It's been a while since I've updated this blog, and it's changed a lot since it got hijacked by a cancer diagnosis, two and a half years ago.
Cancer changed me.
A year down the line, I didn't think it had, but fast forward another eighteen months and it did.
It made me stronger.
It made me appreciate the things that really matter, but it also toughened me up.
I'm mentally tougher, emotionally tougher, but physically...physically, I'm struggling.
Whoever would have thought just one little pill would be such a tough treatment to swallow?
I've been through Tamoxifen - the hot flushes and weight gain were horrendous - Letrozole - well, I lasted just eight weeks on that one, due to the bone pain and insomnia - and now Exemestane.
For the first month I thought Exemestane was the wonder pill; side effects decreased considerably, and I felt like me again.
But the honeymoon period was short lived.
Gradually the stiffness, the joint pain, the insomnia crept up, along with the hot flushes, just for good measure.
Exemestane is steroid based, and considering I was bouncing off the walls with the chemo steroids I should probabbly have expected the insomnia and bursts of random energy, followed by a crash of fatigue.
Not sleeping has become the new normal.
An industrial sized, menopausal fan has become my favourite room accessory.
But the joint stiffness...ooffttt!!!
There have been times when I've been kneeling in the garden, and am suddenly unable to get up.
This usually happens when the garden is overlooked, I'm wearing a dress and the only way to stand is to huff and puff and swear a lot and gradually hoist myself onto all fours to lever myself up!
If I'm moving around, everything is fine, it's stopping moving that's the problem.
I've always been able to contort my limbs all over the place, and that hasn't changed, which makes it all the more frustrating when I suddenly seize up.
Sometimes, I feel twenty years older than I am.
Being flung into an overnight menopause after my second chemo didn't help.
I've toyed with skipping tablets, taking a week off, restarting daily with good intentions, only to skip one again.
It's tough.
My cancer scored 8/8 for oestrogen and was grade 3, lymph node positive.
Just two positive nodes, with one being a single solitary cell, but enough to make the risk of recurrence high enough to make stopping the sodding pills risky.
Going through chemo I was part of The May Ladies, a forum group set up in May 2018, of ladies going through chemo for breast cancer at the same time.
We kept in touch.
Last month one of these wonderful ladies died of secondary breast cancer.
It came back in her brain.
Less than two years after completing chemo.
It shocked me to the core.
And that night I restarted the Exemestane tablets.
But I'm struggling.
