I'm back!

Hello! Remember me? The world's most unreliable blogger.... Well, I'm back and on almost a special date as well. Tomorrow, June 2nd, is the one year anniversary of my hysterectomy, the date I officially became the woman without a cervix. It feels both a lifetime ago and yesterday. I can still vividly remember my stay in hospital - lying in bed in pain, with a huge scar on my stomach that I thought may unravel at any moment. I tried to talk the nurse out of making me stand and take two steps to the chair where I had to sit and begin my recuperation. 

'I don't think you realise, Natalie, I've just had a serious operation....'.

The whole experience also feels like a million years ago, so many things have happened since then: cancer, secondary cancer, chemotherapy, side effects, getting married/committed, turning 50, battling with my fear and anxiety over being made redundant. But the overarching question I have kept returning to over the past year is one I think we all battle with from time to time, it's the question we fine tune all of our lives. Who am I?

For me, with a body I can no longer trust and a life I hadn't planned, I'm also forced to ask: Who was I? Some days it's so easy to sum up my life as a series of events I never achieved. For instance, I've never run a marathon, I've never owned a dog, I've never seen a glacier and I've never worked my way up the corporate ladder, or even owned a suit. On the other hand I've never been on anti-depressants, although there were moments I've come close. The truth is some days I'm very proud of myself, of the person I think I was. On other days I despair of my lazy arse self and wish I had done so much more. But then, I'm presuming some sort of guillotine cut off date, and that's just not the case. As my friend Aussie Jo tells me, we all just have now, none of us know about tomorrow. Just thinking that sometimes is enough to make my head explode.

I'm actually feeling a lot better and satisfyingly, others think I look better, which really helps. I've decided to think that the drugs are working and just thinking this cheers me up. I guess this is the power of positive thought. I am also beginning to get my appetite back and this extends to all sorts of areas. I now feel like involving myself in the world outside my door. A friend said that the hardest thing about being diagnosed with an incurable illness is the fear, and that once I had mastered the fear I would feel liberated. I can't say that I feel liberated, or that there's a firmly sealed box in my wardrobe throbbing with a caged sense of fear, but I'm on the road.

In the time I haven't been blogging, we spent two nights at the  Penny Brohn Cancer Centre in Bristol, doing a course there called 'Living Well with the Impact of Cancer'. The centre opened 30 years ago and pioneered a mind/body approach to cancer, which encompassed a then radically strict diet and juicing regime. These days its teachings seem normal, in the nicest possible way. What I found was that the ability to talk freely with like minded people lent the course its weight. With us were four other couples and a woman who had come on her own. All of us had different cancers, which I think helped the mix, and we all understood the positions we had found ourselves in. And regardless of the type of treatment, or whether it was private or NHS, there was a knowledge of the difficulties of being a patient, of having to become overnight experts in bizarre areas of medicine and having to make life changing decisions quickly. I'd really recommend the centre. Payment is by donation, so it's affordable regardless of wage packet. A huge plus.

A year of being.... what? Unwell? Different? Sick? A cancer patient? It's hard for me to categorise myself because so much has changed. But I've definitely learnt a few lessons along the way. 

1. You learn who your friends are

It's a pretty basic lesson, really. And lots of people would have learnt this before me through experiences worse or different to mine. The truth is that not everybody can cope with bad news. Friends literally disappear, they become too busy for me and my unfailingly awful, complicated or just frightening news. Inside this lesson is another. Forgiveness. Can I forgive them, or will I let them go? Being ill, watching B having to cope with me being ill, seeing her upset by the attitude of some people, throws this question up in the air. Ultimately I have to believe that everyone is doing the best they can - after all, why wouldn't they? And I have to remind myself that I, too, have let friends down in the past. Left them floundering. I like to think I wouldn't now, but I can't guarantee that cancer is making me into a better person.

2. Family rock

In my case, and I know I am so, so lucky, my family have been amazing. If anything, my illness has made us all closer. Having them come across for our commitment/wedding (apart from my youngest brother and wife who couldn't make it) was the high point of the year. It's impossible to express how much my family have helped us.

3. Support groups help

I was shocked the first time I went along to the Sarcoma UK support group. I thought I would last 10 minutes, but I felt so included that I wish it was every week. Maybe I am becoming self-obsessed, maybe I always have been, but talking about my sarcoma and hearing about other people's experiences is fascinating. Who knew??

4. Rest when you are tired

In a society where worth and emphasis is on being busy, it's difficult to admit to being exhausted by 2pm in the afternoon. Especially if I only got up at 9am. It took me months to even realise my bad moods, fretfullness and general temper tantrums were down to tiredness. That I really did need to go and lie down. My friend Moss said that recuperation is a job in itself and needs to be taken seriously and she is right. Only by lying down and sleeping a lot have I become stronger.

5. Talk about it

Why not? If I have to listen to someone's boring conversation about how busy they are at work, they can listen to my boring conversation about how I'm not. Frankly. Most of us talk about work, home life and what's on telly. Wait for the right moment and before you know it the conversation is dominated by The Killing.

So, back to my original question of who am I... I guess I'm a work in progress, working my way through a landscape I wasn't expecting to traverse. What I'm trying to be is not angry about it. Or at least appropriately angry. So maybe I'm an aspiring appropriately angry middle aged woman. AAAMAG. Or AAA!!!!!mag. Hmmmm.