26. A week to go

Apart from a visit to have my nails done on Thursday this week I have left the week totally free for me to relax. That btw is code for over think and get my knickers in a right twist and convince myself I'm going to be the first person to die tragically of radiotherapy on the first day of treatment. ( I have looked it up.... so far NO! its not happened) Work on the Oak gazebo out the back of the house which we call the 'snug' is being finished this week, so I'm hoping that, shopping arriving, various items I've ordered ready for Christmas in case I just can't be arsed later, and generally getting tidy and cleaning the house this week, will get me through until this time next week without having a total meltdown and deciding to not bother going next week. I still have thrush in my mouth from the strong antibiotics and tooth extraction mucking up my oral bacteria, and I have started taking this liquid 4 times a day which boasts to have it gone within a week. Its pretty foul but hopefully will do the job. I really don't want to be starting off with anything amiss before I even start poisoning myself with radiation!

I can't help thinking every time I do the shopping these days of the fact by the time Christmas day gets here, I'm going to be pretty ill, and most likely in a lot of pain, and more than definitely not eating and very very positively not tasting any food. It's really hard looking at all the new this year Christmas ideas and knowing basically I'm not going to be eating any of those. I'm going to try and cook a Christmas dinner obviously, for Paul, but I don't think I'll even want to be in the same room watching him eat it, so tables, candles, and pretty table cloths are all going to be not happening, and I haven't ordered our normal turkey from the butchers. It takes 2 of us to get through it normally, and then we throw some that we just can't finish with boxing day , pies, curries etc so it would be just a complete waste for Paul to eat a leg, and then maybe a few slices the next day. I keep telling myself its only 1 year, and only 1 turkey, but sadly reading about others who have had the same treatment I'm having, sometimes they never get their taste back, or lose their ability to swallow and are still on tube feeding years later. I am really diving into the unknown. Until I start and see which parts are affected, and how badly, I can't, don't even want to try and guess how I am going to end up after all this. So this feels like my last week almost. It's like in a weeks time, there will no longer be me, the me that has always been. From next week, I will be left with however, and whatever, cancer treatment leaves me with. That's hard.

Almost like playing Russian Roulette, and I feel some what crazy for doing it to myself. I know I haven't got any other choices, which don't obviously mean dying, but I do lay in bed at night wondering if that would be a better option of living with how I could become after treatment.

I can remember driving back from the appointment in Norwich all those months ago, and we were discussing about the treatment they had offered me and I had refused, Paul asked me ' What is it that you are actually most afraid of?'

' I think its that I find the thought of dying, far easier and less frightening than doing anything about it' I still feel like that. :(

But maybe I'm just preparing myself for the inevitable. Even if I get through treatment, even if my side effects are temporary and or milder than some others have had, I will forever be waiting for the next test, the next scan, the next glum expression on the face of a stranger saying the words ' we've found cancer'. Probably everyone who gets diagnosed feels like this, and their lives are an endless merry go round of consultant appointments, tests, weeks where you can forget for a while, only for it to all sneak up on you as the dates loom closer on the calendar. Is that life, or just existing and waiting to die, with your own personalised oncology story board. I really don't think I want to do that. But today I have a week, one more glorious week when I am still me, before I spin the barrel and click the trigger everyday for 6 long weeks and hope the fragments that are left are enough to make a person of after all this is done.