71. If you've got any poo...Throw it now!

Well having rested and recovered from our wonderful trip, I am now back to dreading hospitals and tests again. Today is colonoscopy preparation day!

For the past few days I have had to not eat anything that is considered high residue ie veggies, wholegrains, basically everything they tell you to eat more of , and only could eat white everything, rice, bread, potatoes with no skin etc lean meat, sugar and a little bit of dairy. Today I can't eat anything just fluids and have to take tablets and drinks to basically leave me an empty husk of a woman ready for them to explore my colon tomorrow. I have taken the 4 senna tablets and the first of the magnesium drinks and am patiently waiting toilet roll at the ready and wet wipes in the fridge for the poo narmi to begin.

Lottie is at boarding in case she got carried away on a tide of diarrhoea and was found clinging to a tree in the next village, and Paul is staying upstairs and threatened to get his fishing waders out the garage if things turn nasty. I've never had an colonoscopy and everyone seems to think the preparation i.e the not eating and the toilet trips are worse than the actual procedure, so I am in the midst of the drama sitting right here in my living room basically, and it can only get better. I am down to be 'scoped' in the morning, and so by lunchtime tomorrow this will all be a vague and rather smelly memory hopefully, and then comes the worse part, the wait!! They will obviously be removing whatever lit up on the pet scan last August, unless of course its disappeared, which I very much doubt, and that will have to go to be tested and the wait for the results will be excruciating! I am having all this done privately, so at least I can expect the results as quick as it clinically possible, but even then its usually 2 weeks. I rung Addenbrookes this morning and asked if everything is in place for arranging my pet scan now, and that is apparently in hand, so although it seems forever, I will at least know everything there is to know about the cancer side of my diagnosis by the end of June I would hope. Fingers crossed for me please x Its really hard to get away from it all in your mind and when you do, you find yourself arranging things for later in the year, and thinking about Christmas etc, and then suddenly it pops back into your head and you realise the last 2-3 hours of your head space was all a waste of time until you know if you have the luxury of time and a future. :( A girl I follow on face book has received a terminal diagnosis, :( and she's going to London this week to see a new specialist to see if he can do anything to save or prolong her life, the hospital where she was basically were happy to just write her off now and she's under 30 with 3 children the youngest not even 1 yet. When you see that, and the amount of cancer related stories that obviously now pop up on my face book feed you just realise how many people this is everyday life ( and death) for now. Until it touches, no, barges into your life, and takes presence, no one can appreciate how drastically different it becomes once you have cancer. Even if you are 'cured' you will always have side effects, either physically or mentally from your diagnosis and treatment... some people much more than others, you are never the same person. I know I'm not. Today I am going to be hungry and scared and probably sore and achey by the time I finally get to go to sleep later, and in the morning I will drag myself to another hospital, be afraid but smile and joke through it, like I have done every time before, and face the humiliation of the procedure, the pain of the invasion of my body, and the dread of any immediate information I might receive.

I am back to surviving again, get through another day, whatever it throws at you just get on and do it because there is no choice, you just have to do what they say, to find out, if you're sick, can be made better, or still sick after they have hurt you. I know my limits and all I can do is hope that what's wrong with me doesn't want to push me further than that. So for now, I'll be in the smallest room ..... I'll see you after.