Goodbye 2012 and all the bad things about you.

We're on the edge of New Year 2013.
I'm sure I don't need to say the expected, "it's been difficult" and "I'll be glad when it's all behind me".
But it has and I will.  
New Year is the obvious time to look back at the past year and think of how you can make things better in the coming year.  It's not a difficult ask for how i'd like things to be better.  To be honest, Christmas has been a difficult period but i've had friends and family around to keep me up and I have a big party (and afro wig) to look forward to this evening....

I just want to impart a little advice to those of you that will be reading this in a hungover fug tomorrow morning, or maybe not, you good people.  
Cancer (there, I said it) is a terrible thing. I've rationalised this awful illness in my head into a flu like condition that lasted a few months and involved a few more needles.  But I know really that it was a violent invader that was trying to shut me down.  It's an illness that has the ability to turn you into a horrible, selfish person.  Because for once in my life it had to become all about me.  You have no energy to be concerned about others.  I'm sorry to those I shut out, and still have to some extent.  If you ever have to deal with this in your circle of family and friends, keep that in mind.  They don't mean it.

At any time during that Summer period, cancer could have tipped those scales and killed me.  I pushed all negative thoughts to the back of my head and spent my time thinking of what i'd do when all the treatment was over.  Now.  When i'm told there is only a 1 in a 100 chance of it ever coming back, I know it wasn't the flu and I am one of the lucky ones.  It's left a lot of scars though, both physical and mental and although some have healed there are others that are going to take a lot longer to heal.  I'm working on them.  And you can get a great product from Liberty called 'Heal Gel' that I would highly recommend for the physical ones....

TopherTalks helped me so much.  It focussed my mind and kept me busy.  So this is where I sign off from TopherTalks 2012, my blog to update people on what was happening during a very difficult period.

Wherever you are in the world I hope that you have a good one and I wish you all my love and support for all the love and support that you have given me.

Back to school.

I've got a song playing in my head that I can't get rid of. 
No it's not the John Lewis ad or Mariah Carey but an opening number from a school play from when I was about nine years old. I can't remember any of the other words apart from 'back to school, we're going back toooo school.." 
There probably weren't many more words given nine year olds had to learn it.  
I was in one of the lead roles and then I wasn't.  I'm going to have to ask mum why that was. Anyway, it's back to school day for me today after that phone call in early June that told me my levels were up and I needed to start treatment as soon as possible.
It's amazing how easy it was to turn off my email on my iPhone that day and I haven't looked at it since. Queue queasy stomach about turning it back on. But it's also surprising how normal it feels sitting on the train again heading into the office.  

I'm on a phased return for the first few months and people keep telling me that I will be surprised at how tired I will get. Lets see.

Given the nature of my role I won't be going into any detail about my return so I suppose this closes a chapter in the reason for this blog. I'm not going to close the blog though. In my notebook I've found a number of ideas for blogs that I wrote down during my first cycle of chemo so I'm going to develop them.


So,  like that troupe of nine year olds in bright clothes with backpacks on and a huge grin on their faces... "It's baaaack tooooo schoooool."