Just a little too much. (Dawn, put the kettle on)

I've had a fabulous week, I've felt more relaxed and fitter than I have done for a very long time. I'm still getting tired but it's a learning process, how much I can do in one day and how I feel before the batteries run dry, kind of!

Something has been missing though, my life has changed a little since I had my Hickman line out last week. My daily injection is no longer needed which is fantastic, my belly was looking like a very random dot to dot puzzle. I have had a real mental block about giving myself the injections and I had reservations about Wendy giving them to me. I appreciate she's a trained nurse and that she was happy to do it but I didn't want her to, I didn't want our relationship to change to one of carer and cared for. If it got to the stage that I'd been so ill I had no option then so be it but I wasn't planning on being ill! This meant that I had a daily visit from the district nurse team, not the whole team just one of them at a time!

This visit was as much a psychiatric assessment as much it was to administer the drugs. It helped so much having a friendly face call in and have a bit of a chat, I can understand how important it must be for people who are alone. The team helped me come to terms with coming home, being ill, being better and also about being a complete woos when it came to me doing the injections. They were patient and funny and they did a great deal more for me than just give me injections they started my head healing.

The removal of the line has been a relief for me, I had worried bout how the procedure was going to work and whether or not it was a case of just pull the darn thing out. As it happened it was local anaesthetic into the area around where the line exited my shoulder and a reasonable amount of cutting. The line has a rough area designed into it so the body's tissues can grow onto the line and hold it in place. Well from the grunting and huffing of the doctor and the pushing and pulling on my shoulder I guess my body had done a good job of growing new tissue! Once the connection between me and the plastic tube had been severed it was a gentle pull and out it came, as it was pulled out of my neck the doctor put pressure on my neck to help the vein heal up and so I didn't bleed under the skin. I would have been annoyed to have beaten cancer twice and then bled to death! I now have three stitches and a line on my shoulder which may give me the scar I was wanting. More importantly though I don't get woken up by a sharp plastic clip digging in my nipple every time I roll over in bed and I don't feel self conscious in front of Wend when I'm in my birthday suit. She's never commented or made an issue it's purely in my head that I'm feeling self conscious about it.

This new freedom has allowed me to be a little more adventurous with my days, so along with my physio rehab I've visited work and driven around more than I've done before. I'm also really enjoying walking the dog the smell of the leaves, the sound of the river and the feeling of the seasons changing.

The visit to work was great, seeing people and having a bit of time to catch up but most of all it was the welcome I was given. Having been away for so long you never know how people will react to you. They're busy with their own lives and their own worries but they made me feel so welcome and the number of people asking when I'd be back, it was quite humbling.

Well it had to have a bit of a lump in the smooth running and that came on Thursday. It was my fault, I'd felt great on Wednesday and so I'd done too much. It wasn't the end of the world too tired like a few weeks ago but it was a definite reminder of how I'm not sorted, regardless of how good I had been feeling.

I feel great in my own skin at the moment and have very few if any sad thoughts, until I was watching children in need tonight. A young lad had lost his mum to cancer, he was talking about how brave she'd been having all the injections and the treatment and yet she still passed away. I had a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye when George piped up that I had been brave having all the treatment. I haven't been brave I've just had to accept my lot and get on with it, I've been damn lucky to be honest. I'm still here and I have the majority of my faculties about me, long may it last.

(Oh the instruction in brackets is to a friend of Wend's who complains about not knowing whether to have a cup of tea with her blog up date.)