Sam Alexandra Rose

Category: Cancer Survivorship

  • A Swedish Cancerversary

    Poor me.
    Pour me
    another.

    This summer will be five years since I had my sub total colectomy (bowel removal/intestine eviction). So, essentially that will be five years of being cancer-free. I’d quite like to do something to “celebrate” (as much as you can celebrate once having a life-threatening disease). I googled it to get some ideas and there are a lot of sites about it, apparently it’s called a cancerversary, but that sounds a bit weird. I looked up the exact date of my operation, and it was 27th July 2010. Funnily enough, two days ago me and my parents booked a trip to Gothenburg, Sweden (I’m learning Swedish and can’t wait to go). We’re going on our trip on the 27th. Weird, right?

    So that’s kind of a celebration. Though I might not want to mention that to my parents, because, awks. Awkward to talk about what happened full stop, but awkward celebrating me being okay when my brother died of cancer. Is that survivor’s guilt?

    I don’t know. Plus it’s occurred to me that any thoughts about celebrating six months in advance could be a bit previous. Like tempting fate. So. That makes me feel scared. So, mixed feelings. Happiness, relief, sorrow, guilt, fear, impatience.

  • The self-care of not searching the internet

    One of these days I need to get better at realising when spending time browsing the internet for blogs about cancer and Lynch Syndrome goes from reading interesting stories and finding people who empathise, to just fucking torturing myself.

    Today is not that day.

    Tomorrow probably won’t be, either.

    (more…)

  • Professor Green

    Professor Green

    bokehblur:

    A few weeks ago, my mother asked me why I like Professor Green. It’s a fair question, since I’m usually much more of a rock chick – I like Alkaline Trio, 30 Seconds to Mars, Slipknot, Muse, My Chemical Romance, Placebo, and countless others. So it was reasonable of her to ask why I like Professor…

    Reblogging this post from myself from a year or two ago, because I saw Professor Green at O2 Academy in Birmingham on Saturday, after a long time waiting for his rescheduled tour dates, and it was brilliant. That feeling I get when I’m at a gig and just… all the feels, I dunno. It’s hard to put into words. But this still is the reason – I love Pro Green because he gets me so much. Like, the whole second verse of Lullaby is just… yep. I’m a writer and I can’t even say what I’m trying to say. He said something like that once, too. Bloody love him.

    But the point of things I never have went from
    Being a reason for the things that I do
    To just being an excuse that I’d use
    I’ve gotta take responsibility for the things I do
    Find something other than negativity for my fuel
    But I feed off it, even when I don’t seem bothered
    I hide everything that’s going on inside
    Guess it’s been a while since I’ve been honest, I need help
    But I deny it and even lie to myself like I’m fine.

  • Write what you feel you need to write

    Sitting in hospital waiting for my CT scan today, I wondered to myself whether I write too much about one particular thing. Maybe I should write poetry about something else, because it will get boring writing about the same thing all the time and people will get bored of reading it.

    But considering I don’t even know if anyone is reading anyway, there’s little point in pandering to an imaginary audience! And if I have to force myself to write about something that I’m not really feeling, it’s not going to be fun, it’s just going to be a chore. Writing is difficult enough sometimes without turning it into a chore. (It’s okay to admit it’s difficult to feel motivated to write sometimes, isn’t it? Yes.)

    So scratch that. I think I have to just write what I feel like I need to write. Because writing isn’t just for enjoyment, for developing a craft or for entertaining other people – it’s for self-expression as well. I cant just forbid myself to write about something. So I think I’ll continue to write whatever I want to, until I’ve got everything out of my system and feel like writing about something else. There’s no point in compromising – first and foremost, we should write for ourselves.