T is for Therapy

.....in therapy, retail therapy, group therapy, art therapy, shock therapy, physical therapy, alternative therapy…..

Well, I suppose it was going to happen, after a few days of energy and relatively busy days, I hit a low point on Tuesday. A new pain appeared. This is more of a muscle pain than bone pain (guess variety is the spice of life) and spreads a bit over a wider area. It’s now across my lower back instead of just on the right hand side, but it doesn’t spread down my leg which is a bonus. It also seems to mean that I am sleeping better which is amazing.

So Tuesday was the 4th radiotherapy session, at a very early hour… we had to be there at 8.40, which isn’t that early really I know, but when you haven’t been working for a while and have no routine, it is ! I am not used to being up and dressed and having to be somewhere early morning. The advantage is that you are in and out and back home before the day has even got started!

Ed had a lesson at home so to make ourselves scarce, Caela and I walked to a café near our place. It’s an arty-farty former factory which now houses a café and lots of small businesses which are all creative, artists doing their work (who weren’t there!) it was all very quiet. Well, I did manage to buy a dress there and we had a drink so it was time well spent. We walked to the supermarket on the way home and got some provisions in for the afternoon…. we didn’t want to get home and then realise we were going to starve because there was no food in!

It was a real bugger, Caela’s last night and we had decided to go out for Mexican food, but from about 15.00 I was asleep or in pain and I just didn’t feel good so we ended up cancelling. Caela and Ed had to make their own fajitas!

Despite my limited mental capacity, we did have a good laugh watching a French and Saunders DVD. It was their last tour together and so a touching thing for Caela and I to watch together, since a lot of our teenage years were spent watching or reciting their sketches!

What a fucker, the day Caela had to leave and I spent most of the day sleeping! the morning was a haze of sofa and Caela getting ready to leave. Caela made me baked beans on toast… it’s amazing how food can evoke such strong memories. It was raining all morning and slowly eating my beans on toast in my dozy state I was transported back to school days when I was off sick. It just felt like I was doing something not quite legitimate.. I suppose I could have gone to school if I had really made myself but I didn’t feel strong enough. Now I felt like that, I felt like I should be making the most of my last few hours with Caela but instead I was like the walking dead and couldn’t snap myself out of it. Very strange sensation.

Well, the time came and we drove Caela to the airport – I slept all the way, dropped her off, said goodbye, cried, slept all the way home. Got in, went to bed and slept til about 18.00. Woke up to hear someone saying “Yes, finish” … that confused me, who was speaking English? Then I remembered we had the cleaners in, oh wow what an absolute luxury, I go to bed with a dirty house (well, wasn’t dirty as such, but it needed a good whip round!) and wake up to a lovely clean, tidy house.. they even polish the shower cabinet (who has the time to do that?!) and everything in the bathroom was gleaming.

Finally, after my marathon sleep I had a lease of energy, so did some organising of my own, then made some dinner. Hit the sack again quite early – this fatigue business is so weird.. how can I still need more sleep? Well, apparently I do. My body is the boss now, I don’t really have an option but to listen and obey, fighting it just doesn’t work.

I’ve been so lucky this year with having a contract at Hogeschool Utrecht; I still can’t believe the timing of it all. I am a freelancer, have been since 2009, but from the beginning of this academic year all freelancers at HU needed to go on a contract. I wasn’t keen to be honest, but it was a big proportion of my teaching hours and I thought I needed to just do it and see how it went for a year. Well, at the time of negotiating contracts etc. I wasn’t thinking about the advantages of having sick pay, pension etc. I was more thinking of the disadvantages, namely that you have to attend pointless meetings, do appraisals etc. whereas as a freelancer you are relieved of all that admin shit. Well, anyway, I finally signed on the dotted line at the end of August. I think I taught two weeks of lessons and then went off sick. I remember at the beginning being ill, but not knowing what it was, the only issue was that I had lost my voice and teaching without a voice is quite a challenge. But obviously, it means that I have been getting paid for at least some hours this year; the first year I have needed it.

