‘Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them’

I sat there in Christie’s this week, on my own as they wouldn’t let David on the ward with me due to high risk patients, cheers COVID, still being an arsehole, probs for the best actually as he was hanging out his arse from going to the city match and smelt like 2 day old donner kebab (probs not the best for nauseous cancer patients 😂) but anyway, I just started people watching… taking in all those ‘normal’ people lying in beds having blood transfusions and being poked and prodded by 1/2/3 nurses and it made me realise just how invasive having cancer actually is.

Not going to lie to you, I felt like a complete fraud. I sat on a chair (as I said no to a bed, they creep me out…), watching married at first sight UK on my phone drinking a cuppa and having a hobnob thinking like what is even going on, yes I had a cannula in and had to have blood taken every 30 mins 😅 but I don’t even feel like I have this ‘illness’, this ‘disease’ that all these scans and oncologists keeps telling me I have… is this due to my mindset or the fact my body is scarily covering up some crazy shit that’s going on inside me? Who bloody knows. But I’m going to go with it.

However, I’d be lying if I said that I was never in pain. I wake up every morning in pain. My body aches (mainly my back), I’m never not tired, I constantly feel like a run on empty, I get ear aches often from my neck tumour, but I think I’ve just become accustomed to it? I’m not telling you this because I want sympathy, I’ve never wanted that (unless I’m out and asking for a children’s chicken nugs and tell them I have cancer so they let me have it 😂😂😂), I’m telling you to let you into the world of how bloody amazing we are & yes I say WE because I feel once you enter the cancer club, you’re all together & no one will ever understand your journey like our very own little club.

Just some background info, most of those who I speak to often will know I was at Christie’s to have a ‘short synacthen test’. I was on a high dose of steroids for over 16 weeks due to various reasons… this resulted in my adrenal glands no longer producing steroids causing me to go into adrenal failure, this is why I’m such a skinny bitch now incase you were all looking at my scrawny legs (it’s not all about being conscious about being fat, being too skinny is shit too). I was so poorly and so sick for weeks. I finally rang my consultant who put me back on some different steroids and now I’m going through tests to try get my bodies balance back to ‘normal’.

This apt at the hospital just bought things back down to reality for me and I just feel so extremely lucky that I’m not one of those people lying in that bed having blood pumped in me just to keep me stable… maybe one day, but it’s not my time yet. I deal with what life throws at me and throw it bloody back.

F U CANCER 🖕🏻

Rach x