It was the 4th July last time I wrote and I’ve just re read the last blog to remind me of what I’d written.  I shed a tear at how low I was feeling and have been feeling, since the car crash and how I chose to write about it.  Then I read about my surgeon doing a needle test on my right boob because of the pain and after receiving the results I should have been ecstatic as I got negative results.  But I couldn’t help but think he had put the needle in the wrong place as I continued to suffer with the pain.  Well I was right!  I found out from my oncologist that the cancer is active again and that’s what’s causing me pain, my skin turning bright red behind the pain.  I knew it; I just couldn’t put my finger on why I was feeling so down and not over the moon that the tests were clear.  It wasn’t what I believe in, that the mind rules the body, but the other way round, my body was telling my mind!

So I started on a newly licensed chemo called Kadcyla last week. My hope fading fast of ever getting over this as I continue to put things into my body to battle the cancer until I was sent a video clip of a lady in America who was diagnosed with the same cancer in 2006 and went on this drug in 2010 as it was finishing its trial.  By 2011 she was clear of cancer and had tried so many different types of chemo before this that she had just given up, but Kadcyla gave her her life back.  Since that day my mind set began to improve as I was given hope.  Not a cure, granted, but the possibility that this could be the thing I’ve been looking for.

I feel I have moved passed the negative feelings now and reached a place of realism.  The reality being I may die but I also may live (there’s always hope, even if I’ve seen no change yet.)  This chemo may work or it may not.  It’s as simple as that.  Nobody has the answers; I just have to be prepared for both.  I know all those close to me only want what’s best for me and they don’t want to believe that cancer could ever kill me but that I’m on the miracle drug that worked for one lady so it must be able to cure me.  I’m not convincing myself I am going to die anymore, like after the crash, I see things just as they are and I hope they are right but I also know they could be wrong.  I’m told to focus on the best possible outcome.  Why? So that when it doesn’t work out I am let down like I have been so many times before over the past three and a half years.  I choose now to be real, to see things as they truly are.  By no means am I ready for giving up, like I was doing a few weeks ago, but reading and researching again anything and everything that may help me.

Like Kim Alexander says in the video clip “just because you have cancer doesn’t make you a dead person walking.” And she’s right! I intend to live every day filled with pleasure because I never know when it will all end so I make the most of everything I have now.  Easier to do now I’m recovering from my brain injury and I can think clearer (even if I can’t yet drive).  I look at my kids and instead of thinking how will they manage without me? I bring myself back to the now, instead of jumping to the future and think I’m here now and that’s all that matters so let’s go and have fun.  As I continue to teach them to be nice human beings I no longer think they will turn out just fine, I have taught them well, so that when I die they’ll be fine.  I do it as any mum would because I want them to be nice no matter what.  All these life lessons are coming out because I have cancer instead of a drunken Saturday night putting the world to rights.  They’re coming out because cancer has made me think, deep, and put life into perspective.  And life, my friends, I’m going to grab hold of with both hands and enjoy it because I can.