Positivity Fuel

Ooh, well isn't this WEIRD? A blog post where I have some real good news to share instead of having to spin-doctor a monumental pile of crap into something vaguely palatable. I could get used to this...

Yes, unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard from me/my dad (who has been telling anyone who will listen)/my boyfriend/The Void/your cat, that the PET scan I had last week came back clear - that is, it was only as glowy as the PET scan of a totally healthy person might be. As far as my doctors are concerned, I am in 'complete metabolic remission'.

*confetti cannons* (and for once I'm not even being ironic)

Honestly, I've spent the past couple of days feeling really... strange (in a nice way). The news is still fresh enough that I keep wondering if I'm dreaming, and often I'll remember with a lovely sort of jerk and end up smiling at thin air. I imagine this is how people who are newly engaged behave.

Unfortunately, I don't get to skip off into the sunset just yet. My treatment has been so consistently unsuccessful until now that my doctors don't trust my body to stay de-tumoured for long without more intervention. Think of lymphoma like a fault in the immune system - we all make hundreds of wonky cells every day (especially blood cells like lymphocytes because blood regenerates so damn quickly) but a healthy immune system weeds them out before they develop into actual lymphoma. My immune system is extraordinarily bad at this - even worse than the majority of lymphoma sufferers - and that's why the cancer hung on so long even with all the nasty drugs we were throwing at it. I need a new immune system.

I need a new immune system like this otter needs pizza. Very desperately.

The only way to get a new immune system is to have a stem cell transplant from a donor with the same tissue type as you, and luckily I have two sisters who, miraculously, both match. I'm due to borrow some of my little sister Beth the Absolute Superhero's stem cells, and grow my own brand new immune system from those. Hopefully, once I've absorbed their Superhero Power, I will manage to remain de-tumoured for longer than twelve-and-a-half seconds (I mean, we're aiming for forever here). It's a pretty solid plan.

On the flip side, stem cell transplants require a upwards of a month hermetically sealed on a transplant ward, have to be preceded by a week of HARDCORE chemotherapy, and leave you about as good at fighting diseases as a small tiny baby. It can take months to get back to normal-human energy levels, and they can cause a load of issues which essentially boil down to the new immune system totally freaking out in its new environment and having a moderately destructive tantrum about it all. But we're trying very hard to not think about that. What we're trying to think about is getting better.

The most notable change from the last couple of days is my newly rediscovered ability to think about the future without being violently assaulted by an assortment of thoughts of varying degrees of morbidity. I am no longer being forced to confront the spectre of my own mortality with such frightening immediacy. This bright new area of thinking has been accompanied by sensations of real proper happiness. I think I'd forgotten what it felt like. It is really beautiful.

Artist's impression of me (source: Scholastic)

This sudden change in my mood has got me thinking. My current emotional state is comparable to the state I was in during my six months of ABVD - that is, my first set of treatment. I had been given a fairly favourable prognosis by my consultant (I am seriously considering going back and giving him a piece of my mind re. describing Hodgkin's lymphoma as a 'cuddly cancer') and I was pretty confident that the end of chemo would yield a clear scan and a speedy return to the life I'd paused. The most important thing to notice about this situation was that I had hope, and I was in the grip of an almost fanatical commitment to ~positivity~. That faith in the future is what fuelled that positivity. 

In the following months, after repeatedly failing to reach that elusive remission, the hope I had for the future gradually dwindled. How can you keep looking to a future you're not even certain is going to exist? The more unsuccessful treatment I had, the less I allowed myself to believe it was working at all. The stakes were too high. Hope would only make it hurt more when it failed.

Pretty much how it feels when the doctor tells you your treatment 

hasn't worked... again. (source: @pottermemory on Twitter)

This clear scan is like someone removing a wall that was preventing me from exploring the avenues that might give me hope. The light is back on, and even though the stem cell transplant is likely to be a fairly crap experience (not least because I'm probably going to be on the ward for Christmas), it is the last stop, the bookend to this catalogue of misery. The future is within reach.

Lately I've been considering a pretty poisonous bit of discourse surrounding cancer patients - the idea that positivity is a sign of strength, or generosity of spirit, or something. That people who survive this with a smile are somehow more morally admirable than those who go through it with the grace of a newborn giraffe. It's never explicitly stated, but its implied in the way we talk about patients and experiences. I think a lot of time, people fail to recognise how much harder that positivity is to muster when your situation consistently fails to improve. Maybe that person isn't smiling because they have bloody well been through enough. It's too often implied that people just aren't trying hard enough.

I also feel this emphasis on positivity is mostly designed for the benefit of everyone else. They don't have to feel too bad for you if you're smiling through every chemo session - even if that smile never reaches your eyes. I actually think there is a lot more to be said for being honest and authentic about how you really feel. Sure it may be painful, but if you're having to confront the reality of your own impending death, then your friends can get a grip confront the reality that maybe you don't need to 'keep smiling' - maybe you just need them to stop pretending everything will be okay when you know it damn well won't.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a fairly angsty post on my tumblr that condensed to something like 'My mum keeps emphasising how much we all need to support Beth through her career struggles, why is she not also asking everyone to support me through my potentially life-defining PET scan???//?//??//' It was definitely over-emotional and massively self-pitying, and posts like that are the reason I only share my tumblr with a select few real-life friends. You don't all need to see me spill my emotional baggage every other day. But I got a message in reply from a follower which basically said that 'a lot of people find cancer a scary topic, and maybe that's why nobody's talking about it with you'. That message actually made me really angry. You know what's scarier than talking about cancer? Having cancer. If you're scared to discuss it then you'd better hurry up and get over it because someone probably needs you.

Abi xx

Weirdly ordinary

I feel like it's becoming a bit of a trend for me to start these posts with an apology about the amount of time elapsed since I last updated you. Sorry. It's probably the only thing that's ever going to be consistent on this blog to be honest; maybe I should just type out a stock first paragraph and paste it at the start of every post for Ultimate Consistency. Anyway, I feel this is going to be a bit of a ramble because I don't have any Big News or anything, I just wanted to say something to prove I am in fact still alive. 

For the past few weeks I have felt strikingly ordinary - that is to say, I have not been forced to live my life in such a way that I am reminded of my disease three seconds after I manage to forget about it. Part of this has been down to the new treatment regime; Brentuximab (or Beelzebub, as one person so delightfully dubbed it) Vedotin causes precisely one noticeable side effect for me, which is a record low. At least, I think this side effect is from the Brentuximab, but it could truthfully be any one of the nine or so prescription medications I am currently taking. I've got a granny tablet organiser. It's all exceptionally glamorous. The side effect in question is an itch so generalised and persistent that I did, at one point, seriously consider peeling my skin off. You don't realise quite how soul-destroying itching can be until it's your entire body for always. It's impossible to ignore it, and even though you know scratching can only make it worse, you scratch anyway, and then you hate yourself for scratching, and your jaw is clenched with the effort of keeping your hands balled into fists by your sides and you can't really think about anything else because your stomach and shoulders and knees and hipbones are all endlessly hissing with the neurological equivalent of the static no-man's-land between radio stations. After a week of feeling like I was entirely covered in spiders, I persuaded a doctor to prescribe steroids alongside the antihistamines that were obstinately Not Helping, and they successfully banished the spiders which meant I was once again free to enjoy life without a constant reminder that I am Not Well running up and down my body.

