Ok, so I know it’s been an age since I last wrote, but in all honesty the last few weeks have gone so fast everything seems to be a bit of a blur. It feels like only yesterday we were celebrating Christmas and seeing in the New Year, then I realise everything that’s happened in the last few weeks and I stop with a jolt.
We spent New Years with some fantastic friends and inevitably the conversation turned toward resolutions. None of us could name any, Rich said that we would only break them anyway, whilst Caroline wisely offered that the ones we actually intended to keep were the ones you never told anyone. So here’s mine, the one I didn’t name, and the one I wouldn’t tell anybody (except of course you dear reader!). My resolution this year is to live. I don’t mean simply to continue to draw breath, though that of course is some miracle! But to live life to the full. With the words of John 10:10 ringing in my ear I will seek everyday to remember that God has given it to me for a reason and with flashbacks of the carpe diem scene from my favorite film (dead poets society, if you have never seen it make it your goal this year) I will live to seize the day!
This of course is no mean feat. This will take all my resolve to achieve and all the strength and peace God can give me.
Still, this year I will live each day to the full.
The year has already begun, but the battle begins tomorrow. Tomorrow I start Chemotherapy. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but it has. To give me the best chance of seeing my 90th birthday I’m going to wreck my body for the next 4 months. Every 3 weeks for 6 cycles drugs will kill off any lingering cancer cells and sadly a good few of the healthy cells too. I will lose my hair (and apparently not just the stuff on my head, woo hoo no more shaving my legs!!). I can’t eat rice from a takeaway, or ride the tube during rush hour and I’ve been signed off of work. My already poor immune system will be decimated. Food may lose its taste and if you thought blue pee was good then hold on to your hats because this time its going to be red!
I’m a bit scared. I think thats ok. It’s not so much the chemo, or the multitude of side effects, it’s definitely not losing my hair, I’m so ready to sport the bald look! What has scared me most of all is the one and only thing that has made me cry in this whole sorry mess. Sometime in the next three weeks before my next treatment I will have a central line put in. My veins are just too deep for the nurses to find every time. It’s a small thing, I’d even anticipated it, but it sucks:( Still that isn’t this week, this week I just need to stay focused on getting through the first lot of chemo.
Each day, one at a time, to the full.
Each day I will live.