New Year -new me?  Not quite.

New Year – new appreciation ?  Yes

This time last year my life was very different from what it is just now.  For starters I was working (right now) in a job that I love and I had also just brought in the New Year with my family.  While I had a good time I must admit that I had definitely not appreciated all of that as much as I should have and that is hard for me to have to acknowledge.  This year I was in bed for the bells having spent 30+ shitty hours in hospital.  However this year while not participating in the festivities I do appreciate everything slightly more.  I appreciate my family and the friends that I have in my life (both the old and the new) you are all amazing and inspire me to be a better person.  There is something quite hard and sad about going for all these appointments and treatments by myself but I know that I am never alone and at any point I can pick up the phone or post a message and there will be someone there for me.  I also appreciate that maybe I am learning something when I go to these appointments by myself, as I then talk to other people and hear their stories and realise that for all the darkness we hear about each day, there is an awful lot of light and love in the world.  That love and light includes the perfect strangers who donate blood so that I, and all the other patients, can stay alive and face another day.  Yesterday I had four units of blood given to me and at no point could I take for granted the gift that some perfectly random stranger had given me.  That light also includes the work that all the hospital staff do, a more dedicated team you could not find (even the ones that make me cry).  This year I am not going to make my usual resolutions but I am going to promise myself to live in the moment, to love more, to laugh more, to be kinder, to be a nicer version of myself.  Basically at the start of this year, 2016,  I may have cancer but I am still here, still fighting, still loved and cared for, caring and loving and that means more to me than I ever truly understood or appreciated before.  So while I am not saying things are going to be easy, I am going to face the challenges head on, revel in the good bits, fight through the bad and hopefully when I look back at my life this time next year I will be cancer free and happy with what I see.