Good news!

We met with the Professor yesterday and were given our first good news since this whole saga began. The chemo is working and my tumours have shrunk a little bit! High five to Doxorubicin. The news was so good and so unexpected that we celebrated with pasta and an early night. Oh yes, don't tell me I don't know how to mark the big occasions.

There were also the phone calls. It was such a pleasure to be able to phone my Dad, my brothers and my sister with good news. The relief in my Dad's voice... it's so tough for my family who are so far away. While I may fret about the future, I have access to the reality of the situation - I can ring the hospital, a specialist nurse, my friends who are going through, or have gone through, similiar experiences. It's very real for me. For everyone else, they have to take their cue from me, or B, and we aren't always reliable. After all, I may just be in a bad mood, not wretched because I have cancer. Also, now I'm losing my eyebrows and eyelashes, I'm getting all soft focus (like Robin Williams in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry) and more difficult to read, physically (I think anyway). I'm not necessarily sad, just hair free.

I feel so uplifted by the good news, it's made me realise how low I was before. So everyone else, family and friends, must have felt this too. I'm really sorry - I didn't even realise how stressed I was. Because I went from being well, and recovering so quickly from my hysterectomy, to being told I was ill and had cancer, to then being told I had incurable cancer, I'd almost forgotten what it's like to feel at ease. Or to know how I feel. It's only been three months but it's as if I've entered a parallel universe. Tests, chemo, the constant background hum of cancer... it's consuming, it's confusing and ultimately it's alienating. We are having to think about 'things' that we don't want to, 'things' that are uncomfortable and 'things' that happen to other people, not us.

But, what I do realise now, is that it only takes a tiny bit of positivity to shift my perception. Yesterday with the Professor, he didn't tell me that my cancer was cured, or that my tumours had disappeared. Just that the chemo was working, a little bit. And that he hoped that the next round would produce more shrinkage. But to hear good news, really good news, it changed everything. We'd gone into the meeting hoping for the best but fearing the worst - a good way to be, according to B, as the Prof is a Brummie - and the news made us feel like winners. The trick now is to remember this feeling, and to keep it going. I know I haven't just discovered the power of positive thought (apparently there are books written about it!!) I feel like I have. Luckily I'm going back to see Mr Electric in January - he should sharpen me up.

Last week I went to a workshop held by David Hamilton on using your mind to heal your body. David is Scottish and incredibly healthy looking (because he doesn't have cancer, possibly....) and his work is about the power of visualisation. He's a trained chemist, and backs his work up with endless statistics from published studies - it's all very interesting. In fact, I  bought his cd, which I've lost somewhere in the house because I can't remember anything - chemo? menopause? you choose.

Christmas is coming, my sister arrives for five weeks in two days time, my brother and his family arrive in January for a short visit, I have B, and I have my health. I feel lucky. Life is good. There's even a season of musicals on at the National Film Theatre!