First Anniversary

One year, one whole year has passed since I scrambled off the linear accelerator treatment table at the Singleton for the last time. I have had a year of incredible ups and downs, of pain and joy, of delight and horror but I’m still here and more or less in one piece. I am not cured but I am in remission. I am in this curious suspended world, a five year limbo at the end of which the hazard rate of my diseased state returns to that of the general population………waiting for cure to be pronounced. It’s a strange place to be. I long for the years to pass yet I don’t. I’m 69. in the four years I need yet to have that final healing I will be 73. I still wake in the mornings and often still can’t believe this has happened to me. I still fiddle with my neck palpating for that swollen lymph node; still look down my throat with a torch. I’m still mourning what was instead of embracing what is. I’m still a work in progress.

Still, a year on I’m functioning fairly normally, Saliva is fine if I chew gum. I don’t have to carry water around with me all the time and I can eat most things. I still can’t whistle!

I have survived a Christmas to wear a new jumper 🙂

And to my next birthday after spending the last in hospital

And Stan and I celebrated Bracken’s seventh birthday

Spring is round the corner and I have been sowing sweet peas and planning the veggie plot. The bees have been out in the sunshine and I am full of hope for their survival. The hives sit in the sunshine and the bees hum their winter tune waiting for warmer weather.