In New York

In New York
Rochsmefeller

Thursday 19 August 2010

As nice as pie

Return to the blog. Have found it really difficult to write recently, as is evident from lack of entries. This stuff isn't easy and although I thought I could write about my feelings, the more I'm feeling the less I want to talk about it in public. Recent weeks brought a new fear to the table and I can talk about it now because it's over. In short, a cancer scare - it was there, the word was mentioned but turns out that the 'unexplained mass' an ultrasound scan showed is a fibroid, which joins the ranks of the 'multiple fibroids' which have recently come to light in and around my 'uterine cavity'. Loverly. Many thanks to Professor Malone (some of you know him as my big bro, Dermot) for assistance with a rapid assessment. Now I may have to submit to a minor operation to remove the most troublesome of these 'motherf***ers' (to quote our Kate). If that doesn't work, a hysterectomy is suggested. Work has already begun and the first of two hormone injections was administered yesterday to attempt to shrink the said motherf****ers. O joy I will now experience artificially induced menopausal symptoms. In my naievety I rolled up a sleeve for the nurse, but this turned out to be unnecessary as the site of the injection was in an entirely different area...

I have to think about treatment carefully - I can't be out of the picture for long. Roch can still manage really well now but if a hysterectomy becomes necessary sometime in the future, that takes me out for weeks and weeks - no lifting (not even a kettle, I'm told). The suggested treatment removes the fibroid in the uterus, may or may not require general anaesthetic, takes an hour, recovery they say in 48 hours (yeah right), bleeding for up to a month afterwards, but it may not work and the thing might grow back. So is it better to risk a hysterectomy now? Or leave it and hope the fibroids can be controlled by medication and other non invasive treatments.

So the last few weeks have been difficult - now I'm thinking about how we can manage with the proposed treatment for fibroids but I'm grateful because let's face it, I could have been wondering who would look after Roch after I died first of cancer of the cervix - and how about the children? It's important that I stick around for as long as I can for them. I tried not to think about it but the cancer word was in my head and I just don't know what it would have done to Tom or Kate to have me struggling through treatments and having that uncertainty. As for Roch, he found it really difficult to talk to me about it. Well of course he did. He was terrified. That didn't stop me feeling resentful. When we found out the good news, Roch said 'Now it can be me me me again, to which I replied 'Roch, it never stopped being you you you.' Well that's how I felt.

So does that make me a bad person? A very dear friend said to me recently that the thing she thought she would find hardest in my situation was having to be nice to a terminally ill partner all the time. Well it is difficult sometimes and I'm not always nice to him, and I do feel guilty about it but I don't think he wants me to change the way I treat him. I can't be nice as pie all day every day and he can be very annoying sometimes. There I've said it. It doesn't mean I don't love him.

Anyway, we are now in complete agreement on one point - there really is only room for one terminally ill person in this house.

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