Easter weekend 2024

I read a book once, that, imperfect though it was, has stayed with me. The main character is given access to a plant, a rare naturally occurring drug, which simultaneously makes you go blind whilst heightening your other senses to such a pitch that you can see by sensing. He becomes a bit of a shamen, a spiritual leader.

The downside is that once you take too much, you just become blind, possibly irreversibly, and lose all your other skills of second sight.

I think that I'm following a path that feels similar: the act of finding a lump in my breast, the follow through with a call to the GP, the first visit to the breast clinic, the downward spiral into the terrible news that this is cancer, the intense quick turn around into starting chemo, passing through scans and more ultrasounds and the port insertion – all of this has been done with a tsunami of adrenaline coursing through my body in all my waking hours. I haven't been able to eat, I haven't slept beyond 4am, i have crashed through every intense emotional extreme possible.

And that weirdly brought its own energy, at least. The sheer incredulity of this happening to me, to us, right now.

But now, having had my first treatment, a different energy is settling on me, and it is heavy and dark. There's not going to be an adrenaline surge that can counteract the sheer exhaustion and discomfort of allowing chemotherapy to flood through your body. The poisons that we can only pray will attack the cancer cells that are currently flourishing in my left breast are also attacking me.

I have in front of me the long haul. One down, 11 more to go, then the next drug combo for another 3 months, once every three weeks; then surgery, then radiotherapy and more pembro. Such a long, long journey in front, and the first treatment has already taken away my autonomy, my strength.

I'm worried I won't be able to enjoy our wedding – my dearest wish is to be married to S, and yet I am starting to understand that I can't trust my ability to get through a day just because I am determined to do so.

S took the kids off today, skiing. The third scuppered skiing holiday since we have known each other: ill for the week last year, ill with covid during the half term one this year (I didn't go, but would have been trash if I'd been there), and now this one, which I can't join. My levels of superstition are a little higher than sensible right now, not sure I will ever book a skiing holiday again....

I hope they all get on and have fun. S doesn't want to be there, but maybe he will enjoy the physicality of the mountains before he has to come back to our much reduced world here. I really hope so.

Sleep now, as I have been either in or near all day....