When I decided that life was for living and it was time to get on with it almost everything became much easier to handle. Anyone who has brushed with the demon cancer and come out the other side will tell you that the one thing you don't get over is your immediate feeling of doom as soon as you experience an unexpected or hither too unknown pain. The first thought always, no matter what the sensible side of your head tells you is, "oh no, please don't let it be back". I don't think that ever goes.
Anyway, back to my experiences with websites and message boards.
I have benefited so much from being a member of several different support boards over the last three and a half years. Each one I have participated in has given me something special. They are in fact special places to be. It is here that you can share your hopes, your fears your dark and light thoughts without fear of upsetting your nearest and dearest. It is here I have made some of my closest friends. Friends who have become more than cyber friends. Friends I have met in the "real world", friends who have stayed with Paul and I in our home, friends I would never have met had I not participated in the boards.
There have been times when sparks have flown, but isn't this just part of "normal" life. We can not all agree all the time. I have received encouragement, love and affection from these cyber places.
Last year in July or September, 3 years after diagnosis, I announced to Paul that I felt fantastic, felt like me again, felt I was ready to take up the challenge of the commercial world again. By December we had opened our shop. I received support from all my friends on our breast cancer site and I still went there to meet my friends, to get their opinions and their encouragement. In fact my involvement with our site became even stronger.
In the meantime we have resumed an active part in our involvement with the horse world. I was very honoured when I was asked to judge at Europe's most prestigious agricultural show. I enjoyed every minute of it.
As I sit here today having just given a potted account of the last four years to bring me up too today, I can not tell you how lucky I feel. How glad to be alive, how normal my life is, though my friends would argue that there is nothing normal about my way of life. I might just agree with them. I am a 64 year old woman resuming my old career, I have been married for 23 years to my husband who is 17 years younger than me, I get up at 5.30 a.m. most mornings to fit everything in to my day, I am not unique, there are many ladies out there like me, but they too don't quite fit thee accepted normal mould.
Do you know I am even grateful for the fact that I am looking older, feeling older, am sometimes so worried about our embryo business, because the alternative just doesn't bare thinking about.
No, bring it on, ring on life, let me get at it, let me get on with it.
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