Lemons

[smokingboot]

Talking to the surgeon today.

Time to make a date, if I am still up for making a date.

I don't have to do it, I can carry on just taking the medicine in the hope the cancer doesn't metastasize. But the longer we go on, the more the chance of the tumour developing immunity to letrozole. There's only one way to remove that possibility.

I wake up crying and dreading, I creak out of bed and feed the cats. As if to just plain aggravate myself, my mind turns to MacMillan rejecting my request for counselling. The charity can provide cancer counselling via Bupa, but they put you through a little test, and if they think you have issues that are not cancer related but might affect the therapy they reject you. My PTSD puts me squarely in that bracket.

'You can still come to open meetings,' they said. I just felt sick, then cried, then laughed. Rejected by MacMillan! I am so special! Where's my badge?

Glimpsing through FB a moment to see if I could handle going back yet (not ready for the noise it turns out) a friend points to a friend of hers who is doing this:

https://www.makinglemonade.uk/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR08FXr4SUYnb6P0w_sDpcMwd14hbcoHaVWUVkIcmDrdGE8euMTIYGW6Ey0_aem_Ab3CDDbR2JQChf_5t77pYoMqy6QqqKG9mQsCHitJdLYec9CnmgteptC_o_MSlvrPYPPnu9j-JpAeDF3PFeiri8Vh

Friend says this person is one of the good guys and I respect her as a judge of character. So this person brings lots of heart and hope.

"When life gives you lemons,
make something
wonderful
inspiring
positive
personal"

Hmm.

I can only note my personal experience.

There's depression. There's clinical Depression. Of course it is possible to have both, and trauma can compound both or either of these. There's cancer, which can trigger/compound any or all of these, there's cancer treatment/medication which can also compound the issues. It's not even a case of screaming are you fucking kidding me? One is in the middle of a destruction that does not result in some phoenix fire of creativity. If this is alchemy, it's awfully quiet. The furnace is not blasting away dross, it is blasting away self, and even that may be as nondescript as sheeps' wool catching on a barbed wire fence; one just pulls away, leaving clumps behind. Maybe there is drama but it depends on circumstance and the individual. It may also be very dull. One is falling asleep. One cannot do. The mood is beyond flat. If a lemon fell out of a fruitbowl, one would not bend down to stop it rolling across the floor.

Suggestions of ways to make lemonade from these lemons would be... interesting. I see some friends trying to frame their experience as guidance for others, providing a sense of understanding, survival, victory even, but can't imagine my reframing this in any such way. These things may inspire, but as everyone's experience is different, one can never tell. What I think I might be able to do for another person with this is Be In The Room. Without having a heart warming narrative or any great knowledge to impart, I might be able to just listen and hold on for them. I could probably hug them if they needed it. I could do that.

Dear oh dear, sneers a cold mean part of me, suddenly we're all Princess Diana, are we? Shut up.

Sentiment and self pity aside though, once this is over, at some point I might be able to be of use. We shall see.

But I think the lemonade stand is a few years off yet.

5.35 am. Awake too early. Time to compound that with coffee.