It hasn't been a good week....

My cancer is back. It seems unbelievable that it could return in measurable tumour form in less than seven weeks... but there you are, it has. And while it's not The End, it's the end of a future where everything is going to be alright. I can't be cured, from now on I'm to be managed. For a Virgo with a fiercely independent streak, this is galling on every possible level.

I knew I was in trouble when a consultant, not a registrar, came to see me for my three-weekly chemo assessment. Actually, I thought there might be a problem prior to the meeting when a technician left her meeting, which had closed down the whole department for the morning, to scan just me. As I walked down into the bowels of the Royal Brompton basement, the only patient on the whole floor, I felt like the star of a Stephen King mini-series. But it turns out the scary monster wasn't hiding in the broom cupboard, it was inside me all along.

Tumours have grown in my abdomen and pelvis, too many to allow for surgery, which is the best treatment for sarcomas. Instead, I've been offered more and different chemotherapy. I'm to start on the new treatment - doxorubicin - on Wednesday. This chemotherapy is quite hard on the heart, so I've had a heart scan in the department of nuclear medicine at the Royal Brompton. I was injected with radioactive dye (with a half life of six hours!) and we'll find out on Wednesday if my heart is strong enough to tolerate the chemo. I'm hoping that as it has withstood nuclear investigation and, over the years, the travails of lesbian love, it'll prove a tough old muscle but frankly - who knows? I feel like all the goal posts have been moved.

B and I have been wandering around in a daze ever since we heard the news. We can't even comfort each other with our usual 'It'll be alright' hugs because neither of us believes the other. Sometimes, after a session on google, we spout statistics or questions at each other - 'Doxorubicin has a 50 per cent success rate', 'Mindfulness meditation is proven to reduce stress', or (my personal favourite) 'What's an abdomen?'. Distraction is the best medicine, thank god for friends, family and the phone.

I've told my family who are fabulous. It broke my heart telling my dad, who is 80 this week and who has been so supportive and wonderful through the last six months. When I listened to their intelligent and reactive questions it made me realise how hopeless B and I were when we were given the news. But, in our defence, you do feel like you have been submerged in water when you receive news like this. It's not only the language, it's the one step at a time approach. If the chemo doesn't work then there are options, but the options will be reviewed if the chemo doesn't work. At one stage I was so confused and frustrated that I burst into tears and asked 'Am I dying??' to which the answer, thankfully, was 'No'. 'Are these tumours secondaries?' was my next question. 'Yes'. Riiiight.

So, I'm not dying, I'm being managed and we're all going to wait and see. Of course there are elephants in the room and parading through our house, but until Wednesday they are going to have to remain unnamed. B and I are going to make a list of questions and we'll go through them with the doctor on Wednesday, one by one. 

In truth, I'm looking forward to the new chemotherapy. Despite the various strange side effects of the last chemotherapy - gemcitabine and doxetaxel - it did feel like a cosmetic exercise because I didn't believe I had anything to cure. This time around I'm much more serious. I hope the chemo is too.