Adventures and close friends mean so much!

Can't quite believe it's been 3 months since my last entry! August and September turned out to be very enriching months with lots of adventures. I coped much better on the reduced dosage of my treatment which enabled me to be able to enjoy a return visit to the amazing Green Man music festival near Crickhowell. This year I went with my great friend S, her husband and 2 gorgeous girls,8 and 10. In fact my fave memory of those 4 days camping (despite very little sleep!)was chilling in a huge Cinema tent with the 2 girls all cuddled up watching the original Muppet Movie which I remember seeing when it came out in the 80s and the children loved it!It was physically more hard-going for me this year and I still had my pleural catheter in place but I managed and it was a great few days with great friends.
There was then 2 days of sheer crashing out and trying to summon back some energy before heading off to Manchester by train for my 4th consecutive to what I think is the best and friendliest piano summer school around at Chethams music school. It was fab to see so many friends from previous years and make new ones - also a nice surprise to find my 15 yr old godson whom I rarely see was there too. I thought I was going to have to leave after just 2 days as I wasn't able to sleep and just had no energy but luckily sleep came and although I struggled physically I loved it as always and amazed myself by managing to pull of a 25 minute recital successfully at 10pm at night - I had to go to bed straight afterwards with awful stomach cramps and exhaustion so missed out on the champagne and chocolates celebrations with my friends in the bar but I was really proud of myself. I was then due to make a live concert DVD recording at 9am on the last morning after a late night following the final night cabaret in which I took part as always. I seriously doubted my ability to be able to get through my 25 min programme again but adrenalin and determination took over and I just went for it and was really pleased with how it went. These days because I don't know how my body's going to respond I find there's not much room for nerves - it's just a case of getting through it and somehow I feel I perform so much better these days than I ever did when I was at music college and at full throttle.I worried so much about little things which just don't seem to matter any more.What matters to me most of all is that I love playing the piano and I want to share my passion with others while I still can. That's why I love the summer school at Chets as it's full of "piano nuts"like me!!
I then had 5 days to recover from Chets before going on my long-dreamed of cruise to the Norwegian Fjords only booked a few weeks before along with my friend J who has also had to live with breast cancer.A cruise was just what I needed. I'd lost quite a lot of weight and had very little appetite at the time but soon made up for it on the cruise when it seemed it was possible to get almost anything you wanted most hours of the day!I loved the whole experience from the surprisingly sunny "Sailaway" Party as we left Southampton complete with cheesy songs,dancing and flags to the magnificent fjords themselves and all the entertainment laid on the ship from line dancing to classical piano,jazz piano to the amazing Gary Barlow lookalike. We ate,laughed,drank and ate some more! It was a great week and meant a lot to me.
On disembarking the enormous Oceana I then was picked up my great old college friend S whom I hadn't seen since my awful year of 2008 when I had a lovely weekend in Glasgow where she then lived for her 2nd daughter's christening. Well 6 years have gone by and she's had a 3rd child and moved back to her childhood county of Dorset. I had a lovely few hours meeting her wonderful family and playing with the 3 children making loom bands and hearing them all play the violin including the 3 year old! My wonderful London friends then picked me up as they were coincidentally seeing friends nearby in Dorset and gave me a lift back to stay at theirs for a couple of days to help restore my depleted energy. I'm truly blessed with my friends and it's been particularly rewarding to spend quality time and really get to know people better over the last few years whilst I've been single.
Although I was pretty wiped out by the cruise I had a relaxing few days in London and was able to spend a couple of hours with my oldest nephew whom I can't quite believe is now 27 but is incredibly mature and a pleasure to spend time with.
It was then back home and I was very glad that I was able to have my pleural catheter removed after 3 months as the fluid was no longer developing beyond a very small amount. We all hope that this meant that the treatment regime was working but unfortunately blood tests and then a recent scan has showed that not to be the case.
I then had 20 friends round for a very happy house-warming party - I'd moved in at the end of June but things had been a bit busy since then! I felt so supported and it was a really happy atmosphere.
During the last week of September Bass (my beloved lab)and I undertook the long train journey with the great help of assisted travel, which was very impressive, to York to be met by my oldest and dearest childhood friend K and her lovely hubbie R to stay in a cottage in North Yorkshire. It was a really lovely and relaxing week. We were able to visit my beloved Harrogate Ladies College where I boarded for 6th form and when we turned up outside the school we were very much welcomed and found it was an Open Day and we had a wonderful tour by a present pupil who probably thought I was so old as I was referring to all sorts of things that no longer exist there. It was really special as I went to Harrogate at a very difficult time in my life as my father had died of prostate cancer the year before and I hadn't really grieved properly at all and was quite an emotional mess inside but the cameraderie of boarding really helped me enormously and I have a lot of special memories from that time. It was also very special to spend a full week with K and her husband. K and I have been great friends since meeting at Sunday school at 5 and our families have become very close friends over the past nearly 40 years and we've been through a lot together and also have a lot of shared good memories.K is one of only a few of my present friends who knew my dad too so that means a lot to me.
I'm pretty shattered after reliving my summer adventures! I've just completed the 1st cycle of a new chemo oral regmie I've been put on and am really hoping there may be some improvement or at least stability showing in my blood test on Wednesday but we're unlikely to know anything concrete till after my 3rd cycle and scan at the end of December for which I'll get the results on New Year's Eve!!
Meanwhile I'm preparing for a piano competition next weekend in London and was very pleased with my 1st,2 2nds and a 3rd in Brimingham in October. I've got a river cruise Christmas Market tour in Belgium,getting there by Eurostar which are another 2 new experiences for me at the beginning of December with another newer but good friend and I've booked myself an all-inclusive spa hotel week in Madeira for Christmas to get away and get myself some winter sun and some "me" time.

