A little update from the grey area!

 

Firstly appologies: Its much harder to keep up with this blog now than it was beofore, mainly because I have become an expert at compartmentalising my condition.

The Five Week Wait...

It has been a funny old week. I have finally found some time to get it all down after a couple days recovery because a combination of  a really rough month, the TURBT surgery and a chemo wash straight after (a new one for me!) mean that it has been well and truly man down over here!

Controlling what you can...

For the last five years I have been slowly but surely making myself comfortable with the idea of a Urostomy. I like to think of it as controlling what you can when things are out of control...others might call it obsessive...the words control freak have definitely been thrown around. But I know that life is full of things you can't control and it is pointless to try, the only thing that you can always control is how you react to the things that are happening to you. I wanted this to make me, not break me. 

A little bit in limbo

 

Its crazy how waiting for one date for a one day surgery can mess with your way of doing things so much. I had my pre-op very quickly after my cystoscopy two weeks ago and found out i am still on the fast track protocol (because cancer) so was told my surgery would be happening quite quickly.

26/06/2023

I've had todays date, 26/06/2023 etched into my mind for the past two months. Waiting and waiting for my next cystoscopy, it has been looming at the back of my mind almost relentlessly since the appointment was made. I'm pretty sure that now, this date will be etched on part of my brain forever. 

Blindsided...

What a fucking day! or should I say week (and its only Tuesday) I woke up yesterday fully prepared to have my third and final round of BCG for this cycle, in fact I din't get the call from the hospital to hold fast until we were in the car on our way their. 

Here we go again...

 

Back again! I know its been a while but to be honest I have been enjoying six months or so of not having to think about cancer and treatment. But it is time! The past week has been filled with cancer admin: I have arranged appointments, blood tests and rearranged other appointments to tie in with the fist lot of appointments...honestly its bloody exhausting and not helped by the fact that the anxiety always starts to crank back up again too! On Monday I'll be starting on my next 3 maintenance BCG treatments, which I think makes it 21, 22 and 23 but I just had to do a deep dive on my instagram to figure that out and even now I'm not sure if thats quite accurate, but hey, whos even counting any more!

One Last time with the BCG

So yes we are back on the BCG train after a year and a half of no reccurances.

My most recent results: All Clear

I know its a little later than planned but as promised a blog post on my most recent results. This was actually written on my phone the night after I got my results and after about 3 glasses of champange so I can assure you that this was still very much written in the moment! 

Scanxiety but make it bigger!

I havn't posted in quite a while, even tho I have had a post all written up and ready to go for the past three months! The reason for my raidio silence for once wasn't all bad. In fact it was very very  good! 

Lessons from the first Lockdown

I thought it was about time I got back to blogging and it made sense to me to start with a blog about why I felt the need to take a little bit of a break from it in the first place. 

A mental break...

 Hello long neglected blog. I realise it has been over three months since my last post but a lot has happened in that time and I needed to take a break both mental and physically as sharing my journey suddenly felt really hard to do.

Cancer Treatment, Covid-19 and Mental Health Week

Life right now for all of us is so far removed from what we're used to and in some ways there are things about this enforced downtime that I'm actually loving. It has been really nice having Tom at home, even if he is locked away in his upstairs office a lot of the time. I'm really enjoying our daily family walks. I'm also enjoying the break from the outside world and all the pressure that comes along with that. In the absence of all the outside noise and interference I have been able to focus on what's really important to me and what's important to us as a family.