So, aside from treatment every few weeks, the tablets I have to remember to take morning and night, and the vile anticoagulant injections I have to have into my stomach every evening, I'm mostly unencumbered, and it is weird. After a year of being Set Apart, of being The Girl With Cancer, it is strange to feel ordinary. I know I am not better, but this oasis of normality has got me yearning for that healthy future I've been promised, and it scares me a little bit (a lot). When someone has as much treatment as I have had without going into remission, it raises questions of whether anything is going to work properly at all. I talk about future plans and going back to university and what I want to do when I grow up without voicing the Scary Thoughts that creep into my head. Will that future ever be mine, or will my life be one defined only by disease, each step designed to take me not towards the things I've always dreamed of, but instead to keep me just one step ahead of the cancer that refuses to stop snapping at my heels? 

These are not thoughts I entertain very often because nobody has the answers and dwelling in that patch of uncertainty is only going to frighten me. But if you want to quiet the voices in your head, you have to give them something else to do, and in my case, that translates to 'get a bit obsessed by stuff'. This is probably one of the reasons this blog has gone un-updated for so long - I have been distracted (not to mention the fact that updating necessitates entertaining Scary Thoughts, at least to an extent, which is precisely what I am trying to not do). So far my list of stuff to be distracted/obsessed by has included Harry Potter, drawing, drawing things from Harry Potter, Skyrim, Rubik's cubes, actually playing my clarinet for once, The Great British Bake Off, Halsey's debut album BADLANDS, and risotto. I think my mum's trying to persuade me to add yoga to the list because she wants a yoga buddy but I'm not too sure I've got time in between all the risotto.

Told you I'd been drawing things from Harry Potter...

(Incidentally, my preoccupation with risotto is really beginning to get a little concerning. I am becoming reckless and irresponsible in my use of garlic. You could probably replace me with a human-shaped bag of Arborio rice and nobody would notice. Are these fingernails or shavings of parmesan cheese? I just don't know any more. There is nothing but risotto and risotto is all there is.)

I suspect things will begin to feel a little less normal soon, since my boyfriend has gone back to uni and everyone who has an real ordinary life (rather than just a pretend one, like me), is resuming their Responsibilities. Honestly, I would give my right eyebrow to have the same kinds of stresses and responsibilities as them, but for now all I have is a bulb of garlic and more time than I know what to do with. Time to paint another picture. Maybe the Scary Thoughts will drown if I pour enough paintwater on them.

Anybody got a functioning immune system going spare?

Well guys, it's been a bit of a week, and it's only Wednesday.

There have been quite a few people wanting to know what's been going on with me lately, and I have been horribly vague with a lot of them because explaining stuff is hard and complicated and there are lots of feelings involved. You'd probably regret asking once I started crying into your shirt. But there are definitely some people to whom I owe an explanation, and this is the easiest way to do it.

When I was first diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma almost a year ago, everyone told me it was the best cancer to have. My consultant at the time actually referred to it as a 'cuddly cancer' (kind of want to give him a good slap for that) and I was reassured that about 90% of patients my age are dead easy to treat and basically cure.

You never think you're going to be the other 10% until you're sitting in your doctor's office sobbing into your hands because the damn thing just won't go away. To start with it's fairly easy to reason with yourself and talk yourself out of catastrophising every situation, but there's only so many nightmarish consultations one person can sit through before the entire world starts to look pretty bleak.

Last week I had a PET scan (the one that detects active cancer cells) following up my chemotherapy. At my appointment on Monday, I was expecting decent news. I wasn't displaying any symptoms of Hodgkin's any more, I was feeling pretty bouncy, all the medical professionals I had spoken to throughout my treatment had seemed confident that the chemo was working. The last thing I expected was to hear was that my PET scan was only improved very slightly compared to May, and that there were actually new areas on the scan that had somehow grown despite the chemo, the sneaky bastards. It feels like I'm back where I started.

Apparently all is not lost, even though it does kind of feel like everything is pointless and I want to punch lots of things. I'm going to start treatment with Brentuximab Vedotin (isn't that a character from Game of Thrones?), which is a monoclonal antibody drug. In layman's terms, it goes after one specific protein found in Hodgkin's while leaving everything else unscathed. While I am hesitant to let myself be hopeful about it because of everything that's happened so far, it is supposed to be the bees knees. One definite upside is that it's much easier to tolerate than chemotherapy, and because I have four cycles planned, each lasting three weeks, that means I get three months of hopefully feeling relatively un-horrible.

Assuming that does what it's supposed to do and I get a clear PET scan (touch wood lol), it's now being recommended that I have a donor stem cell transplant. The original plan was to use my own stem cells, but considering my frankly shocking response to previous treatments, it seems a lot more sensible to give me an entirely different immune system that might do a better job in the future. Very bizarrely, both of my sisters are matches for my stem cells (the chance of that happening is only about one in sixteen) so I'm hopefully going to nick off with one of their immune systems and everything should finally be good and happy.

(except that donor transplants carry a whole host of rejection risks and potentially horrible side-effects but shhhhhh we're trying very, very hard not to think about that now)

I seem to tempt fate when I say 'things could be worse' - every time I've said it, things just go ahead and get worse. I'm beginning to think the universe has it in for me, or at least my own body definitely does. Guys, please don't ever take your health for granted. I would not wish this situation on anybody.

So yeah, things are looking pretty crap but not the absolute crappest they could possibly be. Be prepared for me turning up at your uni residences throughout the autumn (or Michaelmas if you're a one of the idiots who picked Durham) term/semester/samosa/whatever so I can pretend to be a proper student while I'm feeling vaguely acceptable. I'll sleep on your floor or something.

Peace and love, Abi xxx

Science: now even sciencier!

This post is brought to you by the Christie NHS Foundation Trust wi-fi, now supporting the state of the art security feature of requiring a new login every 2.5 seconds (measurements now made with new and improved science) in order to facilitate a new level of extra secure security that the NHS has only just discovered, since the Christie likes to remain at the cutting edge of science.

Yes, folks, I'm back again, this time with ~residential benefits~ (this is me trying to glam-up the fact that I am now an inpatient... shhhh, humour me). I am actually here for my second cycle of chemo, but I didn't really natter on at you much about the first cycle because I was indulging in a period of Intense Wallowing (to which I think we are all entitled every once in a while) and doing nothing except watching all of season 3 of Orange Is The New Black in a matter of days and crying at anything that had even the smallest whisper of emotional weight (so far this has included such gems as Don't Tell The Bride, Wreck-It Ralph, and, most recently, the music video to Rachel Platten's Fight Song.) I have been a mess and an emotional liability and I would not have had a chance in hell of producing any sort of blog post that anybody actually wanted to read.

Totes emosh. Sob sob. (Image source)

A quickfire (sorry I got carried away) list of events:

1. May: PET scan reveals that the first lot of poisoning had a good solid go. Chemo Friend (see here) gets sent home with a solid 7/10 and a sticker that says 'Well done for trying your best!.'
   
