My summer is over

I knew when I finished radiotherapy all those months ago I would make this year count! And I truly have kept my word to myself. I have been places, travelled, survived stuff I never would have believed I could this year, and I don't mean treatments. Now the weather is just starting to turn, its raining lots, the quilts are back in the duvet covers, the floor feels warm at times under foot telling me the temperature has made the under floor heating automatically jump into life again, and all my trips are over. I have travelled more this year than I have the entire rest of my life, I won't say fearlessly because it hasn't been. But with the determination of someone who now knows waiting for a time that probably will never arrive for her, would mean regret. The regret of not taking the good with the bad, the joy only felt with the fear it takes to get it, and I didn't want to die never having tried, never having witnessed the things this life could have been. Everyday now things are a little different, more challenging, uncomfortable at best, painful at worst. I spend my days trying to convince myself every new pain or strange sensation is purely all part of the healing, the destruction of cells and tissue come with a price, I knew that! But I also refuse to blindly rule out the possibility of the obvious reason, and that its back but too small to be found just yet. I have my summer though, my few months of doing what others have done all their lives and taken for granted. I'm happy, but also strangely relieved, that my trips have ended. The rain lashing at the windows makes me want soup, the log burner, a knitting project on the go and the dog curled up next to my thigh. Christmas looms large on my horizon, and the thought of enjoying, well trying, the first one in this house has an appeal even if a little melancholy. Dentists, hospital, counselling and Dr's are my only appointments on the utility white board now for the rest of the year, so I can rest, regather, recharge (again) and hanker down for what comes next. Either way I'm going to need everything I have again, to either face more treatments, more bad news, more failings and betrayal of my body, or the worse battle, mentally accept my fate and wait. But my last hoorah in Manchester, to see Pauls mum last week is done. We are home, now I'm home, and preparing for the storm that's coming.