A problem shared...

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so,
you apologize for the truth....

Benjamin Disraeli.


I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks. This is mainly because nothing of real consequence has sparked a thought which leads me to write. This is still true today, however I have recognised in the last few months that writing about my feelings really helps me and therefore I am going to put down what's going on in my mind and see if it helps. A  nagging feeling  has been hanging over me. I have tried many things to shake it off as it's leaving me very unsettled and I am not in as positive a place as I usually am and would like to be. My days are filled with many variations on the same theme and it is taking many twists and turns. It's quite basic this theme really and I'm pretty sure everyone will relate to it. It is simply this...I don't want to die.

I have no idea why this is so prominent in my mind at the moment. I have been living with secondary cancer for nearly 14 months and, especially in the last 6 months (great scan results etc) I have taken a lot of strength from my positive mindset. I actually had a very encouraging meeting with my consultant last week. I had asked her about referring me for a relatively new cancer treatment called radiofrequency ablation. This essentially burns the tumours off and has a fairly good success rate. She is going to refer me to the appropriate people to see whether or not I am a candidate for this (there is certain criteria to meet). She also brought up the idea of me having part of my lung removed and this is going to be looked at. Again this may not be possible, but it is another avenue of hope. I have to mention here that my recent press coverage of poor NHS care may have assisted in raising my profile and thus being offered more. I don't know but it does, for me, reinforce what I regularly talk about, taking action and being in control of your care. So all of this is surely positive, and yet my fears are riding high just now alongside a strong feeling of why me.

I am struggling to live in the day and instead doing what I know to be dangerous, and projecting. Maybe it's that time of year, Christmas is quite a nostalgic time with a "new" year just around the corner. Yesterday while at Silverburn I noticed a real Christmassy feeling and I found myself resenting those around me who were free to enjoy it without worrying about if this would be their last. Now, to rationalise this, I have no idea what anyone else is going through, just as no one knows what I am going through. I would very much doubt that strangers would look at me and suspect that I was undergoing chemo for terminal cancer, I look very well. I am aware of the fact that I don't know what is going on with others but at face value, they don't have my life, they haven't been dealt my hand! For those people who I do know don't have cancer I am also feeling resentment. Why the fuck did this happen to me? That's where I am at sadly. I am very tearful and without any warning I will suddenly have a horrible sinking feeling in my tummy and I will involuntarily say to myself  "I don't want to die". Olivia dressed up last night as a teacher, which meant that she had some of my clothes on etc. She came downstairs and I laughed, then just as quickly I felt incredibly sad and upset that I may not get to see her as a real adult. These are the regular thoughts that I am experiencing. I'm consumed by the "poor me's". Today I am trying to shift my mood by examining all of the possibilities available to me. I am back on the trail of the clinic in California and its radical cancer treatment. I spoke to a girl I met for the first time the other day about it, and I said that it was an expensive option. She asked if I had thought about fundraising for it. I hadn't and I suppose my first thought was, well why should people give their money to me. Do I have low self esteem? It would appear so, as this is my one and only life that we are talking about. So today I am thinking well why not? It's a possibility and I am taking strength from it. It's all I can do. The odds are stacked against me but I must find a way to believe that anything is possible. There, that's better my feeling are out. Living with this illness is hard, sharing how you feel about it doesn't have to be.