132. Oh dammit

Ok, moan time. Yes, I know I do it a lot but “it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.” That’s my age given away in an instant. 68 if you don’t know. Where was I? Moaning.

Moan 1. My eyelashes. This is utterly cruel. A false Spring with a flush of thick, lush lashes, top and bottom, more than I’ve ever had. They fell out as the natural growth process returned but I still had good enough eyelashes. They have fallen out, leaving me with the odd spiky lash, like as chemo progressed but with yet another growth spurt of thick stubby lashes. When will they settle. Yes, it does matter a lot. My eyes are really the only thing that’s left of my original good-enough looks!!

Moan 2. Article today in the i about some revolutionary new treatment to reduce deaths from sepsis (a vit C drip). I read on about how sepsis develops and what it leads to and thought ‘I had sepsis.’ At the time, no one mentioned it and I didn’t even feel ill apart from the lack of sleep and any bowel action. I felt cross and cranky but never anxious or fearful. But the cancer crisis is over now and I don’t, metaphorically speaking, have to have my hands over my ears yelling la la la la la to the world because I just didn’t want to know. Now I know and suddenly it hits me, the danger I was in. And I feel a frisson of fear. I can deal with that.



Moan 3. I’m driving up Holt Lane, one of those narrow windy lanes where you have to pull in to let cars pass or lose your wing mirror. I slam my foot on the brake (yes, correct pedal this time) when a car hurtles towards me out of the blue and avoid a scrape.

Bit of exaggeration

Only I have a tiny flashback to my car accident and I’m left driving ultra carefully, like a learner, conscious that every passing car can be a threat to me, every parked car is a potential hazard and generally I don’t feel safe. Add to that the fact that I nearly bit my tongue and my mind starts off on what ifs and I’m getting wound up over the possibility of biting off my tongue. Come on!! Pull yourself together. But this is how I am when I’m driving now, always conscious of rectifying the faults, always thinking about which pedal my foot is on, never just driving, relaxed and confident I do it ok. Solution? Practice. And more practice. But meantime, more fear.

Conclusion: I pushed so much away while I inhabited Land of Denial and now I have to face these things because obviously they are all queued up, awaiting my attention. This is not going to be easy.

Moan 4: This was yesterday. Heavy rain + an artificial mountain dumped beside our house = a recipe for disaster. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been - the house wasn’t affected - but we had a little brook running from the field and down one side of our badly-neglected garden. It tried to go straight through our garage so whatever is stored in loads of cardboard boxes is now one soggy mess but I’m not even going to look!

  Well, it was asking too much for me to be able to introduce a video to my blog and, sadly, you will not hear my shoes squelching across the lawn or hear My Voice (or even the voice of the window-cleaner, who I swear, had ankles as wide as my thigh) but you will see the sodden mess of a flowerbed. Exciting eh? Anyway, the site manager has visited, exclaimed in horror, dug a channel on site to prevent it happening again and is going to raise the matter with good old Miller Homes who, no doubt, will blithely ignore the matter.