It's been a while since my last blog! It's hard this living in the moment thing in that when I'm feeling well(in relavtive terms)I'm determined to fill in every moment of living life and have no time to reflect and then when I'm not I'm too ill to get any thoughts straight!
My brain doesn't work so well these days either - many misspellings and forgetting or not pressing the space button hard enough as my fingers don't have full strength any more but my thoughts and feelings are still aplenty and it feels good to write my thoughts down whether someone reads them or not.
Feeling down today and very weak after having a very nasty reaction to antibiotics I was prescribed for my chesty cough which I feared was yet another chest infection but is probably just a virus.Whatever it was the same antibiotic that gave me a nasty reaction 9 years ago and should be on my medical records to avoid was given and I,desperate to get rid of yet another chesty,hacking cough,duly took the 3 doses only to wake up yesterday morning with the onset of an awful migraine followed by nausea,vomiting,diarrhoea which lasted a full 12 hours and was frightening,debilitating and lonely.
A good friend called in twice and was very helpful and fed and walked my dog but couldn't take the pain and fear away - I couldn't even keep down sips of water and as it was chemicals trying to get out of my body it was a very slow and agonising process.
The out of hours doctors service isn't great- it took an hour to get a call-back from NHS Direct with a very sympathetic guy - I was violently sick while on the phone and alone worried about the possiblility of dehydrating if I didn't stop vomiting which was now heading to the 12 hour mark since I'd begun!He then said I should ring the out of hours service in case it went on through the night but had to go through all my history yet again to the call handler and there and finally got a callback from a doctor another hour later when my friend had returned.As I hadn't vomited since the poor guy on the phone had had to listen to it I felt I was feeling more stable and able to sleep and the doctor said just to let it purge on through! Nice! Anyway I survived the night with no more incident although woke several times.Am feeling much better but very weak after not eating and barely drinking for over 24 hours.
It's the loneliness of illness alone that's the hardest to cope with even if you're not single and without family support like me.Even if you're surrounded by love as I am with my wonderful friends it's the helplessness of anyone to be able to take away the suffering.It is hard not to have that one special someone to be there whatever by your side unconditionally.I'm getting at better at saying mantras to myself like"it will pass", "you'll be ok again soon" but when you're too weak to even have a conversation or listen to anything as you feel too awful it just feel unending and you just feel like you'd prefer to be just put out of it somehow until your body recovers.With huge nausea and bad head it's hard even to sleep undisturbed and you just don't get any rest from it!I had a migraine only about a month ago. I get fed up and frustrated when my energy is so low as it is today and yet I know I need to rest - I have no choice at the moment!
Leaving low times I must record my incredible Olympic Torch adventure in Blaenavon,South Wales on Friday May 25th which was a glorious sunny day - hard to imagine looking out at this rain!
This was such a joyous,uplifting proud day for me and so special and something I will always cherish. It wasn't so much the 2 completely spontaneous live interviews on BBC News 24 and BBC One news with Sophie Raworth which were thrilling and yet so hard to imagine the me from 4 years ago capable of just taking it all in her stride and enjoying it so much with no nerves at all but the best feeling for me was to have nearly 30 wonderful friends from all aspects of my life,the old and new life, all there cheering me on with so much love,enthusiasm and support! I felt like I could do anything that day and felt so priveleged and honoured and blessed to just be there at all!
I remember very well the day in 2005 when it was announced that London had won the Olympic bid for 2012 as we had a power cut in our village exactly at the moment of the announcement between us and Paris and only found out a little later that it was London! I was on the daily drug Tamoxifen at the time and supposedly "cancer-free"but living with the worry and uncertainty disabled me from enjoying what I had and worrying too much about what I might not have.