Gratitudes and living for the moment!

I'm sitting here trying not to think of what tomorrow will bring and trying to hang on to living in the moment of right now of feeling relatively "normal" despite a mouth full of ulcers and a catheter in my lung and knowing that the last 2 days of enjoying the simple pleasures of enjoying preparing and eating food,even enjoying taking the laundry out and having the energy and motivation to put it on the line,will probably soon be a distant memory as I restart the cancer drug that my poor body has struggled to tolerate over the last 30 or so days resulting in back-to-back very high temperatures which caused me to hallucinate for the 1st and hopefully last time in my life!
It's been a while since my last post and as you may have guessed things have relapsed again for me- just 9 weeks ago ( with the rearing of cancer's ugly head in the lining of my lungs which has caused fluid to develop as a reaction and I've had to have an in-dwelling pleural catheter inseted in my lung and have been able to manage the draining on my own for 6 weeks.
As well as this big shock re-diagnosis just 2 days after a wonderful week in Lake Garda,Italy totally unaware that the reason I was feeling so tired and breathless and coughing like a smoker,I was also in the process of buying a new house in order to downsize,reduce bills and mainly get somewhere without the 22 steps up to the front door whilst I was feeling relatively well or so I thought!!
So after the devastating scan on 30th May,having the catheter inserted on 16th June,getting an unrelated debilitating virus on 17th June I moved house (with support and help of most amazing friends)on 26th June and then started my new 2 tablet combo on 1st July.
It's all been a tremendous shock - I seem to be jinxed as my previous move in 2002 from London to Wales happened the day I was initially diagnosed with breast cancer!!
As all who know me are aware I've always been and am a very sunny-natured person who loves life - much like my father who was  also taken by cancer - but I do have low moments when I think why me and that I can't endure anymore but then there's always some sign or message or encouragement to carry on.
My message was a salient one - last week at the cancer hospital I saw for the first time in nearly 12 years treatment there,a small child of about 3,wrapped in a blanket with a bald head, clearly from chemo carried lovingly by her mother. It nearly broke my heart - they have a separate entrance for the children so that the children aren't so scared by the adults undergoing treatment. I realised in a flash that if I was a mother I would want to undergo the treatment and the disease instead of my child and that if that young child who knows so little of life and should't have to undergo or know the pain of cancer and treatment can endure it so can I.
Without my amazing friends and support network I don't know how I'd have the strength to carry on - to continue to be basically fed poison in the hope that it gives me more time - it won't cure me and I can't help thinking that the last 5 and half years I've had of relative stability might be the last "stability" I'll have but I have to keep hopeful and planning adventures and just appreciate the moments I feel like myself.
It's interesting the people that stay more in the background and those who've known you all your life and just stay in the background. What to say - what to do - none of us know including those of us living with terminal illness. All of us in life just need to value what we have in each moment and really appreciate it. We say often in life "it's never too late" - well unless you believe in re-incarnation or an afterlife - there is a too late. Hold your loved ones close to you and never forget to tell them how you feel about them.