will have to consider in death; why be mean or angry, why bitch or backbite, why lie or evade when in death everything will be know; you cannot avoid anything.

In death I will know what my great character flaw is and so in life I must work on patience and trying to be at peace with the knowledge that there is something in me that eventually repels. This is not easy; part of me wonders how I could ever become friends with anyone again if this is what will ultimately happen. After much thought I have decided that by far the best way to stop this ever occurring again is to not have any friends; by that I mean I will endeavour not to make any new ones, not that I will push away those who have stood by me over the last few months.

At the moment I cannot mentally cope with what has happened and so I could not cope with losing another group of people from my life if I where to form a friendship again. It is too painful, far too painful. Even now I cannot quite comprehend that there is something so fundamentally wrong with me that I do not merit a kind word, thought or deed from those I thought of as my friends at a time when I needed them the most. But the sheer fact that I didn’t warrant any such thing proves that there so obviously is something wrong with me, I have to face and deal with that but it is just so very hard.

Still, if I am trying to find positives in life I must find a positive from this. Is the positive the realisation that I am flawed? We are all flawed to some extent and don’t we know this already? Maybe we’re not all flawed to the degree that a large amount of people reject us, so I don’t believe that the awareness of being flawed is the positive I take from this. Is it the understanding that I cannot bare the thought of making new friends only for this to happen again a few years down the line? Hmmm that is one to which I need to give more thought. I am fully aware that I am enough for myself perhaps this is the expansion of that, or another part? More contemplation, more dreams, more sleepless nights and turmoil until I have hopefully learned something from this awful experience.

Waterloo Sunset

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.