anniversary

Today was my middle brother Richard's anniversary.
 I will always remember the date of course and the events of that day are still clear in my mind,even though it was many,many years ago.  
At the time I didn't know how to feel or how to grieve - losing a sibling is a very strange experience and I was desperate at the time to carry on as normal and to not be thought of as the girl whose brother died.
  As a child it seemed that it was my job to be 'good' and 'brave' and 'helpful'.  It's very difficult to embrace the enormity of what has happened for fear of not being those things. The feelings of the the bereaved sibling are usually overshadowed by those of the bereaved parent.
 To lose a brother or sister means that you have lost probably the closest person to you - in age, shared experiences and in friendship and as the years go on you find you've also lost the person that they'd have grown up to be.    
I also think, or used to think - why was Richard the one - it could so easily have been me or Tim, our youngest brother. I think subconsciously that I felt that if one of us had died then maybe life isn't a very secure thing.
Mostly I'm sad for my parents who must carry the huge weight of grief for their lost boy. 

sending you golden light and loving kindness

Richard David Eccles 3.9.61 - 15.11.71

Swimming....

...without my pool pal.

 I was going to give the trip to the pool a miss today as I'd been feeling unwell but decided on a compromise to swim gently and went bare armed. 

Usual people there; Man with Gold Chain who swims a leisurely crawl; Bobbing Lady who is as thin as a whip and has an unusual hybrid stroke and of course Fast Man who did his 60 lengths without any regard for his fellow swimmers- it's quite alarming to have someone speeding towards you in the middle of a lane having overtaken the person in front of him - he never veers from his torpedo-like path despite my death ray glares but this attitude of mine defeats my attempts at serene and mindful swimming. 

Minus the pool pal I had no idea how many lengths I had done - my idea was to swim without being competitive with myself but it felt pointless and I got bored. I tried to teach myself tumble turns but not very successfully. 

 I guess there has to be a point to doing things rather than just doing them for the sake of it. 

It's the same with drawing - I really only draw if there's a purpose to it - a deadline or to make something for someone or to develop new ideas. I'm sure I must be missing something by doing this - maybe I'm not living in the present moment as I am always thinking about the end result.  I shall have to meditate on that. 

work !

I'm gradually working my way through the layouts of Football Jokes and managing to put various critters in here and there ( there's even an aardvark). I know nothing of football apart from having an inexplicable and major crush on Gordon Banks when I was a girl. Still, it's a challenge.
Here's a snippet - a dog who does little jobs around the house....

 

mets meds

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with my medication - on one hand it's lovely stuff as it's working for me (it doesn't for everyone)and on the other I resent having to take it. 
The sight of the bag of pills in the evening after supper always makes my heart sink - I ignore it for as long as possible,then count out the 9 little tablets.
 The morning dose of 9 after breakfast makes me feel pretty much the same. Why would this be ? I think it's just the relentless cycle of 14 days with seven off.
 I love that week off,though side effects linger - I feel a bit sick from time to time and my hands are red and prickly - but it's all tolerable really,or else I've got used to it.  There's also diarrhoea which I hate  to mention. 
I have a drawerful of anti-nausea and anti-diarrhoea tablets but I am reluctant to take them - partly because I am not one for taking anything unless I really have to and probably mainly because I feel as though I'll throw up if I have to swallow another thing.
The chemo tablets will continue until they no longer work for me and then it's on to something else - and I shall be thinking then how silly I was to grizzle about taking a handful of tiny wee pills. 

                                      picture by the very clever Margaret Chamberlain  

swimming & teeth

I am gradually becoming a chlorine shrivelled husk - but possibly a slightly fitter husk than before. I am obsessed by the stats on my Pool Pal (actually it's a Pool Mate but David Sedaris' tale of the Stadium Pal men's catheter always gets into my head) 

Today I swam 63 lengths - I don't like it being an odd number but they'd put the Bruce Springsteen on the PA system which is always a prelude to the Aqua Fit class at 7 o'clock and that's time to get out. I think they only have two songs as it's either Born in the USA or Blondie's Sunday Girl.

I am swimming really as a way of making myself fitter and am challenging myself to do more and more each time. I am horribly competitive - not an attractive trait really,but I can't help it.

 An extra bonus is the discovery that swimming is quite a Mindful exercise - as I swim I count my strokes which is a bit like a mantra and I am concentrating on how my arms and legs are moving and aware of all the muscles stretching out and contracting. Under the water there's the sound of breathing out which is steady and rhythmic. Where I fail in my Zen-like approach is my intolerance towards swimmers who don't obey the lane etiquette - I really need to show some Loving Kindness there.

As for my teeth - I have a titanium post stuck in and had an impression made for the crown -the moulding stuff is totally vile - quite the most unpleasant stuff I've ever had in my mouth (no,wait a minute- I once ate some disgusting Norwegian cheese that looked like an Art Gum rubber).  I paid half the bill (still not managed to convince dentist to take a picture as part-payment)and I go back in a few weeks for the finishing touches. I described it all in detail to Theo as a warning to always respect and look after his teeth.  

first post :

There are squillions of cancer blogs out there and I feel a bit unwilling to add to them but I need somewhere to write stuff that often floats around in my head and that people won't feel obliged to read because it's on my Facebook page.
So...
a brief update about me. 
I am an illustrator,that's the main thing about me- have been one since I left art school a long time ago. Never really thought about being anything else (well,a medical artist at one point,though am horribly squeamish and looking at pathology books in Foyles made me feel very queasy)
I'm also a wife and a mother of one, I have a cat and long desperately for a dog.

Four years ago I had breast cancer - a relatively small thing with an excellent prognosis. One year ago I found out that it had spread and was now in residence in both lungs. I wouldn't have known except for a sudden horrible pain in my chest which sent me to see my doctor and set me on the path to discovering I now had secondary breast cancer. This is also known as metastatic breast cancer. There is no cure but it can be managed so it doesn't mean you're about to kark it, at least not for a few years. 
I'm not afraid of the karking it bit but the lonely path I'm on is weird and strange and half the time I can't quite believe I'm on it.

So that's it really - I'm fitting all my usual bits of life into this new way of living and have got through 1 year of it. I'm very much still here and cramming in as much work as I can just in case - besides which I hate to be idle.

I'll just occasionally witter on for a bit about stuff that occurs to me in the hope that writing something down will be helpful and save those who look after me from having to listen to me asking whether they're quite sure that I really have this thing. It's in my nature to question and investigate but usually I overthink things and end up very muddled.
Righto, that'll do for now. I'm off to my beloved Waitrose to find some lunch,then to the dentist to get my poor broken tooth seen to and if not too numb after that I'm off to swim. I shall report back.