So I have not written here for a while and the main reason for this has simply been how awful I have been feeling.  This has partly been due to the maintenance chemo I have been on but also because I have been dealing with a lot of changes and I guess some major disappointments.  Today however I, well I don’t exactly feel great, but I feel better than I have for a long time.  Firstly that is because I now have a flat to which I can escape when out of hospital, secondly I have been off maintenance chemo for 4 days and that means that I don’t feel like death warmed up (pardon the pun ;o) well not quite so much, and thirdly I just got to pee in a toilet like a real person for the first time since Monday and you have no idea how good that makes a person feel.  You see having chemo is not just about the getting but also about the getting rid of and thus I have been hooked up to a drip for 24 hours a day having the chemo they put in me flushed back out and in order to do that they have to keep an eye on the levels of liquid that you have inside you as what goes in – what comes out = water tablets (or not).  Now I know why maths is so important in school.

The more I deal with this disease the more I realise that 80% of the time just involves me sitting or lying down doing nothing but fighting boredom and nausea and the rest of the time involves accepting that any dignity I had, and I must have had some, has flown right out the window, but as that has gone out a better (some would maybe say more twisted) sense of humour and understanding of what is important in life has come right back in.  I know now that it really is your friends and family that count.  Those people that stand with you and fight alongside you, that make you soup, that clean your flat, that take you out in their car, that talk to you by text, email or phone, that travel for hours just to spend time with you, that whisper in your ear ‘you’ve got this’ when everything around you is telling you to give up.  Those people who are there in whatever way saying ‘how can I help? – what do you need?’ those are the people that make life worth the living and those are the people that I am fighting for everyday – that and I have to help keep the people who make the pee pots in jobs.  So to each and everyone of you I say thank you for helping me find the strength to get through this and  to inform you that you are the reason I have just spent 4 days peeing in to cardboard containers (and I bet that just made your night ;o)

Love you and goodnight xxxx