Thrills, pills and a headscarf

I love an inspirational quote. I'm a bit of a sucker for a nice little line to pick up my mood. As some of you may have noticed, Alice in Wonderland is a particular favourite of mine. However there's one line I see quite regularly that I just can't abide - the "This too shall pass" phenomenon. Something about this one really winds me up. I think it's the naivety of it. The truth is, not everything does pass. I got diagnosed with cancer over three years ago. Initially I thought I would take chemotherapy pills for two years and then I'd be done. It would pass. That was naive. Once you've been diagnosed with cancer it doesn't pass. Even if you recover and get the all clear, it doesn't pass. You get to live with the knowledge that you can be attacked from within your body, without knowledge, at any time. I would say for the majority of people who have had or have cancer, you live with a heightened suspicion of everything you feel. It wasn't...

I got another good scan result recently. That's the third one in a row. I'm nervous to say this because I don't want to jinx it but that's an all time record in the "journey" that is this cancer battle I'm doing. I've smashed my previous record, of one, out the park. And by one I don't mean one in a row; I mean one in the previous two years. Before this year I'd had one, only one, good scan result from all the scans I'd had. Somehow, even though the trend had been a series of bad results, I remained hopeful every single time. Every time I hoped I would be told the tumours were shrinking, that they were responding to the treatment, but that wasn't the case. Scans actually seemed to mean the three monthly meeting to consider the next treatment step. Except that one good scan I had. Before that one I told my oncologist that I knew the tumours had responded to the radiotherapy on my liver. I don't know if I really did know or if that ...