   
   
   There's still a decent bit of mess to clear up, and it's the nasty stuff like red wine in the cream carpet and cat wee that you can smell but you're not really sure where the cat actually wee'd. Standard Febreeze isn't going to cut it this time. The only problem is that the doctor isn't certain what is actually going to work better than Febreeze and wants to ask all his science buddies their opinions.
2. June-ish (do you actually expect me to remember when things happened???): I'm referred to a shiny new team of consultants - I'm going to call them SUPER specialists for the sake of this post because it makes everything sound it a bit more exciting. These SUPER specialists deal with patients of all ages, not just 16-25 year olds, so I have to see them in the decidedly un-shiny main outpatients department, or the haematology outpatients department (even less shiny) and it means my day trips to the hospital are now adorned with 300% increases in waiting time during which I like to bite my nails to stumps, listen to my tummy rumble, and picture in Ultra HD every single worst case scenario my head can conjure. Turns out my doctors only take SUPER long because they're SUPER competent, and need lots of thinking time to do their extra special clever science. So great doctors but they only confirm that everything is rubbish and we need to try chemo NEXT LEVEL in order to reach the chemo BOSS FIGHT. Before I'm allowed a go at the boss fight I have to create a unique system restore point so I don't die permanently.
   
   In normal-person speak this is two or three cycles of a different type of chemo and another PET scan, followed by a harvest of stem cells from my own blood. Provided my PET scan shows full remission I can then have a single cycle (6 days long) of high dose chemotherapy to reset my immune system to zero, and hopefully wipe out every single sneaky little cancer cell in my body. I would then be given my stem cells back to give my body something to rebuild with. Cue a recovery period of three-six months. I'm not getting a whiff of Durham until October 2016 at earliest. SUCH FUN SUCH FUN.
   
   
   
   (Image source: scientificphilosopher)
   
3. Also June-ish: This saga doesn't come without its BONUS side effects, the most notable of which is the near-certainty of total loss of fertility. March off to the gynaecologist under the impression that we can faff about with hormones and freeze some lil Abi sprog eggs for such a time as I am not twenty years old and also not in possession of a body where a significant minority of cells is staging a mutiny. LOL AS IF IT WAS GOING TO BE THAT EASY. Ovaries apparently still a bit too chemoey from Poison Mk I, so even with a month of mood swings and chacha invasion, the chance of success is so small it can probably be disregarded.
4.  Meanwhile: THE RETURN OF THE DREADED PAIN. The nerves in my chest have decided now is a really good time to resume the party that was so rudely interrupted back in October (see here for deets). It's the sort of party that starts off as a get together with six mates but somehow escalates to involve the whole of year eleven, most of the booze aisle from Home Bargains, a 4576789% increase in STIs and a minimum of three ambulances. Lots of morphine, Abi permanently sleep-deprived and sad. Get into that terrible state of being so inside myself that answering texts is pretty much unfathomable, and become swathed in a fog of anxiety, weird guilt for being a bad, incommunicable friend, and self-imposed loneliness. Starting chemo is pushed to the top of the to-do list, wave bye-bye to the hope of sprog egg preservation. Wrestle with conscience. Cry, a lot.
5. June 18th (wow a proper date so proud): Roll up to the hospital at 8am, sleepy and probably high on narcotic pain relief, clutching a hot water bottle to my underboob like it's my only friend. Place dignity into ceremonial box to be rescued at a later date. Get a line into my collar area for the delivery of chemo, and watch with a glassy sort of smile as a total stranger cleans blood from my right boob. (As a side note, so many people have now seen me topless that I've stopped caring. My boobs are the only part of my body that I'd describe as bloody (literally in this case lolol) spectacular, so in all honesty, if you've caught a glimpse, you're welcome.) Get admitted to the ward and lie on my bed feeling sorry for myself as I wait for the Ritual Poisoning to begin.
   
   This Poisoning Ritual is known as ESHAP by the mysterious laws of science. You might assume that five letters means five drugs, but this is not the case. Here's how it works as far as I understand it (Disclaimer: lots of science was likely harmed in the making of this list. Sorry, science):
   E - Etoposide. simple enough so far I guess?
   SH - Um... Shite-arabine? There's a drug called cytarabine in my regime and I can't see a C anywhere in this acronym so that's what we're gonna go with.
   A - A steroid with a really long name maybe?
   P - Platinum (which is actually called cisplatin but I can't even see one C in this acronym, let alone two so ???????)
6. The following week: Physically, surprisingly unpathetic, probably due to the vat of fluid constantly being pumped into my bloodstream alongside the drugs. Mentally/emotionally extremely pathetic. Don't leave my room nearly as much as I should, come extremely close to melting into a puddle made up of strawberries, trashy TV programmes, and overcooked pasta. Cue weeing in bedpans (to monitor... something. I'm still not sure what exactly. Maybe they just pretend there's important stuff they need to do with my wee when in fact they just need to feed it to the urine monster that's keeping their friends captive), fluid-retention-cankles, in-depth discussion of my bowel movements, rectal swabs, and doctors trying a little bit too hard to be cheerful. 
7. Tuesday June somethingth: After an interminable week I am finally released with what feels like an entire pharmacy. The next few days involve me not being able to stand up for more than 30 seconds or so without almost blacking out, lots of crap daytime TV and straight-to-VHS teen movies on Netflix, and migraines four days running. Finally things start to look up, I make it to my sister's final first year performance in Birmingham, buy myself the SHINIEST new computer and complete my induction into the world of video games, and celebrate my little sister's 18th birthday.
8. July 8th: Return to the wonderful world of the Christie for cycle two of the Ritual Poisoning.

Which brings us up to now. I am currently sitting in the ~social hub~ (cringey name, cringey music, but it's not my room and that's all that matters) with my chemo pumps whirring beside me. I hope after enough of these magical chemicals, I will develop the mysterious ability to translate their noises into the deepest secrets of the universe. Or maybe they're just repeating the word 'arse' over and over again. Either way I'd quite like to know.

I approached this cycle of chemo determined for it to not be a repeat of last time. I have been here two days and already I have painted half a canvas that will eventually make up part of a communal painting of the Empire State Building (because why the hell not, right?), and got stuck on the second floor because the fire alarms have this really snazzy feature of disabling all the lifts, despite the fact that half the patients are attached to heavy wheeled equipment and cannot go literally anywhere without working lifts. If it had been a real fire I'd definitely have fried. Either that or I'd have had to orchestrate a careful leap using a parachute constructed only from empty fluid bags and sutures. I've also plink plonked on the piano with the music tutor (who was so amazed to have a patient who could ACTUALLY READ MUSIC), watched Iron Man, and successfully completed a not insignificant number of crosswords and crossword-related puzzles. I've worn actual jeans every day (weird, the psychological effect wearing real clothes can have on a person) and have determinedly not stayed in my room for as much time as possible. Overall I'd say I'm doing a pretty good job of not being a miserable sod. FOUR FOR ME GLEN COCO.

