Cancer and mountains
I know much of the time during treatment, I felt like I had a mountain to climb or at least some large hills to hurdle. But somehow, like most of us do, I finally found my way over most of them (often with a bit of help from the ladies on here!).
Treatment ended (and hormone therapy began) and I set about finding the best way to help myself recover and heal. Healing involves so much more than just the physical side. I had to find a way to live with the chance of recurrence, a way to feel confident enough to set life goals again, a way to heal the hurt that cancer had caused to myself and my relationships with others and so much more.
Some of you may remember that I set myself a pretty large goal early in 2015 (just over 12 months after finishing treatment). I was off to tackle the biggest mountain I could, I was going to trek to Everest Base Camp and raise money to help others facing a cancer diagnosis.
Well, once again Mother Nature showed me that our lives can change in the blink of an eye. While my wonderfully supportive husband and I were flying to Bangkok (and then would have gone on to Kathmandu for the trek) a massive earthquake struck Nepal and the lives of thousands were lost and thousands more changed forever.
Since then we have overcome or dealt with a few more hurdles. We were unsuccessful in our travel insurance claim for the airfares as we had commenced our flight before the earthquake. As far as the insurance company was concerned we had taken the flight so were technically not 'out of pocket' for this part of our travel. We had 'received the service we had paid for'. That was hard. A lot to pay for one night in Bangkok!
Then after experiencing heavy bleeding I made the decision to have my ovaries removed and change from Tamoxifen to Femara. A month into Femara I began to experience greatly increased pain from pre-existing mild osteoarthritis. This became so bad that my GP referred me for a bone scan to rule out a stress fracture. No stress fracture and no cancer recurrence thank goodness.
Then my husband experienced two bouts of an inflammatory eye condition that he has had on and off for 23 years. The second has left permanent damage to his left eye.
But, call us stubborn, call us crazy, we have never given up on that dream of trekking to Everest Base Camp. We kept training whenever we could. We found stress release in the hours spent hiking hills together and knew that the exercise and fitness helped us to cope with everything life continues to challenge us with.
In just one weeks time (baring any other unforeseen hurdles) we will board a plane (possibly even the same one as last year!) and try once again to achieve our goal. I don't know if we will make it all the way but I know that we will give it our very best effort. They say it is more mental determination than physical strength that counts in this challenge. We might just get there then ??.
You just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you never know where you can get to. Will let you know if we make it. Deanne xxx
