Thursday, August 13, 2009

The road to recovery

A year ago today, someone put a camera somewhere one never expects a camera to go, and I saw my tumour for the first (and last) time; a week after that it was gone.

Now I am going through the final steps of recovery - the spots are still hanging around, esp. on my neck, but they are simply a small nuisance now. I had my portacath removed, so have a sore shoulder for a couple of weeks while that heals over. And I'm still quite tired in general, but slowly building up my hours at work.

But one thing the medical world will not allow is to be hurried along ! I still have a few little thing, like having the stitches out for the portacath removal in a fortnight, then one more invasion of the camera to check everything is working correctly internally at the end of the month, and finally two scans (CT and MRI) at the end of September to check everything looks clear.

So in truth, it never truely feels 100% over - after that scan, there will be regular check ups throughout the years to come. But I do feel I am through almost all of it now, and hopefully by the time I return from my upcoming holiday to Australia, I hope to be at full energy levels and working full time again. It can be somewhat demoralizing to work part-time, you feel a lot less valuable and can often feel marginalised, and whilst I'll miss the 9-10 hours of sleep a night, I am looking forward to it.