(Image found on giphy, I think the original source is a now inactive tumblr blog. If you have a more reliable source, please lemme know)

I had an appointment in clinic with one of my SUPER specialists before starting this cycle and I was fairly encouraged by the whole affair. The way it goes in general with cancer treatments is that they start with the most effective approach, and if that doesn't work, you go slowly downhill and get increasingly desperate until you get to your last wild stab in the dark which has only ever worked in two patients ever or something. I hadn't asked what would happen if this chemo didn't have the desired effective because I was scared they'd tell me that everything was terrible (for the thousandth time), but in this appointment we got onto the subject, and this doc told us about a new(ish) drug that they can't use yet because it's both very expensive (oh, classic NHS), and only licensed as third-line treatment (meaning they can only legally use it if they've already tried two other treatments and still haven't got the desired effect). I don't know much about it, but I have been led to understand that it's both much more tolerable than the chemo I've been having, and much more likely to drive me into a full remission with a clear PET scan. So it's nice to know this treatment isn't totally make or break. I'll probably still have to have some sort of stem cell transplant (most likely with my own stem cells, but possibly with someone else's if they think a next-level immune system reboot is necessary), even with this shiny new drug, because the high-dose chemo that goes with it gives you the best chance of getting rid of every last cancer cell and thus staying in remission. Most of my doctors seem fairly confident that it's still perfectly achievable in some way.

(Struggled to find a reliable original source for this image. If it's yours, drop me a message and I'll credit or remove as requested)

I would like to formally apologise to everyone I've ignored in the past couple of months. I know I've had a lot going on but I still think I really could have tried a bit harder to get back to you all. Thank you for dealing with me when I'm at my mopiest, and you deserve a special award if I've accidentally fallen asleep on you at some point. I know I've not been the easiest person to be friends with lately so it kind of amazes me that there are people out there who still like me. You're all  absolute angels.

Big love, Abi xxx

What is going on here?

Normally when I sit down to write a post for this blog, I have some vague idea of what I want to have written at the end. Often the drivel I publish is only tangentially related to the idea I started off with, but the fact remains that I started with an plan of sorts. Not so today. Today, I am thirteen-year-old Abi, the kid who was so confident in her own writing ability that she consistently refused to plan any of the work set for her, despite repeated appeals to the contrary. Admittedly, I was still pretty good for a thirteen-year-old, but I don't doubt that a quick flick through my year eight English book would yield an awful lot of stylistically precocious rambling, as lacking in direction as this post is bound to be.

Let me level with you. The reason I don't have a plan for this post is because I have no idea where I am at the moment. I know that my general outlook is somewhere in the ballpark of 'sad and pissed off', but my head feels rather like it is full of bees, and to work out my feelings more specifically is to risk coming out the other side covered in stings. Nonetheless, the bees cannot stay cooped up forever (that would obviously be classified as cruelty to bees) so maybe this is some attempt to let them out? I assure you that I am as confused as you are.

(I know I have used images by rubyetc before. She is my favourite, you're just gonna have to cope.)

Medically speaking, I am beginning to notice a pattern: the doctor tells me a number of things that might happen, I weigh up the possibilities, and of course, because everything is given to me in uncertain terms, I cannot help but hope for the better option. I then speak to my doctor again, and they inform me that we are in fact in a Very Terrible Situation. It happened when I first noticed my alopecia, and was told it might be limited to one spot, or it might spread. It happened when I was first sent to A&E in September and they told me it might be something very minor, or it might be something very major. It happened again when I saw the haematologist and I was told I might be able to go back to uni that year or I might not. And now it's happened again, and I am having to prise my fingers from the hope of returning to Durham in the autumn. I'm desperately trying to let go of all the visions I've held onto of a future full of children, because I know that may never happen now. And through it all I'm furiously trying to tell myself that everything is going to be okay but after a while they're just words, because life keeps on trying its best to convince me otherwise.

So many times over the past year, I've felt like I'm at a turning point, like things might start looking up soon, and then another worst-case scenario comes and punches me in the kidneys and I'm once again left trying to fit the pieces of myself back together again. Wednesday grabbed me by the ankles and flung me back into the shadowy depths of what's-the-pointsville, and frankly I'm exhausted. 

I know there are people out there who are going to want to tell me I'm very brave and very strong and very inspirational, but our tendency to cover the ugly subject of cancer in frills and ribbons is perhaps the most infuriating thing about this whole affair to me. The discourse of inspiration and journeys and battles and wars is so far removed from how I actually feel about it, that it may as well be from a different planet. In truth, it just feels like an angry dog has been using me as a chew-toy, and my agency - my 'bravery' - has about as much to do with it as a giant squid (ie. nothing). In fact, when the world prattles on about these 'journeys, it only serves to make me feel even more alone and misunderstood. It's like I'm caught in a crowd of people all chanting 'FIGHT YOUR WAR YOU'RE SO BRAVE YAY!' so loudly that nobody can hear me shouting that I'm actually really, really frightened.

I feel this is quite poorly expressed as far as my posts go, but I don't think I want to go back and edit for tone and humour because it's also the most honest I've managed to be on this blog. Maybe I'll come back in a week or a month with something a bit more lighthearted, but that's not happening today; my head is too full of bees.

Abi xx

I can do science, me

Sometimes I talk to people about my experience of illness over the past few months. Most people are pretty great at the whole 'how do you feel?' thing, but as soon as I try to discuss anything even remotely medical, I get lots of confused looks and people thinking that Hodgkin's lymphoma is 'a bit like leukaemia???'

I can't pretend to be an expert, but as if by osmosis, I have absorbed a dribble of understanding, so today, I'M GOING TO EXPLAIN YOU A THING. Or at least I'm going to explain it to the extent to which I understand it, which is probably more than any normal person would ever need to know anyway, unless they were and actual doctor or something.

Firstly, Hodgkin's lymphoma is only like leukaemia in that they're both classified as blood cancers, because they both involve the spodglification of blood cells (technical terminology, I promise). There could well be a couple more sciency similarities too, but they're actually completely different in the way they manifest. Hodgkin's lymphoma is a cancer of the lymphatic system, which is a network of glands in your body. I can honestly say I still haven't quite worked out exactly what the lymphatic system does, but it's related to blood and to the immune system, and it must be fairly important or I imagine they'd have pulled mine out through the nose by now. Lymph glands, or lymph nodes (which are the exact same thing, I now realise) are the same glands that swell up when you get an infection. You have them all over your body, but especially in your head, neck, armpits and groin.

With Hodgkin's lymphoma, these glands go lumpy. Links have been made to the  glandular fever bug going kind of funky but nobody's established a reliable cause. Like most cancers, you just get unlucky and cells start misbehaving. Lymphoma doesn't live in the bloodstream in the same way leukaemia does, it's basically an extreme case of swollen glands, and a distinctly tumoury cancer.

I know what you're thinking - 'but Abi, you don't look very lumpy!' That's because all of my affected areas are pretty much in the middle of my chest (the mediastinum, although if I use big words like that, everyone gives me the confused look again), which is great for faking being a well person, but bloody awkward for treatment, because a) there are loads of important organs nearby, which risk damage and generally get in the way when you want to biopsy things, and b) BOOBS. Seriously, if you want an easy-to-grasp mental image, all the cancer in my body is basically behind my boobs, which isn't much of a problem until you're sat in a doctor's office, discussing the pros and cons of radiotherapy, and he's talking about the risk of breast cancer and referring repeatedly to 'your breasts' in a deadly serious tone. So weird.

Image source - bustygirlcomics

Most people with Hodgkin's go to the doctor because they've noticed that the glands in their neck are swollen and won't go down, but I never had visible symptoms, just mysterious chest pain. I don't know how my personal pain threshold compares to others', but I can say without hesitation that this was the worst thing I've ever experienced because it was so relentless. It felt a little bit like someone had grabbed a handful of flesh and was twisting it FOREVER. Over less than two months, my medication went from co-codamol, to stronger co-codamol, to codeine, to a low dose of morphine, to as much morphine as I needed in order to get any sleep at all. By the week before chemo, I was in a bizarre trance most of the time through a combination of narcotics, sleeplessness, and anxiety. It wasn't pretty. 

