Gone but not forgotten.

The last few days have seen me with renewed energy levels and feeling so much better in myself. It has been remarked upon by people around me, saying how well I look, including an attractive man on the checkout at Lidl last week!. There are several things involved here – I have colour on my face after finding the sunshine in France, the anemia is hopefully declining and my hair colour has changed! I decided to embrace all that I naturally am and stopped dying my hair some weeks ago and now have a rather funky head of short salt and pepper grey hair! Funnily enough in the breakfast news this morning, hairdresser Micheal Douglas, commenting on Judy Murray deciding to go grey (Andy Murray’s mum, usually blonde), said it was much better to look a good 50 rather than be 50 and try to look 40! I look in the mirror and looking back at me is a silver lady, soon to be 50, who has emerged into midlife as a calmer, happier, less driven but more passionate woman.

It’s only when you start to feel better that you realise you weren’t quite on form. I’m better able to cope with later evenings (for ages I was in bed by 9pm!) and it’s only very occasionally that I need to fit in an afternoon nap! The prescription iron is clearing kicking in and having the desired effect together with a slightly lighter period this month on the ibuprofen and Mefenamic acid.

 

I was somewhat anxious that I would be going away on holiday not feeling on form and with the stress of a disruptive menstruation, fingers crossed things will be more manageable going forward.

Tamoxifen was a major headline in the BBC news yesterday. I had wrongly thought that the drug was already given as a preventative therapy for women at high risk of breast cancer, maybe this was only in the USA? Great news that it is now being given the go ahead to be used in the UK as an alternative to drastic surgery. It gives a reduction in risk of around 40% so there is still a lot to consider for those at high risk, given a double mastectomy gives a 95% reduction in risk of developing breast cancer. And of course it comes with side effects, although the hot flushes are not something that I really experience but for many women it’s a real issue. There is also increased risk of blood clots (must remember to get my flight socks out ready!) and effects on endometrium and menstrual cycles.

Genetics appointment on Tuesday with the counseling nurse, not sure what this will involve but I hope it will be informative and provide some reassurance for my daughters for the future.

On Sunday I shall be putting on the running shoes and joining hundreds of other women in a sea of pink for the 5k Race For Life.  I knew no one affected by cancer when I ran my first race a few years ago. This will be my fourth race in ten years and I have a list of names to write on the sheet to pin on my back  “I race for life for…”  including myself. Everyone has been incredibly generous with fund raising in the past, including last year when I raised £650 for our local CLAN (Cancer Link Aberdeen & North) just a few weeks before my own diagnosis. I will not be raising money in this race. I have made a personal donation and I will simply Race For Life in celebration of my own life, in celebration of those family and friends who have been successfully treated for their own cancer, in memory of the ones who have been taken away from us by this awful disease and for the strong people we know who are still undergoing treatment. Marking a year since my own journey began, the event is bound to bring a day of mixed emotions.

 A friend recently asked me if I am able to forget about the cancer now. In the early days, for weeks, it was all consuming, a brain overloaded with the fear, the unknown, the hospital visits and treatment. Ten months on, I forget about it for several hours at a time but every day there is a reminder, however small. A moment too long in front of the mirror catching a glimpse of the purple line that reaches from my underarm to the centre of my chest, pulling on a dress that doesn’t fit without a bra or a pad, a news article about BRCA genes, celebrity mastectomies, licensing of new drugs, new guidelines, a mobile breast screening unit parked outside a restaurant that I am having dinner at, a Macmillan poster that says “No mum should face cancer alone”, Asda’s Tickled Pink charity collection points, a post-surgery clothing & lingerie catalogue arriving in the post, an unexpected sharp jab across my chest after a day of working in the garden, reaching out for my drugs every morning. It doesn’t go away but like many things in life, you learn to live with it and over time it takes up a much smaller place in your head and gets pushed from the huge entrance hall of your mind to the small study where, it sits for now, on top of the pile waiting to be sorted and filed away.