Update....1 year on

Hi all,

So here we are rounding on the one year anniversary of the beginning of this palarva. Wow! How time flies. So  a year ago yesterday 22^nd September I was admitted into Chel West and the rest is history. Well soon to be hopefully.

What is weird is that this would have passed me by (and it fact the date did yesterday) but even more so had it not also been for it coming up to the anniversary of Max’s death, as I was admitted on Wednesday and Max died on the Friday.  A lot has happened in a year and my boundaries have been pushed further than I thought was my breaking point but hey I am still here. Still here and kicking.

So my absence from your inbox is a good thing honestly. I have been doing nothing, nothing but working honestly. In fact, opening my diary I will confirm that fact. Oops had a week in France with my girlfriends too. I did that, but nothing else honestly. I have mostly been conserving my energy and strength for work and taking care of myself. I have given up alcohol, eating healthily and sleeping sloth-like amounts. I’ve begun to read myself a bit better and strangely could feel a change happening since my last scan. My metabolism has slowed, causing my fat jeans to become my skinny jeans and my skinny jeans to gather dust and collect moths at the bottom of my drawers. I put this down to the fact that the cancer has gone- at least it feels like it has. It was a energy sucking parasite which fed on me for god knows how long. In fact, I recall when I came back to my desk after my hiatus, I opened my drawers to find they were over spilling with every vitamin known to man; Beroccas, iron tablets, a, b, c, d and then some. I must have felt rubbish and run down and given hindsight, it’s hardly surprising. So, the food that was feeding the beast and the medication, is now just forming a thin layer of blubber where blubber need not be. Or to be fair, it could just be that I am getting closer to 30 years old! (vomit)

So after a week of being surrounded by my friends slim, brown bodies in France, enough was enough and I have taken the control back. I still look back fondly at those times not so long ago when macaroni cheese not such a dirty word, but now I get more pleasure out of seeing my toes than melted cheese! I am not taking myself too seriously though so don’t worry but it’s good to finally have some power over my body.

Another reason for my discipline is so I can look hot on the beach in Oz when I’m over in November albeit in the shade on the beach. We finally are doing it. After the inconclusive results came back 6 weeks ago, we ummed and ahhed about whether we should go as we really wanted to save it for when I was fully better so we could cheers that glass of Cloudy Bay (thanks in advance dad) with the knowledge that we were in a cancer free zone. I guess if this situation has taught us anything it’s to just bloody do it. We would be spending money anyway going away, so why not travel half way across the world and raid the parent’s fridge than spend our own money! Duh! That’s just common sense. Plus Si’s sister is morphing into a proper Aussie so we need to go and visit her so Si can bash her over the head with a rolled up newspaper when she says something too Australian!

So our dates are Friday 28^th October to Melbourne until Saturday 5^th November when we are Noosa bound. For our two year anniversary, Si not only received some really cool boardies but also a Lonely Planet guide for the East Coast of Australia. So the excitable puppy is now figuring out how we can fit in Fraser Island and the Whitsundays before we have to head back to the winter gloom on Sunday 20^th November. But at least then it’s almost Christmas time, which is always special in London town. I hope the family don’t mind getting home made gifts this Christmas as I do not plan to have any money left after Australia. Fine food, tasty wines and designer shopping costs you know. I would love to see my Aussie counterparts when I am in Oz or Noosa so please let me know if you are around and/or I will contact you separately. I might even hire someone to organise my diary.

I meet with Bower next week so I will have another date for another test for my return. 3000 emails and a PET scan awaiting me in late November- it might take a lot of will power (and perhaps a sedative) to get on that plane back to England. Saying that, we are quietly hopeful and I am being very vocal about my adversity to any further hideous, invasive treatment. The stem cell transplant will be like killing an ant with a bazooka which, as far as I am concerned, is overkill. But my mind may need to be changed if circumstances change. But we have Australia to deal with before all that messy, ugly stuff. We are getting good a pushing the clouds away and creating sunny days, as when there is not much you can do, when there is not much you can do.

So that is me and my news. It’s been a year and what a year it’s been.

Thanks to you all for your love and support and emails and presents and messages and hats and wigs and cards and flowers and hugs and kisses.

I definitely could not have done this without you. Well I could but no one would be reading my emails!

Lots of love and hugs and kisses

Em

xxx