The OH has always said that I would worry if I didn’t have anything to worry about.
That might be true. It might be the legacy of a difficult childhood, it might be all the things that have happened in my life where other people have blithely trashed themselves and others and expected someone else to worry about it and the someone else was me. I would say that I was an optimist and a glass half full person but I am also a realist who knows that bad things can happen and someone thirsty can pass by and there you are with an empty glass.
Given all of which, choosing not to have further therapies for cancer might not be the best choice for someone like me. On the other hand if the therapies were going to have damaging and life changing outcomes, maybe it was a good choice because, whilst optimistically they might not happen, realistically they might.
I haven’t had a day yet since I saw the oncologist that hasn’t had a worry. I have tried to keep busy but I do get tired quickly, though not as quickly as I used to do, so there is a bit of sitting around, in which to worry. How people sit for hours vacuously watching television, I have no idea, to me it’s just half hours of worry in between the adverts.
Next week though, I see the specialist nurse, who was ill for some time. Then we can both worry and she can do it professionally, which is bound to be better. I still haven’t had an appointment for the first check-up after the operation because it still hasn’t been three months since the operation. I must ask the nurse if I have to make the appointment or if they’ll send a letter. And there’s another worry, last time I had cancer 33 years ago, the first lot of surgery didn’t get it and I had to have another lot, so I’m not saying breezily that everything is OK. It might not be. On the other other hand being cheerful and positive is my best (and only) defence against things going wrong again. Well it’s not my only defence, losing a bit more weight will help, except that they weigh me every time I turn up anywhere because unexplained weight loss is one of the signs I might have cancer back again.
Are you joining in with the worry yet? If not I feel you might not be paying attention properly.
I remember this from last time. Living from check-up to check-up. The hurry up and wait is the killer diller of this disease. Except that it isn’t, the cancer is the killer diller the waiting is, like fear, just its henchman.
Yet here we are at Easter, a more appropriate festival there could not be. The light after the end of the tunnel and the return of hope. Except that, sadly with my nose in books always, I know that to be a Christian myth tacked on to the much older Osiris legend, where the baddie not only kills but dismembers the goodie and scatters him about a bit. Maybe smears him on a microscope slide, who knows?
My booknose also reminds me of Peter Pan and Narnia. Aslan is defeated, Tinkerbell is dying. Clap if you believe in fairies, roar if you are not dead yet.
I’d have been happy to be the original Isis, the wife of Osiris, Susan, or any of the children, or even Peter Pan, I didn’t want to be Osiris, or Aslan or even Tinkerbell.
Keep reading if you believe in me, I’ll hope to keep writing.
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