Stormy weather

Nick says she likes it when I write about nature. The main events in nature recently have been storms. Each seeming to follow close on the heels of the one before, giving us barely enough time to pick up the pieces and breathe still air before it is once again being whipped past our faces, giving the trees a beating and robbing them of their leaves. The swirling tightly wrapped isobars on the weather map look like Catherine Wheels jostling for position in the Atlantic before hitting our little island and causing mayhem, stirring up the seas and battering the shoreline. We've repeatedly had to stow things away in the garden to keep them safe and my niece's trampoline woke up to find itself perched on top of their hedge! 

These storms come 30 years after the Great Storm of October 1987 when the weather forecasters famously reassured us in the UK that we definitely weren't about to be hit by a hurricane! We didn't have named storms back then but now we do and it was Ophelia and Brian who chased each other across the country this last week bringing high winds and heavy rain, massive seas, power-cuts and floods. Nothing compared to the devastation in the Caribbean, Florida and Texas in recent weeks of course and we are thankful for that.

Nick and I have been encountering our own storms too and despite trying to batten down the hatches and deal with what is being thrown at us we are struggling here. On the face of it all is calm, a period of high pressure if you wish to carry on the weather theme, as all we have to do is let Nick's body recover from the ravages of the BEAM chemotherapy which her new stem cells are quietly taking care of (actually they are all grown up now, they are mature cells and her bone marrow is back to making its own stem cells all the time just like everyone else's). 
She needs to be patient with her aching limbs and joints; muscle takes a whole lot longer to develop than it does to destroy and she is starting from scratch so this weakness and stiffness is only to be expected. Same story with weight loss and gain - she lost about 20lbs in a very short space of time and although she has put a few pounds back on by eating lots of cake, drinking whole milk and build-up shakes it will be slow because it is muscle weight that she is missing rather than simply fat. So really, nothing to see here. We met with Nick's wonderful consultant, Dave, on Friday and in the nicest possible way he told her to put all this behind her and go and get on with her life. There is most likely no active lymphoma in her body, the treatment is over and we won't see him, or any other medical person, for three months when she will have blood tests and a catch-up with Dave. Reason to celebrate right? What the last nine months of treatment was all aiming for right? Champagne, balloons, here-we-go and there-we-go, party time, holding up a piece of cardboard with 'Cancer Free' written on it and trying to make it go viral on Facebook.....

.......or a whirling maelstrom of tight isobars crashing down on us, a hurricane that wasn't forecast causing emotional devastation and flooding us with confusion and conflict. We have each had such different experiences since the beginning of this cancer thing, we have shared so much but also (we are now realising) we have each been isolated on our own path. Maybe we have tried to protect each other from our individual fears and thoughts, maybe we assumed that after almost a quarter of a century together we just 'knew' how the the other was feeling, maybe it is only now that all this is pretty much behind us that we really know how we feel. It's been a non-stop series of hospital appointments, chemo sessions, scans, side effects, setbacks, blood tests, press-ups, blogs, visits from friends, packages in the post, doing nice things because 'life is just too short', waiting, cell harvesting, transplanting, sickness, baldness, bloody mindedness and all things cancer but it's coming to an end, has ended in many ways and letting go of it all is a lot harder than you can imagine. In fact we never imagined it because no one talks about this bit and we could never truly see this far ahead to give it any thought, didn't dare think about it probably. It doesn't help that there isn't a true 'ending' - no confirmation from a scan or test to say that the cancer is gone for good. 

So instead of a weekend spent celebrating while the wind howls and the rain pours and pours on us we have had what can only be described as a horrible weekend. And for the first time in this whole process we didn't do a very good job of supporting each other through it which is actually what made it horrible. We can do challenging and trying and difficult when we do it together but when we shut each other out and try to face it alone we fail. We failed miserably this weekend but I think now we have learnt not to turn inwards, even if we do it to protect each other, but to talk about whatever is going on in our heads no matter what that may be and no matter how difficult it may be to share.

Full of surprises this cancer journey eh? Never a dull bloody moment, always another storm waiting over the Atlantic, an anti-cyclone, a depression, a typhoon. 

Dave (as well as doing press ups with Nick again!) reassured us that the further we move away from this point the easier it will be to put it all behind us, to move on and get on with our lives but as those people whose houses flooded or got blown away know only too well, the clean-up operation is slow and painful. Only when the craziness stops and the weather calms down do you get to evaluate what you've lost, realise how much help you've received (because terrible situations truly bring out the best in people) and get to reflect on what happened whilst beginning to repair and rebuild what has been shattered, broken and buffeted by the storm.

So we can't draw a line under lymphoma just yet but we are reflecting and processing, feeling angry and yet thankful, sad but happy. It's not quite time to stop doing press ups or writing our blog but that time is coming and we are preparing ourselves for that together. We have always tried to give each other a place of safety and stillness whatever the weather so we'll do our best to remember that as this latest storm rages.

As this weekend comes to a peaceful end we are thinking of our friend Ben who is facing his own category four storm in hospital right now. We send him all our love.