So that was all nearly a year ago now.. I can’t believe it. My managers and team leader have been amazingly supportive and helpful. I guess that they would say they haven’t really done anything, but actually their quiet, non-intrusive support has been wonderful. I have sent a few updates now and again and they have always replied sending messages of support and kind thoughts. Most of the communication has been done via mail, I hadn’t actually met one of my managers face to face (!) so I thought it was time to meet up in person and we went for lunch which was nice. I obviously don’t know them very well so in this situation it is hard to know what to say or how to help but for me, their quiet, invisible support, just allowing me to update when I could but not putting any pressure on me or asking anything of me was the best type of support I could have asked for. Unfortunately, my contract was only for one year, so that means that from August my contract will end and I will be able to claim unemployment benefit on those hours, which will be 70% of the salary… better than nothing!

After lunch, I was just going to call my driver and get picked up (!)… it’s so lovely having a car, because when he is around, Ed just drops me in town and comes and picks me up when I call! What a luxury. It takes me back to my teenage days getting lifts from my dad… although there are a few differences… the main one being that my dad used to be either really late, so we would be waiting around for him, or he would get there earlier than agreed, and grumble if he had had to wait! Dad would only do daytime or early evening shift as well.. he might give us a lift into town in the evening but we (Caela and I ) would never dream of calling dad and asking him to pick us up after the pub at night… oh my goodness, that just wouldn’t happen! We had to rely on the cool/less strict parents for that, luckily a couple of my friends’ parents were less strict and would drive us home at 23.00 or later. Well anyway, back to my therapy…I walked to ‘Clarks’, good old Clarks has had a significant revamp in the last few years so that it actually stocks quite a few nice styles. They haven’t completely abandoned their core customer though; there are still plenty of soft, puffy, beige offerings for the old ladies to choose from but in amongst them, there are some stylish pairs! The only tricky thing about that is that you sometimes have to be careful that the style you are choosing is on the right side of the line; is it cool or is it granny?? Sometimes the line can be quite thin; slip up and you could find yourself wearing the same pair of sandals as the slack-wearing 70 year old granny queueing up at the supermarket next to you! Shuddder! Well, I went in and there was a sale on, so I had a half-hearted look at the section with my size… I picked up about 4 completely different styles – high heeled sandals, silver brogues, slips-ons and some other sandals and then went to sit down and try on. I really had no intention of buying and having looked at my selection again wasn’t even convinced whether I really liked them, but I tried them on and loved two of the pairs instantly, perfect sizing, good price (big discount) and they looked cool. In the absence of a friend to help me decide, I advised myself on what to do (I said “Fuck it, it’s only money” a few times!) and then told the assistant I would take both pairs. Ed would have been proud of my decisiveness and speed! I was in and out of the shop within 10 minutes.

A bit of retail therapy never does any harm does it?!

Speaking of therapy… I went to my GP this week to have a chat and just give him an update on what is happening; he is a really nice guy and can see in the system if I have been in hospital and what has been happening but he likes to see me or at least speak to me every few weeks. Well, I wanted to get a letter of referral to see a psychologist who specialises in cancer patients, so I went to see him. After having a chat with the social worker in the hospital a few weeks ago and not really feeling as if I got anything out of it, I decided that it would be better to speak to a specialist who has lots of experience with cancer patients. Maybe that will be more useful. I’ve got the letter so now I just need to call and make an appointment. Not sure what to expect but am hoping it will be more concrete, I mean more useful rather than just being asked a lot of repetitive questions. What was lovely about my GP was that he noticed my still slightly bulbous nose, and asked about it! Nice… I had tried to cover it up, but he said it looked a bit ‘thick’! He said it had probably been a small infection because my immune system is weak, so I get viruses and infections more easily, but if it’s going away on its own, then I don’t need any antibiotics. No more medication! My nose is still a bit sore and a bit red and puffy, but at least I can’t see an extra nostril out of my peripheral vision anymore.. that’s an improvement!