Happy DX Anniversary to Me...

I started this blog thinking that I could blog-therapy a lot of stuff about my journey with breast cancer, but it hasn't turned out that way. It's not that I am consciously choosing not to, but more that I find that I have less and less attachment to my identity as a "cancer survivor".

Except on this day.

I have been thinking a LOT about my cancer lately. Much more than usual. And I have been feeling incredibly scared and sad..... the kind that takes a few minutes to realise what I'm scared and sad about. And then Boo reminded me. Without meaning to.

Yesterday he said "Tomorrow is Gillian's birthday! Oh... that means that tomorrow is the anniversay of 9/11." And I suddenly realised that that meant that tomorrow was my 7th anniversary of my breast cancer diagnosis (dx). Which explains all the recent sub-conscious focus on my cancer.

Sheesh. And it really IS sub-conscious. And it bites me on the bum every bloody year.

I have an incredibly wonderful group of women who are my bc support group. We were all diagnosed at around the same time and met on an international internet support group. Over the last 7 years I have been incredibly lucky to have been visited by 2 of them (one of them twice) and have also visited 5 of them (they are all in America and Canada). Our little group has diminished over time..... due to the tragic reality of the statistics of developing metastasis of the original cancer.... and the downside of belonging to a cancer support group is that we support each other through dying just as much as through living.

I hate this day.

The day I was dx'd, Toto's godfather (Big H) was staying with us from the UK. Obviously, my entire world was shattered. My children were 3 and 4 and I was living in a little house in a completely different part of the city from my parents. At 10pm-ish, Big H woke me up to watch the WTC buildings collapse. And I knew that my own problem was diminished hugely because of the untenable terrorist acts that occured on that day.

I have lived in NYC. I had a close girlfriend who worked in the WTC and I couldn't get hold of her on the phone. She was okay, but I later found out that two of my "christmas card friends" (friends that you catchup with once every year via a christmas message) lost their lives.

I was thrown into even more turmoil. It's hard to describe it. One part of me felt that I needed the attention because I'd just been given those incredibly impossible words "It is malignant", and another part of me felt that it was insignificant compared to global affairs. Most of me was wildly flailing somewhere in the middle.

*sigh*

I survived. The most supportive person, other than my parents, was my friend who is currently ill and in a psychiatric hospital.

And I should be leaping for joy that it's 7 years ago, because really that means that my chance of recurrance is as the same as someone who has never had breast cancer. Yes, I should be happy. But emotionally, it's not a good day for me.

I will spend most of it with my ill friend. And I will celebrate the divine Gillian's 41st birthday (oh to be in Glasgow with her to celebrate properly) but I will also mourn.

I'll be mourning the "me" who didn't have to face that incredibly horrendous day. And the arduous journey that followed.

Big H!!!!

Of course our visit to Big H had to begin with a visit to his local....

..... and then a walk around his beautiful home village of Southwell....
.... to see the 900 year old Minster....

We completely took over his little house.  A graceful and wonderfully generous host.

Need I say that this will be the LAST AIR MUSEUM that I want to include in our trip?!!!
(although this sign is one that I'd like to replicate in my home!!!)....

I'm a saint.  Well, an Air Museum visiting Mum kind of saint.  Truly.

So we then opted for a bit of a "cultural" afternoon and visited nearby Newstead Abbey (click here for more info) which was the ancestral home of Lord Byron.  We were too late to get inside the house, but spent a couple of hours wandering in the spectacular gardens.