Good Bye 2007, Hello 2008
This post is a bit misleading. I put in the title before the New Year, but then got 'busy' actually writing a yearend letter to my friends and didn't have any puff or time left for the blog. Shame on me! It's been a really long time and some people are complaining. Bless you!
So, first of all, I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season. I did, all things considered. I went out a lot, and also cogitated a bit on my present situation. As I said before, the psychological recovery from this cancer is something else again. But, I am getting ahead of myself. I shall write about that in the next post. Here, I'll just share some of the highlights of last year as I wrote in my yearend missive.
Recapping the year: January, February – chemotherapy. Shocking experience, even though I didn’t have too bad a trot, considering how awful it could have been. Also, it was made easier by having my friends around me – my highschool friend Alison from the UK, Ildiko from Hungary, June from Queensland, as well as my stalwart local friends, Sue and Peter, who came with me to doctors and listened to my rantings all year.
March-April-May – radiation therapy. Now that was easy! Just going each day to get fried progressively. In the end my boob looked like a piece of charred bacon, I gained 10kgs and looked like….. OK, we won’t go into that. The one bright spot during this period was Tunde’s wedding. I listened to the proceedings on the phone and cried, just like a good mother should at her son’s wedding. The deal was that we would have the formal reception when I get to the US.
And we did! It was wonderful, the turning point of my Anno Horribilis. On 2 August I got on the plane and flew to Ft Lauderdale, Florida and spent five glorious weeks with Tunde, Zabrina and the kids and caught up with my brother and his family. After that I went to Washington DC and spent two weeks at Ingrid’s, went down to North Carolina for her nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, and saw most of my old friends in DC as well. It was fantastic! Especially celebrating the High Holidays at Tifereth Israel with the old gang, as per before my adventures Downunder.
One day I was lolling about in the pool at Tunde’s apartment building, when suddenly this amazing feeling of wellbeing came over me: “I feel healthy!” From that moment on my energy level has been improving by leaps and bounds. By the time I got home at the end of September, I was feeling quite frisky and threw myself back into life with great gusto.
October-November-December was a time of reassessment. Getting back to work and a 'normal' life made me realise that my energy level starts diminishing as soon as I wake and it makes no difference what I do, but it will disappear by afternoon. And I freaked when writing the freelance assignment brought me face to face with my fragility, the after effects of chemotherapy – chemo-brain.
Chemo-brain was and continues to be the most difficult to deal with, because it affects my analytical and cognitive faculties, something I have always been very proud of. Well, it’s definitely impaired, so I asked and received advice from peers and I tricked the brain and finished the story. However, instead of 5 hours, it took 5 days to write. Very upsetting.
But, as they say, all’s well that ends well, and year’s end finds me healthy, fit and rearing to go into 2008 and beyond. Apparently the chemo-brain did not affect the quality of my work, because the client had ordered two more stories. Peter and I are back to writing the book we were working on before I got diagnosed, and…. life goes on. Among the new things I am embracing is dragon boating and I have joined Dragons Abreast, the team for breast cancer survivors.
I have to mention my medical team who were absolutely amazing, best of all, my counsellor, Angela, without whom the whole year would have been much harder. Of course, I couldn’t have done it all without my many friends and family all over the world.
So, I have now my own hair, lost the 10kg excess weight and can continue with losing some more,
and life is ahead of me.
Welcome 2008!
So, first of all, I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season. I did, all things considered. I went out a lot, and also cogitated a bit on my present situation. As I said before, the psychological recovery from this cancer is something else again. But, I am getting ahead of myself. I shall write about that in the next post. Here, I'll just share some of the highlights of last year as I wrote in my yearend missive.
Recapping the year: January, February – chemotherapy. Shocking experience, even though I didn’t have too bad a trot, considering how awful it could have been. Also, it was made easier by having my friends around me – my highschool friend Alison from the UK, Ildiko from Hungary, June from Queensland, as well as my stalwart local friends, Sue and Peter, who came with me to doctors and listened to my rantings all year.
March-April-May – radiation therapy. Now that was easy! Just going each day to get fried progressively. In the end my boob looked like a piece of charred bacon, I gained 10kgs and looked like….. OK, we won’t go into that. The one bright spot during this period was Tunde’s wedding. I listened to the proceedings on the phone and cried, just like a good mother should at her son’s wedding. The deal was that we would have the formal reception when I get to the US.
And we did! It was wonderful, the turning point of my Anno Horribilis. On 2 August I got on the plane and flew to Ft Lauderdale, Florida and spent five glorious weeks with Tunde, Zabrina and the kids and caught up with my brother and his family. After that I went to Washington DC and spent two weeks at Ingrid’s, went down to North Carolina for her nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, and saw most of my old friends in DC as well. It was fantastic! Especially celebrating the High Holidays at Tifereth Israel with the old gang, as per before my adventures Downunder.
One day I was lolling about in the pool at Tunde’s apartment building, when suddenly this amazing feeling of wellbeing came over me: “I feel healthy!” From that moment on my energy level has been improving by leaps and bounds. By the time I got home at the end of September, I was feeling quite frisky and threw myself back into life with great gusto.
October-November-December was a time of reassessment. Getting back to work and a 'normal' life made me realise that my energy level starts diminishing as soon as I wake and it makes no difference what I do, but it will disappear by afternoon. And I freaked when writing the freelance assignment brought me face to face with my fragility, the after effects of chemotherapy – chemo-brain.
Chemo-brain was and continues to be the most difficult to deal with, because it affects my analytical and cognitive faculties, something I have always been very proud of. Well, it’s definitely impaired, so I asked and received advice from peers and I tricked the brain and finished the story. However, instead of 5 hours, it took 5 days to write. Very upsetting.
But, as they say, all’s well that ends well, and year’s end finds me healthy, fit and rearing to go into 2008 and beyond. Apparently the chemo-brain did not affect the quality of my work, because the client had ordered two more stories. Peter and I are back to writing the book we were working on before I got diagnosed, and…. life goes on. Among the new things I am embracing is dragon boating and I have joined Dragons Abreast, the team for breast cancer survivors.
I have to mention my medical team who were absolutely amazing, best of all, my counsellor, Angela, without whom the whole year would have been much harder. Of course, I couldn’t have done it all without my many friends and family all over the world.
So, I have now my own hair, lost the 10kg excess weight and can continue with losing some more, and life is ahead of me.
Welcome 2008!
posted by Unknown at 1:39 PM
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