The end of the chapter.....

Treatment is over - and I feel as though I should be jumping from the rooftops and screaming with wild excitement - but I'm not, and that's a bit weird. Of course, it feels absolutely bloody brilliant to know that there are no more visits to the Smurfs - and this Thursday felt enormously and fantastically free - but frankly, apart from that, the whole thing feels like a bit of an anti-climax.

I guess because you don't get the reassurance of a "Off you go, you're cured" type conversation, which would be really really nice. Instead, as Lisa Lynch puts it in the C Word - the end of treatment isn't really a lovely solid full stop, its more of an indecisive semi-colon or a dot, dot, dot......

But enough of that - I am determined not to linger on it as it's simply too emotionally exhausting, and boring for everyone else. In the meantime, Operation Elfin needs to start. I have decided that to carry off a short cropped hairdo (which, for the avoidance of doubt, I do not have yet) you have to be thin and toned. I am very decidedly neither at the moment.

Also, Papa Smurf says I have to do 5 hours exercise a week to minimize the chance of recurrence - along with the low cholesterol, low sugar, low booze diet. I say she's a bully and, to be honest, rather dull.

It will all have to wait until we come back from holiday! That, I am excited about and jumping from the rooftops - it feels an age since we last really had lovely family time - I simply can't wait. Hurray!

Follicle news

I've also been told that eyebrows and eyelashes can take even longer than hair to grow back - I was assuming that my caterpillars would re-emerge swiftly, given how often I had to pluck the buggers - but it seems not, which is a shame. A face without eyebrows is like Take That without Robbie (contentious), or Queen without Freddie (less so) - nice enough but just not complete somehow....... no matter how cleverly you draw them on.

Hair (fuzz) growing fast but still totally see through. A few weeks should see normal hair starting to appear - in a fetching shade of mouse (sorry Paddy, EAGLE, I know....). By Xmas I should have an Emma Watson style crop - hence the need for elfin-ness.

Not sure what I am going to do with this blog. Perhaps one last posting before we come home at Xmas, with a photo, so that you all recognise me and don't think Hermione has come to stay.......

Happy days.

As zen-like and serene as ever, J xx

The difference a week makes....

Just re-read that last post and can't believe how totally different I feel this week; this rollercoaster ride that we are on is quite extreme. So, sorry to have subjected you all to that one, but I did promise to be honest.....

For a start, this week, I don't need the dreaded WBC booster injection - and as a result, have virtually no side effects. OK, I've got a spot on my tongue, but my mother would say that's from telling lies, and who am I to disagree? I wish I knew what I'd been lying about though.......

Papa Smurf also decides I only need one of the drugs from now on, because I've had enough of the other one (had enough of as in "don't need any more of", rather than as in "stuff that" - although that too). This also hugely reduces the crap factor of each week, so the final two weeks is looking very promising.

The final two weeks! I can't tell you how amazing that sounds. In ten days time, I will have had my last treatment and life can return to normal - starting with our trip to Bali at the end of September.

Actually, I suspect that this is when the scary part (rather than the horrid part) starts; learning not to live in dread that it's going to come back, dealing with the scans and waiting for results, being rational about not thinking that every headache is a brain tumour etc etc. We are both reasonably good at putting all of that into a little box marked "Do Not Open" but it does tend to seep out a bit in the middle of the night if you don't pay attention.

I have decided that so much has been done to my body which I have not chosen, that I want to do something to it myself. Perhaps a way of taking control back, but I want to get a tattoo done - perhaps more of a talisman, who knows. I know I could do this by getting super-toned or something, but let's face it, a tattoo would be so much less effort. And all those silly arguments like "what will it look like when you are older" seem rather moot - let's face it, no-one's bodies look fab when they are old and mine certainly won't........

So - something Asian, I think, and something to symbolise fight and hope and strength......... Thoughts on a postcard, please. Location also tbd.

I am also focussing very hard on growing hair now. Still not altogether successfully - the bread is now really really mouldy but still no real covering ability. But I plan to have hair for Xmas ("All I want for Xmas is NOT me two front teeth.......") so watch this space.

As zen-like and serene as ever, J xx