Today is my first post for about a week. The reason is that I have been too busy to make a post. I have caught up with work, launched two new marketing programs, caught up with friends, explored the far reaches of Singapore for organic vegetables and innovated new macrobiotic recipes.
In other words, I am catching up with my life, after about 10 days feeling 'not quite right, but not quite ill'. I have had a very good week am feeling fantastic, engergised and connected to life.
Chemotherapy prepares you for the rest of your life as a cancer survivor. Before you begin, you feel frightened. There's no other word for it. One is simply terrified. Will I be able to keep my food down or will I spend days face down in toilet bowl? Will I lose weight, become cadaverous, and will all my hair fall out in one fell swoop, turning me into a fright I cannot recognise as myself?
Once the oncologist puts the drug in you, you live from hour to hour, waiting for the side effects to manifest, starting with the initial coldness in the stomach area, the taste of blood in your mouth, the feeling of 'not being quite 100%'.
Then begins the journey of cancer survivors. Life is lived from day to day - in thankfulness from day to day, for each experience that is not 'not feeling quite right'.
Thanks for each day I don't throw up, each day I can eat a full meal, each day I can go about normal things. Thanks for every day that I feel stronger, that I wake up smiling, feeling good to be alive. Thanks for the friends who take time to stay in touch, for the date pudding and ice cream that I am not actually supposed to eat now that I am macrobiotic - yum! And for the warm wind and sunshine on my face as I sit in the taxi, relaxed from retail therapy, windows down so I don't catch any germs being harboured in an airconditioned cab. (To think there was a time I would rather have cut my right arm off than go without airconditioning!)
Each day is different, unexpected. No longer taken for granted. Every experience is savoured, turned over at the end of the day like a slowly melting toffee in the mouth, but remembered with pleasure once gone.
Cancer rewires you. I have just begun the journey. I hope, God willing, it will be a very, very long one.
In other words, I am catching up with my life, after about 10 days feeling 'not quite right, but not quite ill'. I have had a very good week am feeling fantastic, engergised and connected to life.
Chemotherapy prepares you for the rest of your life as a cancer survivor. Before you begin, you feel frightened. There's no other word for it. One is simply terrified. Will I be able to keep my food down or will I spend days face down in toilet bowl? Will I lose weight, become cadaverous, and will all my hair fall out in one fell swoop, turning me into a fright I cannot recognise as myself?
Once the oncologist puts the drug in you, you live from hour to hour, waiting for the side effects to manifest, starting with the initial coldness in the stomach area, the taste of blood in your mouth, the feeling of 'not being quite 100%'.
Then begins the journey of cancer survivors. Life is lived from day to day - in thankfulness from day to day, for each experience that is not 'not feeling quite right'.
Thanks for each day I don't throw up, each day I can eat a full meal, each day I can go about normal things. Thanks for every day that I feel stronger, that I wake up smiling, feeling good to be alive. Thanks for the friends who take time to stay in touch, for the date pudding and ice cream that I am not actually supposed to eat now that I am macrobiotic - yum! And for the warm wind and sunshine on my face as I sit in the taxi, relaxed from retail therapy, windows down so I don't catch any germs being harboured in an airconditioned cab. (To think there was a time I would rather have cut my right arm off than go without airconditioning!)
Each day is different, unexpected. No longer taken for granted. Every experience is savoured, turned over at the end of the day like a slowly melting toffee in the mouth, but remembered with pleasure once gone.
Cancer rewires you. I have just begun the journey. I hope, God willing, it will be a very, very long one.
posted by Simone @ 11:13 PM
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