Welcome to Limbo Land...

As I signed on to blogspot today, I had a look at my list of posts and realised, I've been blogging quite a lot recently. I put it down to having rather too much time on my hands. This is (obviously) in large part due to me not working at the moment, and having to find ways of ocupying my time which don't use up too much energy! One unfortunate aspect of this whole brain cancer malarky is that I find myself frquently shattered and too tired to do anything. I am attempting to clear out some of the junk in my old room (I switched rooms) in my parents' house. BUt rather pathetically, I can only manage 30 minute bursts before I feel wiped out! As a result much of my time tends to be taken with things I can do sitting down such as DVDs, books, writing and blogging! My ability to do a lot is also being hampered at the moment by the unwelcome return of a few symptoms (in case I needed proof the cancer cells were growing again...). My left hand ( although certainly nowhere near as bad as before treatment) is getting stiff and numb, and as a result it is harder to hold things in it for a long period, so I'm back to doing a lot of things with just one hand. Also my hearing in my left ear is also (off and on) weak. If there are too many different noises I find it hard to hear clearly. And then added to this there is my general balance and spee, which lets face it has been near apalling for the last ten years! I think the strangest thing is the sense of limbo I now find myself in. I know that the tumour is still there, yet am receiving no treatment which is both a relief and scary at the same time... It's a relief because chemo makes me feel really ill and rotten and draws attention to the fact that I really do have cancer and can't ignore it (no matter how much I want to!), so not having treatment means I feel less ill, and can look forward to feeling better over the next couple of months. Of course the flip side of this is that not having treatment is damn scary, as I know I still have a tumour and that at present, nothing is being done about it. Even at my sickest on chemo, there was this feeling that it was somehow worth it if it made me better. But now I spend a lot of time trying not to think about the possible outcomes of my next scan in July, as some of them are a little too scary to deal with. I am attempting to treat the time off chemo as a bit of a holiday, a chance to do a few things and see a few people whilst I still feel fit enough to do so, especially as chances are any further treatment is likely to be even harsher than what has gone before.. I am also putting all thoughts of work on the back burner. Funnily enough, this morning when shopping in our village, my mother was asked by someone "Is Lucy well enough to go to work yet?" People seem to have a very strange idea of how long recovery from cancer takes; even when people's chemo is successful it can take months after treatment before they feel like their old selves- it is an incredibly long and frankly boring illness! For my part the idea of future work keeps shifting. Although I would like to get back into work, at the moment I have no job to go back to. As luck would have it, just when this recurrence started I'd come home after finishing my year contract in Taiwan, so was effectively unemployed. Meaning that if and when I am feeling bettter, I will need to find a job to go to! What complicates matters is that the career I've chosen (TEFL) generally involves living in other countries, which might not fit in to well with a schedule of out patient appointment in the UK. There is also the fear that I could get ill again thousands of miles from home. This isn't a new fear. Having had cancer before in 2006, I was aware of the possibility when I lived in both Russia and Taiwan, but having this recurrence has made it all a bit more real. So for now, my main aim is to get as fit and healthy as I possibly can, and then potentially look for TEFL work in Western Europe(nearer to home), or if I find myself under the watchful eye of the hospital for a while, I may have to look for work in the UK, so I don't miss any appointments. Also after a couple of years getting by on a PGCE and an online TEFL qualification, I think I'm going to bite the bullet and do the CELTA course when I'm better, as it really is the stepping stone to any kind of longer career in TEFL and essential to land jobs in good European schools and/ or the UK. Am also still hopeful that I will be going on my holiday to Italy at the end of September, but again this is a bit up in the air at the moment, until I know how my summer is going to pan out, although my oncologist didn't rule it out completely...