A surreal fortnight.

The details of the next few days are a bit fuzzy - I suspect that the next parts will be shorter and less detailed. I also suspect my mind of taking over and protecting me from the true horror that was those few days - and bless the few people we "told" at that stage (you know who you are) who listened to me sobbing and told me that this was the worst it would EVER be, and that as soon as we knew what we were dealing with, it would be so much better.

And guess what - so far, they are right. The feeling of falling off a cliff, no, way worse, falling out of a space shuttle perhaps - as you see your perfect life unravelling out of control - is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. But it passes.

So to the PET scan - a lovely radioactive sugar cocktail which then shows up any abnormal metabolic activity (aka The Thing) in an MRI type scan. We then got the first good news in a while - it was clear apart form my left boob, where there were two areas of suspicious activity.....

One thing you learn very quickly when dealing with The Thing is that you have to take in The Most Enormous amount of information and process it, ask intelligent questions, make decisions that are, oh, really quite important (one boob or two, anyone) incredibly quickly. It's a bit like an immersion course in molecular science, or black holes, or biochemistry - to degree level - that takes place over a period of two weeks. And if you think you know something, and don't ask, you turn out not to know it at all and make incorrect assumptions......

Anyway, I have totally lost the plot now - but yes, there were these two areas of activity - one of which was in some kind of lymph BUT apparently not the lymph which is a worry..... But which meant that mastectomy was the sensible option so that they could be sure of getting it all out. That'll be one boob then. Lovely Prof T said that he would reconstruct at the same time - and he'd make me a beautiful new boob - and we go away and decide on dates.

God - how are we going to tell the children?

To cut a long story short, we tell the kids all they needed to know at this point (Mummy has a lump - the surgeons are going to cut it out - er thats about it....). They are singularly uninterested (brilliant) and so much more impressed by my new iPad.

Surgery date is booked for 17th March (Happy St Patricks day) and off we jolly well go.....

The weird thing is that I feel totally well and totally healthy. I've lost weight over the last 6 months and feel at peace with my body for the first time ever, tennis has started to tone up my flabby bits, my hair is under control (to a degree - J would probably disagree) and a decent colour (ditto). How can I be ill? I think this is the source of the surreal feeling - this hideous situation can't possibly be happening to us - The Thing? Me? Look at me! You've got to be kidding right?

Right. Yea.

As zen-like and serene as ever, J xx