Okay so I lapsed in my writing again.

It is impossible to try write a sentence when your brain is turned to mush by a cocktail of drugs that may on some fucking off chance help you… if they don’t kill you that is.

I can’t bore you with the details of phase one trials, weekly hospital visits, long sessions in MRI and CT machines that never show me anything positive.

I have have had another 5 months of poison turning me into a vegtable, unable to get off my couch while the cancer continues its invasion, spreading, spreading, spreading.

So what does this mean?

• I am never going to hear the word “remission”.
• I am never going to hear the words “disease contained”
• I am done with operations and biopsies.
• I am done with chemo. 
• and my home has suddenly been invaded by machines that hum in the background and some of most extraordinarily wonderful nurses.  Palliative nurses. Palliative. This just means the drugs are a nicer. Slightly more fun.

The next step of this journey has begun, and it feels like I am in the Millennium Falcon hitting some kind of Hyperspeed… it’s a bit patchy.

My days are gentle.

10 days off the chemo and my mind is clearer, food suddenly tastes delicious again and I want to do things. The Laundry. The paperwork. Cook even.

I am spoilt -I had three weeks to say goodbye to Africa in December.

The days grow longer and we see occasional glimpses of Spring

I am still surrounded by the most amazing family and friends who walk this road with me.

My lover loves.

My daughter fills our home with noise and laughter and my heart overflows.

Slowly working towards my new work regime of 3 days / week - and I do feel more contained. Pity the back pain still interferes with my life, but at least I have  dropped the meds by half and have begun to introduce some basic yoga exercises, so I must be on the route to recovery. Must be.

I spent Friday with my old school friend Bev - you know one of those friends you spent entire days with at school, hours on the phone with every evening, and then long lazy weekends with - talking about nothing and everything and spending far far too much time in the sun with.

It has been almost six years since I last saw her, fleetingly, longer since I spent any decent quality time with her, and yet, it felt like no time had past at all. Comfortable, easy and safe. Years melted away and while we have both changed - in many fundamental ways we have not changed at all.  

The day was a gift.

this week i found out that the Marsden does not have any phase 1 / 2 trials that I wold qualify for as the next step in my treatment plan.  I see my oncologist next Friday to debate my options - do I go back to the very first chemo I did in 2009 that was marginally effective, except on the lungs, and are there any other courses of action out there for me.

It has been a challenging few weeks because on top of all the chemo debates, my back gave up on me and I ended up with severe back pain - severe enough for me to get hospitalised, doped to the max and to have a facet injection yesterday afternoon, the relief has been almost instant - today I feel bruised and sleepy bt better.

We booked our holiday to Greece in August and I can’t wait. Can’t wait for blue skies, hot sun, and views of the sea. It is going to be a huge gathering of the extended clan - most of my siblings, one of Eran’s and a couple of long time family friends - thats before I mention the cousins and aunts and my gran whom I owe visits too.  It is going to be a much needed 10 days of not being here in London.

Phew. I can’t wait.

A perfect weekend.

Friday night shabbat dinner with family and extended family and someone else was cooking - much laughter.

Saturday long lazy lunch with old uni friends and kids and I cooked, with heart, so it all worked.

Saturday night a farewell party with the parents from Chi’s class, bounced on the trampoline with the kids, giggled with the mothers and had my first cigarette in years in the garden feeling like a naughty school girl!

Sunday was pure lazy via a short visit to Habitat’s closing down sale (sob!) where I felt like a scavenger but still came away with a few things, think shocking pink velvet cushion and a gorgeous cuddle blanket for the couch.

Now my new books calls, more on that later.

Sleep.

I don’t write because all I have to write about is cancer. Fucking cancer. 

So here I am, in the same place I was 2 years ago and it is here, rampaging, and taking over again, still.

So more tests, more agonised waiting, more more uncertainty, only more so.

More so - because now we have reached the end of the drugs available on acknowledged and established protocols, so now we wait to see if any research trials are suitable and available to me.

A weekend of hibernation and fear and today I resurface and bury my head in the inane admin of work because anything else will just mean tears tears tears.

Random thoughts flit through my mind, my arms, my finger tips and magically words appear on screen.  Inane. No reflection of the empty business inside. Tired.  Busy week, busy day and my first yoga class in months.

Eyelids droop and I fight sleep. 

Sleep.                                    

17 months.

Do I bother to describe the rabbit hole I entered?

Suffice to say I am here. 

Again.

Still.

Much has passed by that I can choose to forget, and the good is that somewhere in the crazy time warp that is living with cancer we fell in love with a shell of a house, we brought it, threw some money at it and now we have a wonderful home.

I bonded with my mother, reclaimed my own mothering, and returned to work.

Life is good, and summer sun shines. 

Blink - and 18 days have passed. Time lost in a vagueness of family, routine, and freezing temperatures that have allowed us to luxuriate in our annual winter hibernation.  Each day we ventured out to do something with our Chi, each day a toy explosion, interspersed with occasional teary panic attacks as the next year of my life speeds towards me. Future unknown.

It has been so good to live a hospital-and-medicine-free life for a couple of weeks. The chemo side effects are wearing off so I no longer have to wrap up like an mini Michelin man to go anywhere. My feet look pink in their new skin and the numbness in my fingers has eased - writing with a pen is still entertaining but I can almost scrawl! My head … is almost my own!

it all ramped up again last week with the beginning of radiotherapy week.

  The snow is beautiful when it falls and for about an hour after - then it turns to ice and slush and grey and it ain’t so nice anymore - at least not in London. I still love it though, but I am looking forward to the promise of spring. My daff and tulip bulbs are beginning to show tiny green tips in the soil, and the days are already getting longer and that make such a difference.