Wasn't expecting this.

So it's almost been a week since my last chemo. I've had another busy week, had lunch with a bunch of lovely ladies from the Melbournites group, a couple more photoshoots and now getting ready to be a bridesmaid at a wedding in Darwin in a few weeks time. Then radiation starts.  Everything was going swimmingly apart from the usual stress and hassles that go along with this thing called cancer. 

Yesterday morning though, everything got turned on its head when I got a phone call from my lovely grandmother in NSW...the one I went to visit as a surprise halfway through chemo, who knitted little teddies for my chemo nurses, who spoils me with little pressies and letters and is honestly my most favourite person in the world and one of the only people who makes me feel truly happy when I am around them. 73 yrs young and thinks nothing of wrestling with her great-grandson on the floor, or having a drink in each hand at Christmas.

She said they had found a mass in one of her lungs (non-smoker) and now she's having a biopsy this week sometime.  I now understand how others must have felt when I dropped that news on them. And even though it could be a number of different things (as they told me at the beginning when I found my lump)  I just have a feeling that it won't be good, and in that one phone call, I realised how old she sounded and that bad things happen to good people, and I wasn't ready for ths yet!! You know it's going to happen eventually but don't really believe it. 

Then, (bless her!) she said that she wasn't going to tell me about it until they had results, but felt that she had to, and that she surprised herself & actually feels quite calm about it and not scared or upset...because of ME! "You've been so brave and strong through everything you've had to go through, and you've explained things to me, I've learnt a lot through you and I think that's what's making me feel ok about this now."

I don't feel brave and strong at the moment. I feel scared and angry and helpless and lost and all those things that a cancer sufferer is meant to feel. And then I get that phone call. 

As much as I want to jump on a plane and just be there, I know there's no point til after the biopsy results. I'm clinging to the hope that it's not cancer but, I DO have that feeling. I can just remember all the stress and everything I had to go through before I was diagnosed - tests, waiting, more tests, stress...I remember saying to mum "How do kids and little old people do this? " I know she won't be alone (she has a very strong family & social network where she is)  but I know she'll be scared even though she says she's not...and now I feel helpless about being so far away...Aaarrgh! 

It's not all positive and happy for me. 

I know this has nothing to do with breast cancer but it is part of my "journey", hence why I'm writing about it. I needed to get it out and hopefully it will be ok. 

Til next time, I hope everyone is having a better couple of days than me!