A Smiling Face

She calls a name

It's not mine

She grins her familiar grin as another lady stands and walks towards her

Hi I'm Naomi I hear her say

Five years ago I answered her call, stood up, grabbed my stick and wobbled across to meet her, my reading glasses still perched on my head, my knitting hastily stuffed back into my bag.

I followed her into a room...

Five years. It's such a long time, but as it sit here watching it only feels like yesterday.



It's hard to believe that those five years have passed. The whir of diagnosis. Biopsy. Surgery. More results. Chemotherapy. A bald shiny head and never ending nausea. Tattoos for radiotherapy before I popped out at the end of the tunnel with a prescription for Tamoxifen clutched in my pale, shaky hand.

Five years ago. 

But this time my heart doesn't pound, nausea doesn't rise in my stomach, my palms are not sweaty.

I breathe easy. No more bad news today when my name is called.

I want to wave to her and say hello but I know the lady she is seeing needs her uninterrupted attention as she embarks on the journey.

So I just smile to myself in the knowledge that the lady is in good hands.

For me today is just a review. Do I want to keep taking the tablets.

Yes. 

Without a doubt I tell my surgeon when he asks.

He reminds me that there is a chance that some cancer still lurks, clutching to cell walls, waiting for its chance to start multiplying again. But the Tamoxifen should stop it. Block it. Halt its troublesome progress.

So for as long as they'll let me I will continue to swallow the pills.


Meanwhile I will keep making the most of my life full of family and friends. 

I am Rich with kindness and love.

Shake, rattle and roll...

This morning Mr H was up when the birds started twittering. Like a dormouse I slept on, curled up under the covers. I woke when my burring alarm got too hard to ignore to find Mr H standing like a sentry by the side of the bed,

it's 9 o clock you need to take your tablets...

My two doses of epilepsy tablets must be taken twelve hours apart. A long lie in is no longer an option. I could of course have my Sunday morning tablets by the side of the bed but once awake this dormouse needs food...

Before 2008 the only pills I popped into my mouth were paracetamol and brufen to keep the constant headaches (and nausea), which I ignored far too long, at arms length.

Now I take a purple and 2 white ones each morning and a handful at night. When a new pill needs adding, like Tamoxifen for my breast cancer, I slip into fret mode.

I hate taking these I grumble to Mr H.

He calmly reminds me they are my tools for living...

Sunday is my tablet morning, like any creature of habit I need routine.






And like a Girl Guide I like to be prepared.

 As I eat my breakfast I cover the table in boxes to sort my weeks supply. I pop all my drugs out of their packets into my weekly pill box. Then twice each day it only takes a second to tip my morning then evening allocation into my palm and swallow. My tablets control my health conditions. I control my tablets...







If I am going out in an evening I decant my epilepsy tablets into my precious pill tin, which once belonged to my dear friend Jon and is a treasured gift from Jacky his Mum. I then set a reminder alarm on my phone and like Cinderella, I take them before I turn into a midnight pumpkin...






Want to know more about how your body deals with drugs? Click Here A Medicines Life Inside the Body - National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Or on the Effects of Epilepsy on a Body? - HealthLine

I thought I could (bracket Breast Cancer)...

After my diagnosis and once I stopped smashing windows and throwing plates at the wall,  I drew brackets in the air and declared to everyone who asked :

it's OK I will get through the treatment then get on with my life. 

But without realising it, I set those brackets in concrete. The space filled with (sore wounds, drugs, IV lines, jack out of the box nausea; hair dropping out onto my shoulders and finally twenty trips to be zapped....

But when I came to close the brackets, Tamoxifen and further surgery blocked the closure... 

I was stuck in a tunnel of treatment

So for the last two weeks I have tucked myself underground. To reflect. To cry out the anger about things gone wrong. My messed up 50th birthday year. My changed body. My energy so low even crying is tough...

Now with my badger like head I peek above ground to see light, a bit of blue sky, and to discover my pen again.

I needed the time underground to root out a way to close the brackets. 




And with tears of relief! (Breast cancer diagnosis, Surgery, Chemo, Radiotherapy) or as Jude calls it (Cut, Poison, Burn!!)

So today I drop my first Tamoxifen tablet (hormonal therapy to treat breast cancer) into my palm, ten days later than planned, and I open a new phase of my life... Menopause and a new look...