Doesn’t really have a ring to it….though phonetically it works (is that the right word?!?)

Actually having a good day – 2.30pm, not dressed, lots of coffee, huge fry up brunch….very chilled…except I forgot my anti viral tablets in London so have to go and get them. Much as I really don’t want to, I don’t want a shingles attack more.

I am starting to look like me again. I got seriously checked out yesterday when I was out and that felt good – its been a while. I have a light fuzz of hair on my head, about 2mm long, about 50% of the amount of my ‘normal’ hair, but not shining bald. May well all fall out again, no idea, but the fuzz (its kind of like fur rather than hair) is there for now. My face looks like my face again – when I look in the mirror I see me – welcome back me :). I am even starting to sleep – last while 5 – 6 hours in one solid block, last night I even dozed on and off for a couple of hours after that. And for the first time in a week didn’t have to get up every 2 hours to pee. Even my nails are better – I have been getting shellac on them since I started chemo to stop them breaking and so on – its worked well so far. Last manicure just over 3 weeks ago there was bruising on my thumb nails and one other nail – I thought that was the start and it would get worse. However, got them done yesterday (fire engine red :-)) and they are much better – I am so happy about that for some reason.

And yet there still is an underlying sadness today. Simple sadness. I wish I didn’t have cancer, that today didn’t mark another first: Christmas with cancer. I wish I didn’t have to work quite so hard to maintain the bigger picture, the positivity, the healing. I wish I didn’t have to say that Taxol is so much better than EC, that I could have remained in my ignorance about either of them. I wish my new normal was not having a large lump under my collar bone where the chemo line is put in; knowing my way around the routines of the Marsden so very well on chemo day.

Both are my reality today and it is what it is. The fact remains there is so very much I am grateful for today. And that I am coming out the other side of a major part of this cancer journey – I am looking back at the last 6 months and feeling compassion for myself because it has been as rough as fucking hell. But the sheer fact I am looking back means I am not in it any more.