Writer, researcher, music lover, cancer survivor with CMMRD ("double" Lynch syndrome)
In the space of two weeks, I have:
– Been to see a gynaecologist due to weird MRI results, and told everything is fine, that they can give me a hysteroscopy if I want (just a camera check-up thing) but I said if it’s not totes necessary, don’t bother
It’s all mad. Absolutely fucking mad. I did okay through Christmas, until about 30th December, in anticipation of this appointment with the gynaecologist due to the MRI I had. Spent that evening curled up with my boyfriend crying, and the days leading up to yesterday weren’t much better. Anxious, freaking out. Distracted. Wednesday night my belly was flip-flopping all over the place, doing somersaults.
Home alone, feeling reflective or otherwise emotionally riled for no real reason, and in possession of a lot of Jack Daniels. Four bottles, in fact. Obviously I’m only going to have like two glasses; it’s just interesting that I have so much in the house at the moment. Good to know it’s there, I guess – though I will have to pick a different alcohol when I eventually go to the supermarket to do my “will I still get ID’d now that I’m thirty?” test.
Words have not been forthcoming.
Telling the truth is hard.
Makes me think of my blog award from last year. What an honour to get an award just for telling the truth. Lots of truth. It sounds simple but that doesn’t make it easy.
Last night I wrote the following tweet, which got more attention than I thought it would:
Birthday in a few weeks! Don’t think people realize how important my 30th is to me as a cancer survivor. It is a landmark I will feel privileged to reach. If anyone did already realise that, I would declare them my bff right now; that would be impressive. Blog to follow tomorrow.
I wrote the below passage when I got to my desk this morning because on the drive to work I had been thinking about my uncle who doesn’t have long left with us, and that made me think about my brother and all the things I don’t know and don’t dare ask about his passing, and naturally my thoughts turned to myself, so here we are. And I hesitated before sharing this because even though I have been writing this stuff here for a while now, it still seems like maybe it’s weird or oversharing, but above all I feel like it is important and we should talk about mental and emotional health after cancer, even if people don’t want us to, even if nobody else is, even if nobody is listening. So here we are.
I’m in a really good place right now in terms of not withdrawing to some dark recess of my brain to think about bad memories, or worry about what future health problems might occur. That is really weird for me at this time of year. Normally September/October would be the time when my blog would have an influx of dark poetry, and I haven’t written any poems in a few weeks. So, not great in that respect. I do think my lack of poetry is partly because cancer survivorship is where most of my inspiration has come from for the past couple of years now, and partly because I’ve just been busy with other things such as my degree and my literary magazines, so I haven’t dedicated time to writing poetry. It’s almost as if I have to be unhappy in order to be creative. But as much as I love writing, that would be too big of a sacrifice to make. I know there’s a saying about suffering for your art or whatever, but there has to be a balance.
Or rather, you might not find me at a Macmillan Coffee Morning.
Typically, this is a difficult time of year for me. It’s coming up to my annual consultant appointment, which leads to my consultant (also known as “the life-saver”) sending me for some lovely tests to make sure I’m not about to keel over. Namely: a tumour marker blood test, an endoscopy, a flexible sigmoidoscopy, and until last year, a CT scan. As you can imagine, none of this is much fun – never mind being poked and prodded by strangers (lovely as those strangers may be), but scanxiety is pretty horrible. And around this time of year when it’s all looming ahead of me, I have a habit of going to a dark place. I just think about it all… a lot. It’s not just worrying about what could happen to me in the future (particularly the not-so-distant future), but also being reminded of what happened seven years ago and at check-ups in the years that have followed. My brain latches onto a bad thought and runs with it, and I let it, and I wallow, and it all takes over until my appointment has gone – or at least, until the next appointment:
This is a quick note about how I tried not to let a bad memory ruin my morning. One of my work colleagues became a dad yesterday, which meant that this morning people in the office were talking about birth, labour, c-sections and epidurals. I sat listening while working (it’s a small office, it’s impossible not to listen), until the bit about the epidural, at which point I grabbed my headphones, went to YouTube and clicked on the first music video I saw. Which, usefully, was Slipknot, but anything would have worked to drown out what they were saying.
I am officially seven years cancer-free tomorrow (as far as I know) and yes, I’m still harping on about it.
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