Dreaming of Normality
One of the threads on the forum has been about mentally and physically having non-cancer days which got me thinking. The following is a rework of my reply so sorry if this sounds familar.
I think I have coped living with secondaries by trying to have a degree of normality but my normality is so different for a 47 yr old and I now can't imagine a 'normal' life at all as sadly cancer effects virtually everything I do. This disease has robbed me of too much to allow me to operate at anything near my normal capability so that in reality I can't have 'non-cancer' days.
In my dreams, I have non-cancer days but nearly everything in real life is effected by bc.
In a dream world, today Iwould like to go up in a hot air balloon over an african reserve park. and see all the animals grazing or walking around. I would have pink/rose champagne and Gordon Ramsay's Just Deserts Chocolates. Sounds so blissful rather than being indoors on a lovely, brigh sunny but very cold and windy day!!!
In a more realistic today's world, I would like to be able to use all my fingers so I can type this quickly and accurately, not have a swollen belly and diarrhoea or be trying to find a position in a bed or in a chair where my back doesn't hurt, where my heart and breathing rates are normal, my ankles aren't swollen, I have hair and eyebrows, I have no lymphoedema, I have a left boob and my children are not looking scared as they know how ill I am and will die soon. I would also like to be able to eat any food and not have to be careful what I eat or have to eat it slowly or with loads of sauce on so I can swallow it. (not much to wish for then!!!).
As you all probably know, I do loads and go out a lot and I try not to let the cancer stop me doing things but it does. As a family, we have all adapted to 'an ill mummy' and the children have to care for me which seems so unfair. Their lives are dominated by my health - 2 nights ago, the 11 yr old twins were caring for me. My son was preparing the nebuliser so I could breathe and my daughter was heating up wheat bags and arranging my pillows and my 8 yr old was helping me get undressed. That is sadly an increasingly 'normal' day for me. People are amazed by what I achieve when I am so ill but I have always been a driven person who wanted to achieve things and I am a frustratingly stubborn and determined person but that personality trait has I think kept me alive and trying to live normally!!!
For many of us living with secondary cancer, we can not escape from the reality of having cancer everyday as it causes us pain, difficulties with everyday activities that it makes us angry, bitter, cynical, sad, tearful, scared, frightened and living with the uncertainty of when we will die and how that will be and where the next secondary will be etc.
The other thing that has happened with my secondary cancer is that I have got shorter as my spine has collapsed and my hip is wearing through with the cancer. I went on a special height measuring course in 2002 and know I was 173.3cm but in december 2008, I was measured and I was 170.2cm and over the weekend when my pain in my back was so bad, all the adults appeared to have grown so suspect I'm even shorter now and even more round shorter shouldered.