Nobody ever determined the precise cause of that particular pain, but it went away within three days of my first dose of chemo so I have no doubt the bastard tumours in my chest were to blame in some way or another. In a convoluted sort of way, I was lucky it was there at all, because if it wasn't I'd never have had the chest x-ray that led to the CT scan that led to the biopsy that led to the diagnosis. I might still be at uni right now, drenched in sweat, half my original weight, almost entirely made out of cancer.

In my case, it was caught pretty late. It's diagnosed with stages:

1 - one group of lymph nodes has blobbified. You're mildly screwed.

2 - two or more groups of lymph nodes are spawning weirdo cells, but they're both either north or south of the diaphragm. Still only mildly screwed.

3 - two or more groups of lymph nodes are doing the lumpy thing, both north and south of the diaphragm. Moderately concerning.

4 - two or more groups of lymph nodes are glowing with cancertastic joy, and it's also spread to other organs or bones. Firmly in the grip of the lymphoma monster. You should probably elevate your worry levels to 'high'.

The doctor classifies it as type A or B depending on whether or not you've got BONUS symptoms (in my case, at least 10% weight loss over 6 months, and night sweats), and adds an X if it's assumed a distinctly masculine persona and is taking up a lot of space. The combination of numbers and letters I was presented with was pretty much the worst case scenario: 4XB. Go hard or go home.

In October, the extent of the mess inside my ribcage was delivered to me in a diluted form. The doctor did show me the images from my PET scan, so I got to see the abundance of tumours in all their luminous goodness (PET scans light up in all the areas where cancer is hiding), but it wasn't until this week that he really stressed just how much cancer there had been. Originally I had no frame of reference, so I saw that a lot of my chest was glowing, but to my doctor's credit, I had no idea how bad it was in comparison to other people with the disease. Turns out that lymph nodes around the lungs and heart and behind the collarbones towards the neck, plus part of a lung and a bit of your spine, is quite a lot of places for lymphoma to be.

Diagram doesn't represent actual science in any way, shape 

or form. But it has pretty colours, right? #priorities

My consultant is a seriously fantastic doctor. He somehow manages to make cancer entertaining without being patronising, and still exudes this air of 'I know exactly what I'm talking about'. He feels like a safe pair of hands, and he reminds my mum of Nick Grimshaw mixed with Gok Wan, which is never a bad combination. In October, he told me he was prescribing six cycles of ABVD chemotherapy, and then may or may not proceed with radiotherapy depending on how well the chemo zaps the tumours. It was a lot to digest but I made my peace with it - with that plan, I'd probably be free of the bugger by early summer.

I don't think I realised how much I'd internalised that timeframe, so when I found out yesterday that it might be a deal more complicated, it was quite hard to swallow. My new scans were really good - it's nearly all gone, but there are two regions where the images were still faintly glowy which means I don't get to leave this crap behind me just yet. Apparently I'm an awkward customer because the two regions that need attention are about three miles away from each other. The preferred approach with radiotherapy is kind of 'stabby stabby'. The smaller the beam the better, because high-energy beams don't discriminate between cancerous tissue and healthy tissue, so the less good stuff you can damage the better. Treating my remaining areas of concern with radiotherapy would also mean treating a large chunk of lung, a significant blob of breast tissue, and all the other stuff that's between my breastbone and my right collarbone, which is possible but difficult and quite risky. 

The alternatives presented were more biopsies to determine if the flashy pretty bits of my PET scan are actually leftover lymphoma and not just rogue inflammation, and more chemo of a different type to what I had before. Before any decisions are made, he wants to ask as many experts as he can possibly find, and get a second opinion or seventeen, which means I have to wait another three weeks before I get any real answers or any actual action plan. I was expecting yesterday to bring me some kind of resolution, for better or worse, and without that I'm at a bit of a loss.

All that's left for me at the moment is to try and concentrate on the fact that my scans showed a really drastic improvement, and to hope that whatever comes next still manages to liberate me in time for the new uni term in October. For the next three weeks, I'll just have to waft about, furiously imitating a healthy person and keeping my fingers crossed that at the end of it, Dr Ed(/Nick/Gok) tells me something I want to hear.

Abi xx

Emotional flailing

I have literally zero concrete excuses for the shameful length of time since my last post. If you could all try your best to imagine I was preoccupied doing something blisteringly heroic then I'd appreciate it (I'm thinking along the lines of serial puppy-rescuing), but let's be honest, I have in reality just been wasting my time taking lots of baths and binge-watching Friends.

The past month has involved a good deal of emotional flailing. Emotional, because at the end of March, I went in for my last dose of chemotherapy, and trying to explain how that makes me feel is a task and a half. Flailing, because I got my PICC line pulled out then too, meaning I can once again practise the ancient art of expressive arm-flinging without worrying that I'm going to accidentally pull it out and cause my entire venous system to unravel (I am reliably informed that the consequences of accidentally pulling out a PICC line are pretty much the same as letting a nurse pull it out on purpose, but my scumbag brain seems reluctant to use this information in any useful way). I suppose I could utilise my newly free arm to interpretively dance my feelings about the end of chemo, but that might end up confusing us all even more. Let it suffice to say that I don't think finishing chemo feels very much like I thought it would, and even when it feels good it also feels a little bit like losing something. Being untethered is both freedom and abandonment. Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which. Currently, the only way I can accurately answer the question 'How are you?' is through a series of vague wiggly hand gestures.

(image credit: rubyetc, who can also be found here, and who I am entirely convinced is a complete genius)

Honestly though, alongside my emotional flailing, I think there might be some legit psychology (as opposed to simple laziness) behind my lack of output recently. I say this as somebody who has absolutely no formal psychology education so I'm going to need you to humour me and put aside any real cognitive theory for the next paragraph.

The past month is the first one I've had for the best part of a year where I haven't felt hopelessly incapable half the time. In terms of physical and mental capacity, I've felt closer to my old self than I have for a long time, and with that physical and mental capacity comes my propensity for perfectionism. As much as I try to fight this tendency, I still struggle with the rather unhealthy habit of basing my self-worth on how well I am able to do stuff. For most of my life, this has been somewhat beneficial because it's a fairly foolproof source of motivation, but it starts to get problematic as soon as your ability to do stuff is compromised by factors outside of your control. I think what happened during chemo, was that I effectively paused that mindset because it just wasn't sustainable. I managed to be content with simply surviving, and anything else I did was a bonus, but now I have better possession of my faculties again, I've accidentally pressed play and welcomed back with open arms my prodigious talent for self-criticism. Suddenly, nothing I produce is good enough. I fear everyone else is going to judge me as harshly as I judge myself. Instead of churning stuff out, I hesitate, and I backspace and I backspace and I backspace and nobody gets anything.

Of course, I realise that's stupid, so I'm just going to publish this and hope it jolts me back into thinking Sensible Adult Thoughts. I'd also like to remind myself that nothing I produce is EVER going to be perfect, so it's much better to embrace the imperfection than try to fight it. There will always be mistakes so I may as well enjoy them.

I'd like to end this post with a list of toilet words just for funsies: poo bum wee willy smelly fart.

