Every cloud has a silver lining – even a huge, dark, brooding COVID cloud.

The Oxford Dictory Definition of A silver lining: “A sign of hope or a positive aspect in an otherwise negative situation. The phrase is often seen as part of the proverb “Every cloud has a silver lining”, meaning that there’s hope or something good to be found in every bad situation.“

The last few enforced months of peace and quiet have given me a chance to calm my mind and process all that has happened to me over the last three years.

I will admit now that I’ve been very absent from here as I didn’t particularly want to inflict the inner workings of my mind over the last 18 months. 

Weirdly, even just trying to organise my thoughts for this cathartic download to you all is already making me feel lighter and happy, I truly should have just done it sooner, could’ve saved myself a whole heap of angst. 

OK… So… Oh. My. Word.

I need to back track a little… I’ve just found some notes which I wrote on Tuesday 13 November 2018 – a bit telling about my frame of mind at that time methinks.  Again, weirdly, I say that I’m going to get down to business with some emotion and then don’t…

High time for an update – Hello Stranger, I hear you say. Aha, there she is I hear you say.

I’m Sorry..? Spot the question mark? Does just one word cut it for being such a shabby blogger? Last post was on the 20^th May… I had no idea that so much time had passed since I last put keyboard to screen.

Right, let’s do a quick six month summary and then get down to business with some emotion.

Had a wonderful week at Chelsea Flower Show – felt useful, clever, professional, smart and loved. I really do like working that venue.  And the fantastic news is that I’m booked for next year as well so I must’ve done something right.  I really didn’t have any obviously problems with stamina, energy levels stayed up, which I guess was helped with the adrenaline coursing through my system!

Goodness, I’m having to check my diary, very frustrating that I now don’t appear to have any capacity to retain memorable moments! Not sure I can put that down to chemo now, more like the fact that I am another year closer to 50!

• Mum got a new kitten ‘Lucy’.
• Special Day out at Harry Potter World.
• Herceptin sub cutaneous injections continued until mid August 2018.
• Joe and I tried to re-train Winston – still not worked… I’m a crap dog trainer.
• Joe’s SATS – done and passed with flying colours.
• Breast cancer and big boobs don’t go together. (2^nd Oct 2020: Quite clearly, I was still not happy with implants..)
• Hel’s 50^th birthday – such a lovely weekend, but marred for me by having a big, unexplainable bleed.
• Thought I was coming off all medical lists.. and then because of bleed got added to gynae for further investigations (2^nd Oct 2020: Had lots of tests as they wanted to be sure that the tamoxifen hadn’t caused womb cancer, all clear and fine)
• Big job working on Dublin medical meeting, got straight to work on that one – meeting scheduled for June 2019 (2^nd Oct 2020: went ahead successfully)
• Another job in Athens confirmed for September 2018, lots to do over the Summer of 2018.  Had to hit the ground running and had to shake off the chemo brain as quickly as possible…
• Joe finished primary school
• Had a couple of dreadful group post cancer counselling sessions – not going to mention which organisations they were but realised group sessions aren’t for me

WELL – Now I AM fifty (that happened with not much pomp and circumstance and just a rather lovely, COVID dictated small celebration)… and I am sure that my brain has gone a little bit more to mush. 

I now know that I WAS definitely avoiding putting my thoughts down on paper as I have spent the last year or so doubting myself, or to be correct, my body.  However, I do truly feel that I am out the other side, albeit slightly battered and bruised, with a patch work of scars (I no longer describe them as my cancer battle scars – to be absolutely honest they are just a bit of a mess)

So, to summarise what’s actually been going on…

Over the last year or so I felt as though it wouldn’t be the right thing to say that I’d been having some bad thoughts about my health and the future.  But I now realise that I shouldn’t have been ashamed of that.  I just didn’t and still don’t trust my body.  Because the word remission doesn’t seem to feature in cancer treatment programmes nowadays, when you’re discharged from oncology you live in a sort of constant flux of “Has it come back”, “Will it come back”, “When will it come back”, “How will I know whether it’s come back”…

So therefore I threw myself into work.  I had lots of lovely projects to work on and restocked the bank account.

Then there was the BIG op, I didn’t call it that beforehand as it was billed as a bit of a straightforward rebuild of the left boob.  Well, by heck… I think I can safely say this was the worst bit of all my treatment.  I had a Diep Flap reconstruction, I think I have probably mentioned it before, but goodness, it was a toughy. 

