When will I get my wish?

Why is it that every time I have a bad day I want to blog?  Is it to create more drama so my writing will be more interesting?  Is it to raise awareness of the shit times I go through because everyone always sees me with a smiley face?   Or is it for more sympathy.  Well actually it’s absolutely, categorically, none of the above.  It is just to unload, for my own selfish reasons, the burden that I carry, so by typing it out, it actually makes the load that little bit lighter and I can carry on functioning again as normal.  Putting it out there is so that anyone else having a tough time might find some comfort in knowing that others go through it too.
So my thoughts today are this…why after everything I am doing do I feel like nothing is working? 
Last weekend almost 60 wonderful women all met at the Chapel House pub to walk at midnight and donate money for me to help fund my costly, alternative treatments and make my life that little bit easier.  I was overwhelmed by the turn out, some of which don’t even know me (nor do I know them) and how generous they were in giving their time, energy and money for me.  So I really want to make you all proud and show that with every penny donated it’s got me one more step closer to better health.  I want to wake up one morning and see the redness in my skin shrinking, the itching lessen, the texture become smooth and the burning to subside.  I just want a sign that things are improving because mentally I can believe they are but only for so long, as the physical symptoms get worse.
There is not a doubt in my mind that the body knows how to heal itself if we give it the right messages.  I just need to know what message my own body is asking for.  Lots and lots of people respond well to chemo, surgery, radiotherapy but that just didn’t cut it for me.  It was a temporary solution but never quite got to the core of it to make me better, hence my alternative approach.  I feel like I have a little devil sat on one shoulder and an angel on the other.  The angel reminds me of all the positive things I have learnt along the way about nutrition, mind over matter and how no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in and how dire they may seem the mind and the body can still turn it around with the right guidance. And with this I have found myself helping others along with myself, to approach each day with a zest for life that even cancer cannot touch.  But then when I allow it, the devil pops up to whisper in my ear about another IBCer (person with inflammatory breast cancer) has died, is dying, has tried everything too but it just didn’t work for them and I lose my focus .
I would love nothing more to blog my way through this cancer journey with humour and wit and to inspire and lift others but the fact is that not every day consists of fun filled banter but messages both good and bad from the medical and alternative industry on what is going to happen next.  I have come to a point of numbness with this now.  After my last lot of results (being bad) I was floored for over a week, barely making it out of bed in the morning and sobbing my way through the day, I realised afterwards that I allowed myself to react that way because I pinned all my hopes on a positive outcome.  I allowed someone else to push my buttons.  My feelings were dependant on someone else’s perception of this disease when the only perception that matters is mine.  Picking myself up off the floor took some doing and I eventually did it thanks to family and friends and also my oncologist telling me all is not lost…yet.  But again my feelings were created from his perception that there was more that could be done.
So on Sunday I am going into hospital for an injection to sensitise my skin, so much so I have to wear sunglasses and keep fully covered for the next 7 weeks (never before have I wanted it to be winter not summer). On Tuesday I will have Photodynamic therapy directed onto the skin to attempt to kill the cancer cells and stop the itching.  Friends and family are excited and encouraging about this news, but me, I am numb.  I am not negative nor positive, pessimistic nor optimistic.  It is what it is.  If I just go with the flow and not allow anyone else to push my buttons then I won’t have to deal with the shitty end of the stick should it fail.  However I can embrace the changes should it work, because if it works I will get my wish.  I will wake up one morning and see it shrinking, the itching will cease, the burning will stop and I will feel the relief that I forgot existed that finally my body is healing with the therapy’s guidance.  Remembering the day when I noticed the chemo had shrank the swelling in my breast back in 2011, I felt I could take on world and that nothing was going to take me from this earth just yet.  Well I want that feeling back, the feeling you get when you can physically see something is finally working after all your tiresome efforts, knowing they weren’t in vain.  Knowing that everything you had, you gave, and it was all worth it.  Today, I’m not so sure my day will come but tomorrow I may feel like my moment is right around the corner as is everybody’s if we only allow ourselves to believe it.  “The mind is only ever one thought away from bliss”.
So if anyone sees a little devil knocking about, swat him with a fly swatter and send him packing.  There’s only room for one voice on my shoulder.
 

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