Abi xx

Broken records

Okay kids. We need to talk.

(A small disclaimer: I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. you're all wonderful, and none of this is in any way directed at any particular individual. Think of it as a collection of vague ponderings drifting out of my brain and into yours with all the non-specific gentleness of falling snow. Happy thoughts, rainbows and kittens. Please take some love from me to you. I wish to fill all your cups with kindness. Isn't the world a beautiful place?)

(If you found all that a bit simpering, here's disclaimer v2.0: Dear Reader, if you think any of the following is specifically about you, here is a pin to aid in the deflation of your ego, and a small stepladder so you can get over yourself.)

(A second disclaimer: I am fed up because I had chemo very recently and 'tired' doesn't even begin to cover it, so sorry about the sass. I swear, it's not you, it's me.) 

We need to talk about some of the things we like to say to cancer patients.

Look, I get it. You get some bad news from someone you care about/quite like/met on a bus one time, and they are blatantly Not Okay. Something in our simple human nature wants to fix this, and although I could cynically argue that this impulse is entirely in pursuit of that warm glowy 'I did a good thing' feeling, I'd like to believe we're better than that.

So you say something. You don't think too hard about your words and their implications but it's all well-intentioned, and it comes from a place of empathy, so it must be kind of helpful, right? RIGHT!???

I'm guilty of it. We're probably all guilty of it.

But here's the thing: when we do this, we sound like broken records, and not in a good way (is there a good way one can sound like a broken record? Maybe if you're aiming for some sick dubstep (I am totes down with the kids)). When you're on the receiving end, you begin to see things a little differently. There are certain comments I have now heard and/or read so many times that I have actually considered writing them down and weaving them into a controversial and lengthy piece of slam poetry, complete with SUDDEN SHOUTING and lots of pointing for emphasis. I have therefore formulated some Official Opinions™ about them, opinions I even surprised myself a little bit by having, because I do feel a tad unkind criticising something that people only really do because they care. But I wish to be nothing if not honest, so without further ado, I would like to present my six least favourite things people like to say to cancer patients (from least to most vom-worthy):

6. "Get well soon!"

This phrase is lovely to hear when you've got a hangover or a fungal toenail infection or piles, because if you've got a hangover or a fungal toenail infection or piles, you know with near certainty that you will get well soon. I heard this most often when I was first diagnosed - when I had just been informed that my only option was, at the bare minimum, six months of systematic poisoning. I had no guarantee that I was going to get well at all, and if I did, it would not be soon. When you consider the reality of my situation, and the frankly horrid journey most cancer patients find themselves faced with, "Get well soon" seems at best platitudinous, and at worst insensitive and impatient. I appreciate that it often isn't intended as a command, but rather shorthand for 'I hope you get well soon', but it still grates somewhat because of the imperative phrasing. I'm sorry that I'm not better yet, I swear I'm trying my best! The last thing I need is for you to remind me to bloody well get on with it.

This card is my favourite because a) it is really tiny and cute; b) it has a bit to fill in yourself in the middle which is SUPER COOL (yes, I am a big nerd); and c) it actually acknowledges the absolute rubbishness of getting better. Shoutout to Gibby Gibbface for sending it to me. Mostly I got excited about the teeny envelope.

Things you could say instead:

• "I hope everything works out okay in the end!"
• "I'm rooting for/thinking of you."
• "Please enjoy this small kitten I have brought you."

5. "If there's anything you need, please ask!"

I will try every short-cut and coping strategy in the textbook, throw out the textbook, and resort to attempts at experimental voodoo magic before I directly ask you for the things I need. It's not because I don't want to accept your help, it's simply because asking makes me feel like an awkward, presumptuous six-year-old. It's a noxious cocktail of anxiety, embarrassment and - yes, okay - pride, and it totally paralyses me somehow. That's not to say that, if you are close to me, I won't discuss my struggles with you - but I would hope that if you can see that I need a hand, you will offer to help out instead of waiting for me to ask. Things can get a bit overwhelming at times, and it's much easier to say "yes please" than to psych yourself up to ask, only to risk being told that the person who promised you their help "doesn't have the time" or something.

Things you could say instead:

• "I'll try my best to help you out if I can."
• "Would you like me to [insert specific thing here]?"
• "Please enjoy this small kitten I have brought you."

4. "I'm here for you."

Okay, this one is actually fantastic but please please PLEASE don't say it unless you 103% unambiguously mean it.

Things you could say instead

• (Only after MUCH pondering) "I'm here for you."
• *demonstrates here-for-you-ness*
•  "Please enjoy this small kitten I have brought you."

3. "But it's going to make you better!" 

Normally, I hear this one after I've been having a bit of a vent about how crappy chemo is and I understand that it is supposed to point out the silver lining. The problem is that a) I am now an expert silver-lining spotter, and have sought out and committed to memory all the silver linings there are to find; b) you are telling me nothing that I haven't told myself about four hundred times every day since I started chemo anyway; and c) the more silver linings you find, the more likely you are to notice just how big the cloud is. I am an advocate for positivity but you sometimes find this idea knocking about that positivity is the only way forward, and any negative thoughts at all are simply there because you're not trying hard enough. It feels like a moral judgement: 'how dare you not be happy about this long and painful process with possibly catastrophic and definitely inconvenient side effects - you should be thankful and only thankful that it's going to make you better!" Of course I am thankful that effective treatments exist, but that doesn't mean I am not also allowed to be legitimately upset and frustrated that my entire life has been turned upside-down. Some feelings cannot be brushed off, they have to be explored and rationalised and worked through first. I find the insistence on relentless positivity something of an insult to the complexity and range of human emotion.

(Image credit: The Fault In Our Stars Quotes)

Things you could say instead:

• "Would you like to talk about it?"
• "It's perfectly okay that you feel this way, chemo clearly sucks."
• "Are you in the mood for positivity right now or do I just need to let you feel sad for a bit?"
• "Here are hugs."
• "Please enjoy this small kitten I have brought you."

2. "Cheer up you only have [insert number] sessions of chemo left now!"
Imagine that, for the past five months, it has been sub-zero and your perilously steep driveway has been covered from top to bottom with black ice for the duration. You've tried gritting it, you've tried special boots, you've tried going down in all the creative ways you can think of, but still, every day without fail, you slip and fall on your arse, quite hard. You have kept a very close watch on the weather forecast and are counting down the days until the heatwave which should be arriving in a month's time to melt the ice and give your artistic-looking backside the reprieve it so desperately needs. You go to a friend and you tell them just how much your bottom hurts, and just how frustrated you are that even after five months, you still have to go on bruising it every single day, and what do they say to you? "Cheer up, it's only a month until the heatwave!!!! :) :) :) :)"

You probably want to punch them, right? Haven't you suffered enough? Haven't you earned your frustration? Does your friend really think they're going to help by telling you something you know better than anyone else? 

Honestly, if you want to cheer me up, bring me ice cream and movies or something. If you're not going to let me talk it out and validate my feelings, at least distract me so I don't have to think about how I still have to go through this ordeal x more times.

Things you can say instead:

• "I'm sorry you're still having to suffer through this."
• "Do you wanna watch the extended editions of all the Hobbit movies AND THEN all the Lord of the Rings movies IN A ROW WITHOUT SLEEPING!!!!???"
• "Please enjoy this small kitten I have brought you."

