Adjusting!

Well - it's been a busy week - the past fortnight feels like it's been a month! So much to sort out,find out and deal with.
Was getting frustrated and anxious towards the end of this week as I still hadn't heard from the hospital about a start date for my treatment and I'd previously been told it should be starting next week. Your whole life feels like it's on hold until you know what's happening.
After a very stressful day with me and my husband both getting overwrought with each other I finally was phoned up on Thursday afternoon by the nurse who will be giving me my treatment at home and told it will start on Wed 12th March with bloods being taken the day before.
We've been going from very positive and happy thoughts to very black thoughts this week. It's hard to get the balance at the moment when the news is so fresh!

People's reactions are interesting. I met a neighbour in town on Wednesday and told her as I know the bush telegraph is rife in our village and she'd get to know soon anyhow. She asked if I'd come to terms with it yet - after 5 days! I know she meant well of course but I don't even know what this news about my health really means in real terms anyhow so I think it is a very gradual coming to terms with thing over a long time (hopefully). Another neighbour said I'd be so relieved when it was all over - meaning the treatment - I didn't like to say that well I wouldn't be around as I am likely to be on some sort of treatment for the rest of my life now. It's weird but you really can find a sort of black humour even when faced with your own mortality as sometimes it just doesn't really feel as if it's really happening to you! You feel somehow removed from yourself especially as I currently feel so well!

Friends I've told so far have been mostly extremely supportive but I had a massed forwarded email from one friend today telling of the dangers of keeping bottled water in a car ( it doesn't say for how long)and the links to breast cancer. It said that's how Sheryl Crow got breast cancer. My friend had also written to me " I hope this helps"! For one I think it highly unlikely that Sheryl Crow can possibly definitively what caused her breast cancer and two I find these emails that claim to have found the definitive cause of things and you must send this to all your female friends to keep them safe rather distasteful and patronising! Also even if it's true - I never have gone in much for buying bottled water, never leave it in my car and also it's not a lot of help to me now I've got secondaries but I'll stop ranting now as I'm sure my friend meant well!
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm not interested in possible causes - we've read loads of books and articles over the past 5 years, changed and improved our diets greatly, get organic fruit, veg and meat boxes weekly and have reduced the amount of chemical cleaning products and gone over to different shampoos to try to avoid the very strong chemicals but these silly emails that scaremonger people and are generally not very accurate really annoy me!

I'm very excited about my Playstation 3 that I've treated myself to and will hopefully arrive next week! I feel like a teenager again about it although of course such things were not in existence when I was a teenager! If I'm going to be spending time at home recovering from my weekly chemo and drug treatments I want something worthwhile to do! Ha ha!
I'm also an avid reader and must start cross-stitching again which I took up 5 years ago when I first was having chemo to while away the time.

I'm still busy teaching the piano as well. It's strange carrying on a semi-normal existence whilst carrying this great burden at the same time but I guess there people all over doing exactly the same but this doesn't always make it any easier!
I've enjoyed having my teaching to distract me this week. I do genuinely enjoy what I do when the child enjoys learning too - it can be purgatory teaching a reluctant practiser for them and for me!!

I'm hoping I'll be able to keep up with my badminton too which I took up last August and really love despite being convinced for most of my life that any kind of sport and me just don't go! I could never get the tennis ball over the net despite lots of coaching as a child so convinced myself I must have been dyspraxic which my husband regards as hilarious as he says I'm very well-co-ordinated. It's funny what labels stick on to you as a child and go with you into your adult life!
Haven't done much running this week but am still determined to try and run most or all of the way in the Race for Life I'm doing in Cardiff in June. Have never done anything like that before. Less than a year ago I struggled to run a few yards for a bus without nearly collapsing with stitch so it will be a big personal achievement for me especially this year!

Happy St. David's Day!