In 2009 after my life had completely turned upside down in 2008 with my secondaries being diagnosed and my beloved husband walking out and immediately beginning divorce proceedings,I was beginning to slowly put pieces of life back to get together which largely meant carving out a new life and a new me. I was chatting on the phone one beautiful summer's day that year (probably the only one we had but hey!)to D a wonderful friend I had made through my cancer journey through an internet forum. There had been about 6 of us on the same treatment for secondaries at the same time and we regularly posted to keep our spirits up or have a moan or rant when needed. I'd struggled to post at first after my husband left - feeling a failure for someone to be able to leave you when you'd been told you were going to die prematurely but gradually built up courage and people were incredibly supportive even towards my husband too realising how hard it is for the partner but as relations worsened and it was clear he wasn't coming back and was actively making things horrendously difficult D in particular was great with me and in her strong Mancunian accent told me to forget about him and move on with my life as bleak as it seemed at the time. D and I started to talk about the Olympics to be in 3 years time. She knew that summer 2009 was likely to be her last summer and spoke bluntly but not resentfully that she knew she wouldn't live to see them (which sadly turned out to be true as she sadly died in December 2009)and I truthfully didn't believe for one minute that I would be either but promised her that if I was I would be there for both of us! The memory of that chat and her personality (I only actually met her once but "knew" her online over several years)are still very much in my heart today. She was a very strong and feisty woman and said things as she saw them - very bluntly - but with a capacity to laugh,joke and smile through the most awful of sufferings. Her very descriptive,no holds barred posts just made you laugh out loud but also cry at the amazing ability to inject humour into the darkest of times.
I wasn't able to apply for tickets with the way the system was so I won't be going to any events but much better than that I held that Oympic Flame for 5 minutes and it was the most incredible day of my life just to be able to say I'm here, I'm alive and I've shared in an amazing moment of history.
I will be in London (health permitting!)3 times during the Olympics and will be able to breathe in some of the atmosphere and buzz I would have wanted to escape pre-cancer! I will be singing in 3 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC National Chorus of Wales which again is something I never imagined as I don't consider myself as a singer at all but the feeling of being a small cog in the big community wheel of a choir is truly uplifting.
I will always be indebted to Breast Cancer Care for nominating me and supporting me throughout the nearly 10 years I've lived with this disease and hope for many more to come.
I don't know how to thank my friends but they know who they are and that their part in my life however big or small they feel it is helps me truly every day.
Thanks to the generosity of special friends I am the proud owner of the very torch I carried that amazing day.
It's my own Olympic Gold!
My brain doesn't work so well these days either - many misspellings and forgetting or not pressing the space button hard enough as my fingers don't have full strength any more but my thoughts and feelings are still aplenty and it feels good to write my thoughts down whether someone reads them or not.
Feeling down today and very weak after having a very nasty reaction to antibiotics I was prescribed for my chesty cough which I feared was yet another chest infection but is probably just a virus.Whatever it was the same antibiotic that gave me a nasty reaction 9 years ago and should be on my medical records to avoid was given and I,desperate to get rid of yet another chesty,hacking cough,duly took the 3 doses only to wake up yesterday morning with the onset of an awful migraine followed by nausea,vomiting,diarrhoea which lasted a full 12 hours and was frightening,debilitating and lonely.
A good friend called in twice and was very helpful and fed and walked my dog but couldn't take the pain and fear away - I couldn't even keep down sips of water and as it was chemicals trying to get out of my body it was a very slow and agonising process.
The out of hours doctors service isn't great- it took an hour to get a call-back from NHS Direct with a very sympathetic guy - I was violently sick while on the phone and alone worried about the possiblility of dehydrating if I didn't stop vomiting which was now heading to the 12 hour mark since I'd begun!He then said I should ring the out of hours service in case it went on through the night but had to go through all my history yet again to the call handler and there and finally got a callback from a doctor another hour later when my friend had returned.As I hadn't vomited since the poor guy on the phone had had to listen to it I felt I was feeling more stable and able to sleep and the doctor said just to let it purge on through! Nice! Anyway I survived the night with no more incident although woke several times.Am feeling much better but very weak after not eating and barely drinking for over 24 hours.
