Well, every time another year at Added Value rolls by – my anniversary of joining 16th September, now 14 (long) years… so does the anniversary of my diagnosis. 12th September 2008. Even the 'diagnosis' word is distasteful, I hate saying it, writing it although – you may have noticed – I still find it even harder to actually say the C word. Suspect more than a little bit of denial still – and probably always – going on there. It just can't be applicable to me – surely? Hence why its taken me a week or so to actually put some thoughts to virtual paper on this.<\/p>\n
So, here we are – 2 years since that shite awful day when my world fell in. Mind you, as I went home, looked up Multiple Myeloma, this thing I'd never bloody heard of, on the Internet, with the consultant's words ringing in my ears 'I am SO desperately sorry' – I knew already that I was in a bigger pickle than my half thoughts of 'I've just got dodgy ribs', 'its some muscular thing', 'thyroid gland – doesn't that imbalance people sometimes?' could ever have lead me to believe.<\/p>\n
And of course, the Internet didn't exactly have a whole bundle of laughs waiting for me, as this new world and way of living was suddenly thrown upon me. Its just like when you see a 'nearly bad accident' happening – like someone tripping towards a glass door, wobbling a bit too close to the edge of the tube platform or a near-miss car accident that almost could have been a total disaster – and you get a sniff fo how life could suddenly take the mother of all turns for the worse. But in most cases, it doesn't – thank god – actually happen.<\/p>\n
When it does, you can't believe it is actually happening to you. That you were somehow, in all the millions of people in all the countries in the world, the unlucky bastard that ill fortune decide to rest its miserable finger on. And that in a matter of seconds, the life you knew, has gone. And that despite all the good things you look back into your life to try and build some unproveable cosmic argument that it shouldn't be you and that there are plenty of more deserving 'bad' people – somehow its still there, with your name in the magic box on the hospital forms. You are the person that gets called from reception into a consulting room and however much you think 'surely I'm here to support someone else' or 'I'm just standing in for the real person that this is happening to' – the medical team still somehow seem to be focusing on you and the nightmare begins.<\/p>\n
You become a hospital number – a new statistic to add to the list. People actually came to look at me – 'ooh, another young Myeloma patient, the incidence seems to be going up' – and suddenly the happy go lucky, do whatever you want, hopes for the future, some worries and some great stuff, must remember to buy milk and post that birthday card normal life is snatched from you. In an instant. Not your fault, Nothing you can do. Never to return.<\/p>\n
And there's a new 'future' ahead. No certainty. Not a single day when the spectre of C isn't there. Long flights when you wonder how long you'll be able to travel and live normally before it all goes tits up again. When you ask yourself if you're living your life the very best way, because there are no second chances any more. When you question every decision you make, from which day off to have in a week, to who you should be seeing socially, as there's no room for error. Its like walking down one of those circus corridors where the walls seem to narrow and the end of the corridor is only 2 feet high and there's no exit, a trap you can't escape from, and all your friends that you thought were with you, living the same life, have got out and you're the only one, stuck, with an inexorable end in sight.<\/p>\n
It will never stop being a total mindfuck, I don't think. Because there's really no hope, which is the toughest thing to deal with. Other C's at least give people a 20%, 50%, 80% chance of it going away forever and no longer tainting people's lives – but this one doesn't. It must be hard enough living with the fear of it returning – let alone this one, knowing full well it will be back some day… and probably relatively soon, fuck it.<\/p>\n
God I hope I somehow buck the odds and get more than the 2 years from Stem Cell Transplant in remission. I LOVE my life and want to keep it, so desperately.<\/p>\n
I'm not upset as I write this – more in a state of sad, tremendously wistful resignation – but I couldn't let the 2 year thing go by without marking it in some way. Of course, there are positives to it being two years – one of my Under 50 people didn't make it this far, so I'm not complaining that here I am, still on my perch and pretty perky with it. And as I stood at my 40th birthday party, blathering away with my steroid chops, I had no idea if I would still be around, as I am now, sticking a few bits and pieces in the diary for my 42nd birthday. <\/p>\n
And as 42 is the answer to the universe, maybe a great thing lies somewhere around the corner that will make all this go away, and allow me back into lovely, normal, mainstream living. Here's hoping – I will raise more than the one cocktail to this possibility on a regular basis – so at that's one area where its still 'business as usual'. Bottoms up.<\/p>\n
Sx<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, every time another year at Added Value rolls by – my anniversary of joining 16th September, now 14 (long) years… so does the anniversary of my diagnosis. 12th September 2008. Even the 'diagnosis' word is distasteful, I hate saying it, writing it although – you may have noticed – I still find it even harder to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n