Friends.....

(5)

As my health declined more and more until I was no longer an entertaining, fun person, able to go out for coffee mornings with friends or attend parties and lunches I began to make a major discovery, one that saddened me deeply and left me isolated from the outside world.  My network of friends gradually began to crumble until there was almost no one left who kept in touch with me.  I would receive an occasional email or text from one or two friends but that was all, apart from my closest family members, and I have a very small family.  What saddened me even further was that people I knew weren't staying away because of a fear of illness.  They would actually mention in emails that they were busy and time poor because they had been visiting a friend in hospital lately!   For some reason, though, they stayed away despite text messages from me almost begging them to visit.  I had actually come to that.....

It would be an interesting study into the human psyche to discover why this was because, in my experience, hospital is a busy place and you are rarely left alone, even though sometimes that's your fervent wish!  Apart from visitors, there are trolleys trundling along the corridor, the tea lady and cleaner popping in regularly and meals brought in at regular times.  And that's before you even begin to count the nursing staff taking obs, doctors' visits and being sat in a wheelchair and taken to various departments for tests.  They say you come home from hospital for a rest and never was a truer word spoken!

Yet I was at home and all my friends knew this but, for reasons I was unable to understand, they stayed away in droves.  My days were long, lonely and I was beginning to despair that this was going to be how I would spend the rest of my life.  One or two friends asked me if there was anything they could do and I would answer, "Yes, please pop in for a visit" but that would be ignored.  I still wonder why. Perhaps they thought that I was simply being lazy or had agoraphobia or that I was a hypochondriac and wanting attention.  These had to be the reasons because  I live in a reasonably central area;  no one would have to drive for longer than twenty minutes to reach my house and I could see no reason why my house could cause them any kind of difficulty to enter.  We didn't have a large, ferocious dog or a lion for a pet!  My thoughts were getting more and more far fetched in an effort to understand.

I'm normally very upbeat and chirpy and you could say almost a PollyAnna but at times my situation overwhelmed me.  I could not imagine how my life could improve but I had to do something, anything, because I knew I was going downhill physically.  I didn't want to go down mentally as well because I knew it would be a long, difficult climb back up again.  I clung onto every tiny bit of willpower I had in an effort to retain my essence; the person I knew I was but who was becoming lost in the darkness of this decline in my health, which was beginning to take me over more and more rapidly.  

I began to do Mindful Meditation.  I knew I had to gain control over these thoughts before I became completely lost.  By now it was more than two years that I had been confined to the house and spending more and more time in bed looking at those walls, unable to drive and therefore unable to shop, visit friends or do anything at all to save my sanity.  I couldn't even tend to my garden, which had always been my haven of peace, so I saw no one except the two friends who continued to be loyal.  However, they worked full-time and were only able to visit infrequently.     

I had bought a book called "Mindfulness: a practical guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World" by Mark Williams and Danny Penman, which included a free CD of guided meditations.  After reading the first two chapters I knew I had found my way home.  I began to listen to the meditations and found them easy and effective.  So effective that everything became clear to me and I had somewhere to go in my mind when my physical situation became too much for my mind to bear. 

I can see your eyes glazing over again and hear you saying, "Get to the point! This blog is supposed to describe an insider's view of metastatic breast cancer.  You promised!"  Bear with me because this is what I promised.  This is an insider's view of what it's like to feel your health slipping away without knowing why which is, yes, unusual but not unknown.  I honestly felt as though I was dying, although I didn't put it in those words in my mind because I believed, completely and utterly, that I could somehow find my way back.  I have always been a positive thinker and, even in those dark days, I couldn't believe that I would not, somehow, regain my health and vitality.  While I'm not a believer that positive thinking prevents illness, a positive attitude creates opportunities to find answers.

By gaining control of my thoughts I was able to create moments where I could see a light at the end of the tunnel and know I would not give in to the darkness.  Gradually, Mindfulness Meditation became a permanent way of thinking that was subconscious.  I came back!  Because I was stronger mentally I was able to use my mental strength to lift myself and there were times when I was having a reasonably good spell so I would seize that moment to try to build some physical strength because I still believed that I could be well again.  Gradually, there were other moments when I could try to consolidate the gains I thought I was making.  I began to take short walks, very short walks; only 50 metres and I had to go back to bed, but I was happy because I felt I was making headway towards my goal of being able to walk every day for forty minutes as I used to.  I believed that would be the key to recovery and that I would increase my walking time until I could go for those long, long walks I dreamed about.

This was what kept me going.  This was behind my determination.  I truly believed that I could achieve good health again in this way until the day I noticed that my left breast had changed shape.  

Because this subject has always been something of a taboo I'm fully aware that, to some readers, this may be confronting but I'm not going to step back from that because one of the many reasons for writing this blog is to help women (and men, although I can't describe men's symptoms at a personal level) to be with me at that moment and gain insight into the necessity to be familiar with the appearances of your breasts.  I am actually a very private person and not given to descriptions of this kind but I do it because of the need for real awareness and in the hope I might save even one woman's life.  It's not enough to rely on mammograms, as I've said in an earlier blog post.  Self examination is vital but it's also not enough.  Look at your breasts and memorise their appearance so that the slightest change is obvious.

Why am I stressing this?  Because this is what saved my life and I'll expand on that in further blogs ~  


If you have any questions or suggestions you may email Leapfrog at: positivetrialsblogspot@gmail.com