Thursday, April 29, 2010

Testing times

Going back to work has hit me hard, harder than I thought it would but it's also come at a bad time. I've been having some cracking good pains in my left arm and elbow. Me being me decided it's due tot he amount of poison that was shoved through that arm when I was on chemo, unfortunately my consultant doesn't agree.

It may be a circumstantial thing as i have been sat for a really long time over the last year doing bugger all and even less with my left arm as i'm right handed. Which ruled out Mark's theory that I'd been bashing the bishop too much. I'm reasonably ambidextrous but not that good!

So the testing has begun again, 6 xray's of my upper spine and shoulders which may have been inconclusive as I went for a MRI scan last night. It's weird, when the NHS needs to move quickly it can and that has made Wend and I all the more anxious, when you get a phone call at 7.45pm asking you to come for a scan the day after next it just takes me right back to when all this started almost exactly a year ago. The phone calls, the hurried appointments, the uncertainty and the surreal feeling that we were going pinch each other and wake up and out of the nightmare. The girls know something is going on, we've told them as we always do, that I have to have some more scans. Looking into their eyes and telling them that we don't know what's happening is one of the hardest things. I can remember the utter joy and relief of telling them I was in remission and now all I keep thinking is what if, what if it's back, is it the same, is it different, is it better or worse, do I have the physical ability to do treatment again. Do I have the mental ability to do treatment again.

I don't really have a choice. I have too much to live for.

I appreciate that my head has been full of rubbish but I've been taking it out on the wrong people, the people who are closest to me get the grumpy miserable git who snaps and is generally bad tempered. The dog has had short shrift on a few too many occasions, but we're closer than we were, he's sat on my feet as I type this. Why is it that I can't take it out on something else, an inanimate object, something that doesn't have feelings. I try to be so careful at work, there are so many opportunities for the odd snide remark but then I would become the teacher that I swore I'd never be.

In a weird way I thought going to a funeral would help my head, not any random funeral as rent a crowd but a relatives. It was one of my mum's cousins and although we'd never been close I wanted to go for his mum, Connie who is an absolute hoot and my mum who has supported Connie through many trying times.

Well I was wrong. The vicar or bod who does the service read a preprepared script about someone who I knew not. A popular person who'd worked hard his whole life and was excellent with kids at parties. Now this wasn't the person I had met, maybe it was the families memories but I could feel myself getting more and more irate and had to stop myself asking who are they talking about!

Then my mind decided that it'd had enough of listening so started working overtime placing me in the coffin and Wend and the girls in the front row. I decided there and then that I wasn't having them go through the rubbish I'd just had to sit through so I started thinking about my own funeral and how it could be and the Indian food feast afterwards and the music and the bikes and bikers and then the Shadows started playing Apache. Although I like the track and it was on the first ever album I bought, on cassette none the less, I thought you can bugger off you're not playing that at my funeral. They weren't, it was actually playing at the crem that bright and sunny afternoon. I so wanted to do air guitar down the isle but I refrained, just.

I get the results of the MRI scan next Wednesday and fingers and everything else, that will cross, crossed that it's nowt to be worried about it's just the damaged muscles and veins repairing themselves.

It's easy to type but it's bloody hard to keep the fascade going. But it's life and it's there for living so until someone stops me I'll keep on, hopefully in a better mood!

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