In short, on the 20^th August 2019 I had a 10 and a half hour op to take out the implant that my body never really accepted and move some of my tummy to rebuild my left boob.  I won’t go into details, but it hurt and took a long time to get over.

It meant that really up until Christmas time I was still feeling the effects, to be honest, I still have a bit of a struggle now locating my stomach muscles and general core strength.  But I have just started trying to pay a little more attention to myself and do some pilates to help that along.  It is very, very strange how after all that has happened to me, I seem to be incapable of helping myself.  That ‘Self Destruct’ button just sometimes won’t go away…

At this point my social life had pretty much ground to a halt.  Confidence was at an all-time low, it’s a pretty hard thing to hide that when you are known for being a social able being.  I managed to make a dear friend’s hen-do and wedding in June, another very dear friends 50^th Birthday celebrations in July and one more very special friend’s wedding in October but that was it.  For each one it was a case of…”Deep breath and hope no-one notices me or asks me too many questions..”.

By the end of October I started to throw myself into work and driving Joe around to various Tae Kwondo competitions and we managed to get into a good rhythm and routine.  Unfortunately, I seemed to have an undercurrent of “When is the cancer going to come back?”.  I think that this rather dismal way of thinking was actually normal, it’s just that no one tells you that it is.

I realise now that it doesn’t always have to be that way.  I know that not everyone is as lucky as me, and for some it does come back, but I have also realised that if you live in the shadow of cancer then you don’t move forward.  If it’s going to come and get me again, then so be it, I’ll fight that battle when it happens.  But I’ve got to get on with things in the here and now.  I KNOW I am high risk, I’ve bloody well had it, and for all I know it may still be lurking in my blood stream, but it’s not here NOW.  I became so paranoid about it over the last six months that I’ve requested extra CT scans, which they’ve done, and all is clear.  I need to trust the medics and all their whizzy machines and get on with life.

And then… Dah, Dahhhh… along came COVID, which I am definitely not going to go into here, except to say it took many attempts to get myself off the government “At Risk” register.  They were very happy to send me bumper packs of mushy peas and pasta, but heaven forbid I go and visit my mother…. 

One thing I will say though at this point, is that it is truly heart breaking to see the empty waiting rooms in the breast care centre.. Please, ladies… if you are reading this and you think there is one little teeny, tiny bit of women’s intuition that you think something may, possibly be wrong with your boobs, GO AND GET YOURSELF CHECKED…time is so important and all the clever people are there ready to check you over and help you.

So, after a few months of home schooling, an events business that tanked in 48 hours flat, some wonderfully special quality time with my two boys, one four legged one obvs.. – it was time to find something to do to fill my time and re-evaluate.

Enter Stage Left….Jolies Fleurs and Joanne Preece – in a moment of madness (and hysteria from not having enough to do), I phoned a local florist to see if there was anything I could do to help her out.  It was 10 days before load in for Chelsea Flower Show… I think subliminally I may have been missing flowers…

Well, in her I found a tranquil, inspiring, kind, creative, small business and it’s owner who has subsequently been teaching me about small business ownership and how to arrange and deliver a jolly good £35 hand tied bouquet.

Then, (via the flower shop) I met Katie, a local and rather brilliant seamstress, and now we are working on a little venture that I will tell you about soon… Something I wanted to do ever since my headscarves arrived from America back in 2017.  I wasn’t brave enough to do it before, but now enough time and reflection has passed.  I want to try to give people that wonderful feeling I experienced.  On a crappy day something arrived in the post which I put on my bald head which was bright and lovely and fun and made me feel a whole heap better.

One last little thing, and probably the thing that has made me want to come back to my blog… Next week (after the statutory COVID swab) I will be having my last bit of breast surgery…!  I am actually excited.  This is a bit of a tidy up, a ‘de-bulk’ as the professionals say… plus adding a nipple back on… and the last chapter of what has been a bit of a tedious and painful journey.

And so here we are, life is yet again coinciding with my Daddy. The 6^th October is the anniversary of when he died, I still have a little natter with him pretty much every day, I think he’s getting back at me for bothering him by making sure that someone stuffs a Q-tip up my nose just when I am supposed to be remembering him!

Well, in hindsight, that was never going to be a short, punchy post… that’ll teach me for leaving it so long

Big hugs

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