With the Russian madman causing mayhem in the world, I am really trying to maintain a positive outlook.
The war news is dominating and it’s difficult to avoid. But am very aware of how my mental health can affect my physical health, so I am attempting (and so far succeeding) to limit my news watching/viewing. I look at just enough to get a very superficial overview but even that is more than I want. I feel so sad for all the people affected by this megalomaniac!
Time flies by, even the chemo treatments. Yesterday was #5 of the planned 6. The results of my blood tests continue to be good. The cancer marker went from 301 to 187 this week. But not low enough to move on to the next stage. Dr. McCleave said they want to see it at around 30 which is quite a long way yet.
When I came back to South Africa in 2019, I naturally gravitated to where I was born and grew up. And actually ended up in the what we used to call the village of Kloof. (It’s no longer a village!) Kloof is about 18 miles/29km from Durban and just on 1600ft/500km above sea level, giving the area a more moderate climate than Durban, usually being a good 10F less which was the case when I took Rodney to the park this afternoon. Plus less humid.
The fourth treatment went as planned. Mick came with me so he was able to meet my doctor. It’s always good to have another set of ears in a consultation but this one was very straightforward because everything is going so well.
November 16 last year is the fateful day I got the definitive news that changed my life.
By then I ‘d been in hospital for 8 days going through tests and everything else that goes along with a cancer diagnosis. I’d just had laparoscopic surgery for a biopsy and the GYN/surgeon came to visit me after I had very gently been given the diagnosis. He’s a lovely man and from reading his bio, a pretty religious one as well. He said to me as he sat at my bedside, “Have you considered end of life?”
Is this the new normal? It’s actually quite comfortable. Maybe we have just been so brainwashed and constrained for the last 5 months, this easing up feels like a whole new world and maybe we’ve completely forgotten what it’s like to live any other way! (Or maybe it’s a conspiracy to control us!!!!!)
I had high hopes that when Level 4 of the South African Lockdown kicked in on May 1, there would be an easing of restrictions to make this isolation more bearable. But except for a 3 hour window in the early morning when we are allowed to “exercise”, nothing changed for me. No visiting, no socializing, no, no, no.
For a couple of years now, I’ve been capturing memories. The good, the bad and the ugly ones.
The impetus behind this originally was that my family has very little information about our parents’ past. Just a few anecdotal stories handed around. Our mother was very, very tight-lipped, way beyond the stiff upper lip of her generation. We had maybe a couple of stories from her youth that she may have mentioned in passing. But probably got from our grandmother who I barely remember.