"Do you wanna watch the extended editions of all the Hobbit movies AND THEN all the Lord of the Rings movies IN A ROW WITHOUT SLEEPING!!!!???" (Image Credit: I have seen this one all over the internet too many times to find a reliable original source. I'm pretty sure it's from Saturday Night Live but it could be Who's Line Is It Anyway?. If that's wrong please feel free to correct me, and if you have the original source then I will gladly add it or remove the image.)

1. "Stay strong!"
Every time I see/hear these words, I kind of want to vomit. They go hand-in-hand with the simpers of 'Oh you're so brave!' and hackneyed talks of 'battles' and such other rubbish. I am not your symbol of hope, I am not your inspirational role model, I am an ordinary human surviving something in the only way I know how. It's not brave and it's not strong, it is necessary. Sometimes I struggle with the enormity of it all. Sometimes I feel like a tiny child with none of the tools I need to cope with something like this. Sometimes the last thing I feel like being is 'strong', and I'm not going to deny my real feelings so you can put me on some pedestal and tell everyone how remarkably I am coping. I think our society has a real problem with romanticising disease and disability. Paralysed children do not exist to be inspiration porn for able-bodied adults, and neither do I. I'm only a person - the very same person I have always been.

Things you can say instead:

• "Please enjoy this small kitten I have brought you." (Are you getting the hint?)

Honestly, I don't really take offence at these things when people say them to me, because I know they are delivered with the best of intentions and it would be ungracious to respond directly with the comments I have made here (so I'm doing it indirectly in a blog post instead, which is obviously so much better, ha). I appreciate the efforts people go to to make things better for me, but sometimes it just doesn't work, and sometimes it's actually counter productive (we're all only human after all - and that includes me!). I think all that is needed is a little more consideration of wording and implications, and a little more sensitivity towards somebody's unique situation. 

Often I wonder if our impulse to respond to bad news is sometimes somewhat misplaced. When we see tragedy and loss, our instinct is to declare to the world exactly how terrible it is, and precisely how sad we find it (and doesn't our horror at this horrible thing demonstrate our impeccable moral character?) but I think it's always worth asking yourself just what your voice is adding to the discourse. Are your words doing anything positive to contribute, or are they drowning out the voices we need to be hearing? Do you even need to say anything at all?

When it comes down to it, it's a simple matter of 'think before you speak'.

(A final disclaimer: you're all very lovely and kind, and if you have ever said any of the above to me, I promise you I harbour precisely no hard feelings. Maybe we could just stop saying them now?)

My weird little friend keeps nicking my silverware

I have made it no secret that chemo is hardly a spectacular experience. It's very easy to get frustrated when you don't even have enough energy to complete the three measly tasks that constitute your to-do list for that day, and as much as I try to master this frustration, sometimes I need a coping mechanism to make my lethargy and general sub-par-ness slightly more palatable.

Please welcome to the stage my imaginary chemo friend. Before you dismiss me as a total nutjob who should, by all accounts, have grown out of imaginary friends by now, I would like to make it abundantly clear that this particular friend doesn't actually accompany me everywhere I go. I do not share imaginary afternoon tea with him, nor do I engage in any kind of conversation with him, imaginary or otherwise. No, what you need to understand about this imaginary friend is that he is more of an analogy, a metaphor if you will (if you listen carefully you might be able to hear Augustus Waters cackling from his fictional afterlife), and his imaginary presence merely forces me to consider chemo in a rather more balanced way than I might otherwise. He gives me a sharp prod in the ribs and reminds me that, at the end of the day, this protracted inconvenience is for my own good. 

Let me tell you a little bit about him. In my mind he looks something like this:

(On a little bit of a tangent, this image is taken from this blog, specifically this post. Franzi, the artist, is both extremely hilarious and incredibly kind, and this little fellow is actually her version of John Watson from BBC Sherlock, known affectionately throughout her comics as Potato John. I simply find this rendering of the character hopelessly endearing, and I suppose he must have wormed his way into my consciousness somehow, such that my chemo friend has accidentally adopted his form.)

He is sweet and kind and generally adorable, but he is also blundering and clumsy. I like to imagine that he turns up on my doorstep once a fortnight with a duster and an enormous grin, and confidently proclaims that he is going to clean my house for me. He is so devastatingly eager that, despite my misgivings, I step aside to let him in. To my surprise, even taking into account his generous circumference, his small stature grants him access to certain spots I can't reach by myself, and he blasts the grime with unexpected efficiency. Less helpfully, he also completely rearranges the living room, knocks a lot of stuff over, breaks a few irreplaceable family heirlooms, and then falls asleep on the sofa, surrounded by debris. On his way out, when he finally wakes up, he raids my kitchen and inexplicably pinches half my spoons by way of payment, and I am left alone to restore order to my now sparkling dwelling. Two weeks later he comes back, so full of the joys of life that I let him in to repeat the process, if only because I can't bear to break his adorable little heart.

I would imagine you can piece together most of the chemo parallels in there, but I should probably explain the spoon thing, right? Right.

Spoon Theory is an oddly charming way of describing the effect chronic/long-term/mental illness has on one's everyday life. It was originated by blogger Christine Miserandino, who found she was struggling to convey the experience of living with lupus to her best friend. The conversation took place in a diner, where spoons were present in their abundance, and so spoons became the vehicle of her explanation. She gave her friend a handful of spoons and told her to imagine that these spoons represent the resources and stamina she has to make it through the day - each spoon being a unit of physical, mental or emotional energy. An entirely healthy person is, in their day-to-day life, possessed of so many spoons that they can afford to fling them haphazardly into the breeze, perhaps singing merrily to the percussive accompaniment of pockets full of jangling metal. Illness dramatically reduces the number of spoons with which one begins the day, and every task undertaken (from getting dressed to walking to the shops to writing this very piece of blogular nonsense) costs you some of your precious stash. You find yourself assessing every situation, calculating the number of spoons you have to spare. On bad days you have to be especially miserly, saving your spoons for the simplest things like feeding and washing yourself. You become a chronic spoon hoarder, longing for the days when your pockets will once again jangle with sweet, sweet spoon music.

I appreciate that I might have expressed that a little weirdly, but take a moment to consider its elegance. To those in the know, simply uttering the words 'I'm running low on spoons' is enough to explain that I have woken with particularly low energy, and that I may need a helping hand if I'm going to make it to the end of the day without collapsing and/or having a total emotional breakdown. It says something a bit more nuanced and complex than 'I've not got enough energy for that', but it doesn't take any more energy (or spoons!) to say, which makes it a really helpful analogy for people to understand. Since its inception, it has become almost universal in its usage among those who live with illness long-term (so much so that many of them refer to themselves as 'spoonies'). I explained it to my dad a while ago, and he appeared totally delighted by the mode of expression. Since then, it has cropped up a little in our vocabularies, simply because it lets us talk about my continued experience with illness much more casually than we might be able to otherwise. Anyone who has lived with anything from cancer to chronic pain to depression will know just how valuable that is. It helps me feel a bit more normal.

Maybe it's because of the English student in me, but my imaginary-friend-analogy-metaphor-thing is something of which I repeatedly try to remind myself when frustration begins to creep up, perhaps because metaphor and imagery are some of the tools I'm wont to use to understand the bizarre and wonderful mess that makes up all of our existences. Equating the nastiness of chemo with an irritating but well-meaning friend helps me to keep the positives of the experience firmly in view. After all, he does help in his unique little way, even if he remains intent on making off with my precious silverware in the process...