It's the loneliness of illness alone that's the hardest to cope with even if you're not single and without family support like me.Even if you're surrounded by love as I am with my wonderful friends it's the helplessness of anyone to be able to take away the suffering.It is hard not to have that one special someone to be there whatever by your side unconditionally.I'm getting at better at saying mantras to myself like"it will pass", "you'll be ok again soon" but when you're too weak to even have a conversation or listen to anything as you feel too awful it just feel unending and you just feel like you'd prefer to be just put out of it somehow until your body recovers.With huge nausea and bad head it's hard even to sleep undisturbed and you just don't get any rest from it!I had a migraine only about a month ago. I get fed up and frustrated when my energy is so low as it is today and yet I know I need to rest - I have no choice at the moment!
Leaving low times I must record my incredible Olympic Torch adventure in Blaenavon,South Wales on Friday May 25th which was a glorious sunny day - hard to imagine looking out at this rain!
This was such a joyous,uplifting proud day for me and so special and something I will always cherish. It wasn't so much the 2 completely spontaneous live interviews on BBC News 24 and BBC One news with Sophie Raworth which were thrilling and yet so hard to imagine the me from 4 years ago capable of just taking it all in her stride and enjoying it so much with no nerves at all but the best feeling for me was to have nearly 30 wonderful friends from all aspects of my life,the old and new life, all there cheering me on with so much love,enthusiasm and support! I felt like I could do anything that day and felt so priveleged and honoured and blessed to just be there at all!
I remember very well the day in 2005 when it was announced that London had won the Olympic bid for 2012 as we had a power cut in our village exactly at the moment of the announcement between us and Paris and only found out a little later that it was London! I was on the daily drug Tamoxifen at the time and supposedly "cancer-free"but living with the worry and uncertainty disabled me from enjoying what I had and worrying too much about what I might not have.
In 2009 after my life had completely turned upside down in 2008 with my secondaries being diagnosed and my beloved husband walking out and immediately beginning divorce proceedings,I was beginning to slowly put pieces of life back to get together which largely meant carving out a new life and a new me. I was chatting on the phone one beautiful summer's day that year (probably the only one we had but hey!)to D a wonderful friend I had made through my cancer journey through an internet forum. There had been about 6 of us on the same treatment for secondaries at the same time and we regularly posted to keep our spirits up or have a moan or rant when needed. I'd struggled to post at first after my husband left - feeling a failure for someone to be able to leave you when you'd been told you were going to die prematurely but gradually built up courage and people were incredibly supportive even towards my husband too realising how hard it is for the partner but as relations worsened and it was clear he wasn't coming back and was actively making things horrendously difficult D in particular was great with me and in her strong Mancunian accent told me to forget about him and move on with my life as bleak as it seemed at the time. D and I started to talk about the Olympics to be in 3 years time. She knew that summer 2009 was likely to be her last summer and spoke bluntly but not resentfully that she knew she wouldn't live to see them (which sadly turned out to be true as she sadly died in December 2009)and I truthfully didn't believe for one minute that I would be either but promised her that if I was I would be there for both of us! The memory of that chat and her personality (I only actually met her once but "knew" her online over several years)are still very much in my heart today. She was a very strong and feisty woman and said things as she saw them - very bluntly - but with a capacity to laugh,joke and smile through the most awful of sufferings. Her very descriptive,no holds barred posts just made you laugh out loud but also cry at the amazing ability to inject humour into the darkest of times.
I wasn't able to apply for tickets with the way the system was so I won't be going to any events but much better than that I held that Oympic Flame for 5 minutes and it was the most incredible day of my life just to be able to say I'm here, I'm alive and I've shared in an amazing moment of history.
I will be in London (health permitting!)3 times during the Olympics and will be able to breathe in some of the atmosphere and buzz I would have wanted to escape pre-cancer! I will be singing in 3 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC National Chorus of Wales which again is something I never imagined as I don't consider myself as a singer at all but the feeling of being a small cog in the big community wheel of a choir is truly uplifting.
I will always be indebted to Breast Cancer Care for nominating me and supporting me throughout the nearly 10 years I've lived with this disease and hope for many more to come.
I don't know how to thank my friends but they know who they are and that their part in my life however big or small they feel it is helps me truly every day.
Thanks to the generosity of special friends I am the proud owner of the very torch I carried that amazing day.
