Addy's blog: Climb every mountain

I’ve been mulling over what to write in this blog for over a week now. Do you want to hear about where I am in my cancer journey (or my brother and mums)? Do we want more Coronavirus/lockdown stories? Do you want advice on self-love and what to do all summer? I couldn’t decide, so you’ve got a blend of all of it!

My brother has finished all his treatment and is starting the path back to work (although not the office physically for quite a while). We lost our Mum on 19th May - not directly Covid or cancer related, but impacted by both simultaneously. She went into hospital on VE day with an infection but by the time she made it to a ward she was unresponsive and died 10 days later. No one was allowed in to see her during this time, but the NHS team did their best to keep us up to date with her treatment and progress. My Dad was allowed in to say goodbye in her final hours, and bless him, he managed a videocall for us kids to see Mum and say goodbye (not bad for an 80-year-old learning how to use WhatsApp). It was a horrible time but I’m glad she is no longer in any pain, and thanks to Covid, she got the small funeral she wanted.

I finished my last chemo cycle last Wednesday. This entailed two weeks of 5 tablets twice a day, plus anti-nausea tablets, then 1 week off, for 12 weeks in total. I’ve mostly been “fine” during the treatment, but side effects of extreme tiredness, digestive issues, insomnia, hot flushes, sore hands and feet have left me exhausted and glad it’s done now. But it has left me feeling somewhat at a crossroads. Its almost a year to the day that I was diagnosed, and my treatment journey has all been leading me to this day, and now I’m here I don’t know what to do next! During all of my ups and downs I’ve often felt like I was climbing a mountain (sometimes with my teeth and with my hands tied behind my back), but now I’m at the supposed “top” looking down, and I feel a little deflated, underwhelmed almost. I think I need to be told what’s next and can I get on with the job of healing, recovering and learning to live normally again?

Today I have kicked myself in the proverbial and told myself to cheer up, this is a cause for celebration! So, with my mountain theme pinging around my brain I had a happy half hour surfing the internet and came across the song “Climb every mountain”. Having never seen “The Sound of Music” (*gasp* I’m in my 40's and somehow have missed this classic) it really resonated and made me smile when I read the lyrics:

Climb every mountain
Search high and low
Follow every byway
Every path you know

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream

A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live

It’s the summer holidays now and we are spending loads of time in the garden and the woods going back to nature. Building forts, dens, splashing in the paddling pool, finding minibeasts or dare I say it, gorging on Disney+!

I need time to allow myself to feel pants and pick myself up again. But I also need to have dreams and goals, however small. Today’s goal is writing this blog. Tomorrow’s goal is to make brownies. To quote Edmund Hillary “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”

Addy normally works in Risk & Compliance in the city, has a 5-year-old trainee F1 driver, a 3-year-old aspiring space doctor, a lovely hands on husband and two mad rescue cats.

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