Abi xxx

New Year's Vague Sort-Of Aspirations

Normally I'm a bit cynical about New Year. What is New Year but an arbitrary date where the number denoting the year, which is an arbitrary unit of time, (and what is time but a construct anyway oooohhhhh *wiggly mysterious finger gesture* (shut up, Abi, this is too deep for you)) increases by an interval of one? The ticking over of 2014 into 2015 holds no more meaning that the silent segue from March 14th into March 15th, or the almost imperceptible movement of the minute hand as 2:38pm becomes 2:39pm. If we're going to celebrate one meaningless moment passing, then shouldn't we extent the same courtesy to all other moments too? Why does the passage of time matter so much more at the stroke of midnight? I bet 11:58pm feels a bit miffed.

New Year's resolutions are the perfect opportunity for the media to burrow under our skin and convince us that all our Christmas indulgence has made us too fat/lazy/complacent/terrible to hold any worth as human beings and we must of course change this by immediately buying their gym memberships, diet plans, and weird cardboard food, now with 129% less calories! I confess, I have made resolutions in the past, phrased vaguely enough that I can deem even the most half-hearted effort a 'success' without too much argument. They've been things like 'manage my time better' and 'read more' - goals that lack any kind of metric whatsoever, so I can merrily go about my life without the promise of failure breathing down my neck. After all, how can you fail if you haven't even worked out what you really intend to do? You probably get the picture - I've never considered New Year to be properly worth my time.

New Year felt a bit different this year though. December 31st marked the sixth of my twelve sessions of chemotherapy, which means I'm halfway there, and as much as I despise the thought of another three months getting my blood periodically diluted with poison, there's triumph mixed in with the dread. I'm still scared, because cancer is unpredictable, and chemotherapy is disempowering, and nobody can be completely sure it's even working until it's over anyway, but I'm not just scared. I'm hopeful and thankful and optimistic and a whole host of other things too. This is the home straight; despite my impulse to prepare for the worst, I'm beginning to feel more and more like things might be okay in the end. December 31st also happens to be the anniversary of me meeting my boyfriend. We don't really have a proper anniversary of 'becoming a Thing' because we drifted together in such a way that there was no real point of collision, so the date of our first meeting is the best we've got (at least it's an easy date to remember). The celebration was admittedly a little half-hearted because we'd spent all day at the hospital (the well-intentioned and grossly enthusiastic mixing of mocktails did little to inject any joy into the experience, but you have to commend the staff for trying) and our enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by cytotoxic drugs and tiredness. Nevertheless, New Year's Eve felt a little more capital-S-Significant than it might have done otherwise. I had a couple of real, non-arbitrary reasons to believe 2015 might be different.

I really want 2015 to be different. Last year was rubbish - like really, spectacularly rubbish - and without the stupendous patience of a few people in particular, I probably wouldn't have got to the end of it in one piece. I am so desperate to leave all that negativity in the past where it belongs that I am prepared to send my cynicism on its merry way and treat January 2015 like it actually is a new beginning. If I want this year to be different, I'm going to have to make it so. To that end, I have made myself some vague sort-of aspirations. I'm not sure they quite deserve to be called resolutions, they're just things which I think will make me happier, which I hope is a low enough bar to set myself. I have learned that I cannot trust circumstances to improve (2014 was the year-long equivalent of that scene in a cartoon where the characters are in a tricky situation, one of them says 'at least it's not raining', and then it starts raining), so I'm left with no choice but to improve the way I approach said circumstances instead. Cue efforts to become a Radiant Goddess Creature composed entirely of light and positivity:

1. Read. I baffle myself with my reading habits. I'm an English student, I have a to-read list which currently has over eighty books on it, I have more time than I know what to do with, and yet I have been stuck halfway through Brideshead Revisited for about three months. I love reading, the only obstacle seems to be convincing myself to switch off my phone and actually sit down and do it. I have literally no idea why I procrastinate something I like so much, and in the interest of transforming myself into a Radiant Goddess Creature, I will make a conscious effort to spend more time reading. (I know, this is one of those goals that doesn't have any kind of metric, but this time it has some emotional weight behind it, which, according to science or something, makes me much more likely to do it, honest.)
2. Resume status as clarinet ninja. I'm tired of feeling defeated, and a sure-fire way to chase away that feeling of defeat is to do something really well. Together with my trusted friends Mozart and Weber, I will once again be mighty and powerful (and also hopefully actually learn to play scales properly).
3. Journal. A quote that's stuck in my head ever since I first read it: 'I'm terrible at journalling. But I do it anyway, because I think that maybe one day I’ll write something that I didn't know before, and suddenly it will all make sense.' My journal was used almost exclusively as an emergency vent whenever I hit crisis point last year. While that's all very well and good, I now look at my 2014 journal with a mixture of sadness and anxiety, as that's how I was feeling most of the time when I used it. I don't want to start pretending everything is sunshine and rainbows when it damn well isn't, but I do want to record my thoughts more often so that when I look back on my 2015 journal, I also find things that inspired me and things that I'm grateful for. Life's pretty cool if you make an effort to find the good bits, and journalling is going to be my effort to find the good bits.
4. Fruit, veg and water. I don't care about losing weight (more as an act of rebellion against the Western media-patriarchy-machine than because I'm actually satisfied with my squidgy bits) - this one's about health. I've been following doctor's orders to drink three litres of fluid every day during chemo. At times it feels like some crazy variation on Chinese Water Torture, but for all the splooshy stomach sounds, eating and drinking properly always manages to make me feel a bit more alive.While I'm not going to force myself to drink three litres a day once I'm done with chemo (I'm not a masochist), I could probably stand to drink a bit more than I used to.
5. Find a form of exercise that I hate less than other forms of exercise. I have all the grace and coordination of a squid, and my lack of depth perception (thanks for the eyesight, Dad) means I cannot catch to save my life, so sports have never been a strong suit of mine. There have been points in my life where I've taken a perverse kind of pride in my lack of physical prowess, but I think it's about time I did something about it, since there is no pride to be found in needing to take a breather halfway up a flight of stairs. Maybe I'll put my squidliness to good use and start swimming?
6. Be nicer to my parents. I'm not sure this requires an explanation to be honest. Not that I'm unkind to them exactly, but I could probably go a bit easier on the sarcasm.
7. Keep in touch with my friends better. I am very good at convincing myself that, if people want to talk to me, they’ll message me first. Which is a stupid attitude to have, because if everyone thought like that, nobody would ever speak to anybody.
8. Live intentionally. The frequency with which I tell people I don't mind when I actually do mind is getting silly. Drifting along like a discarded Wotsits packet in the breeze may be simple enough, but it's a lot easier to be happy when you know you're doing something because you wanted to, not just because that's just how things panned out.
9. Have a magical attitude. To consciously approach life with positivity, compassion, gratitude, and Goddess-like radiance.

It'd be foolish to expect to fully achieve all of these, but I hope they'll be a catalyst for some sort of improvement. To be quite honest, I'd settle for comfortable mediocrity. If my year can manage to be any more than pretty much average then I'll consider it to be a glorious success!