Kate's Blog

Follow me if you will as I try to navigate through the ups and downs of my world.

I'm writing this blog to help me make sense of all that has happened - from my diagnosis with non-Hodgkins lymphoma while pregnant with my third child in May 2008
, through to my reflections on chaotic family life as I try to pick up the pieces of my life again.


The kids are so small, and I'm working hard to keep us all safe and to stay in remission.

Stay with me - it won't be all doom and gloom I promise!



Wednesday 3 March 2010

Thanks

This is a thankyou. To Tracey at uno,dos, Tracey for your thoughtful message on my last post. You are right - I do need to 'listen' to what the information I read is telling me. I subsequently read that people who undergo bone marrow transplants can struggle for quite a while with long-term fatigue. Apparently it is a well known side effect.

It has been useful to read all this stuff which I had been putting off. It has reiterated what a tough time I've been through in terms of treatment - and reminded me how amazing it is that I'm still here to write this. I really do need to let myself relax more and remind myself that I'm really not 100% yet although I look as if I am. And that's partly the problem. I feel as if people are saying - you're out of hospital, a year away from your treatment. Why aren't you ok? But maybe they're not, maybe that's what I'm saying to myself. Anyhow - if anyone is saying that, I'd point out that I have had extremely high dose chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, plus radiotherapy. Not to mention a caesarean and a new baby while that was happening. And all that happened in the past 22 months. Couuld that be why I'm struggling with this overwhelming exhaustion?

It's helped to know all of this and to see it written in black and white. When I was going through it I literally took one step after another and kept my head down. Now perhaps I'm starting to process what happened.

I have decided to try to make early nights a priority for while. It can't hurt can it? Maybe it'll help. And I need some help that's for sure.

3 comments:

Tracey said...

Kate, you are welcome.

Tracey said...

Kate, I wrote you a big long e-mail and then realized I don't have an address for you. The short version is this.

Other people are NOT thinking anything, but even if they are, so what? There are only four people outside yourself you need to answer to on this issue.

And if it makes you feel any better, I am exhausted all the time too. I could fall asleep standing up. And raising three kids is hard for me, even with out surviving a life threatening disease and three life threatening cures.

I wrote a post about it a few weeks ago. I thought of you, when I did. What you are doing with your life is hard even in the best of circumstances.

Take care (and that is not just a cliche.)

Sarah said...

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley