Today is an awful day for me. It’s one year exactly since I was diagnosed with Neuroendocrine cancer.  Just two days before I had run my first half-marathon surprising myself by completing it a good 13 minutes faster than my predicted time. So as you can imagine a cancer diagnosis was not what I had expected to receive when I was asked by the consultant endocrinologist to return to the hospital two weeks after a CT scan.

Since that fateful Tuesday all I ever  seem to do is count the days till the next appointment, or the days since I last felt well, or the days till the next injection. My life now revolves around meticulously recording symptoms and side effects so next time I see my oncologist or specialist nurse I can discuss at length whether the treatment is working or not. But the truth is no one knows, the truth is I must wait until the next scan where they will be able to see or not whether the cancer has spread. There’s no guarantee and sometimes the severity of the side effects is such that makes me ask myself is it really worth it? How much time is all of this actually buying me? I have been told many times “there’s no cure, your cancer is advanced”.

Having seen my husband suffer through so much invasive and debilitating treatment, I don’t think I want to go through yet more unnecessary pain and discomfort, nor do I want to be spending precious time away from my children whilst undergoing yet more treatment. I want quality of life.

I’ve had a whirlwind of emotions brewing up in the run up of this anniversary, compounded by my having to drive my eldest daughter back to her university accommodation earlier last week, as she prepares to return to the world of academia after a well deserved break following Michael’s death. I was able to keep it together all the way there, however once I was on the way back I cried constantly until I parked my car at home. I was emotionally drained for a few days after that.

At the end of last week I endured a heart wrenching 24 hours period when I realised I had lost my engagement and Michael’s wedding rings. I have been wearing his ring on my ring finger together with my engagement and wedding rings as well as one his ancestors wedding ring. That’s four rings on one finger. Luckily after posting a public appeal on Facebook a local couple contacted me to let me know they’d found them and I was reunited with my rings 24 hours after realising I had lost them. After this experience I’m now looking into how I can get four rings customised into one or two rings to make sure I never go through this horrible experience again. If you know of a jeweller in the sunny South of the UK who’d be up for the challenge, please let me know by commenting below, thank you.

As a last-minute decision I entered the 10k race part of the Bournemouth Marathon Festival. My aims were to:

• test my body
• complete the race injury free
• run the distance without stopping
• get round in 63 minutes

Well I can report I achieved three of the four aims. I ran the whole course, non-stop in 64:50 minutes and I’m injury free, I’ve got the medal to prove it too!. All of this just five months after surgery. I believe these are all good signs that my body will be able to cope with the 10 miles on 10 November; I’m counting the days.

Finally today has also been a reminder of how awful this grieving process is.  If the only way people can understand grief is to experience the loss of a loved one I wish I had a superpower that allowed me to stop anyone ever to have to go through it.

Last night the kids started complaining that he house felt cold, well of course it’s october and whilst the days are still mild, the nights are definitely not and as soon as the sun sets a chilly air enters our home.  So I started up the central heating system.

There’s a process involved with it, which Michael used to be in charge of, mainly by calling a plumber who would spend a good hour going up and down our attic, up and down our staircase, checking each radiator, firing up the boiler, turning off the boiler, etc, etc, etc. Michael (or I) never bothered to check what the plumber did, just paid the guy and off he went never to be seen again for another year.

Well this year I realised perhaps I had left it too late to call anyone in, they’re all already fully booked and I’d probably have to wait at least a week before someone could come in to get the heating going. Mmmmhh… maybe it was time to take action.  I bled the radiators, I knew that was an essential, I also knew that if I shut down all the radiators but the one furthest from the boiler any air bubbles would travel to the one still switched on and it would be easier to get the air out.  Well this radiator happens to be in the upstairs bathroom so cue frantic running up and down the stairs, checking the boiler, bleeding the radiator, switching on, switching off, back upstairs, back downstairs, whilst kids complaining it is still cold mummy!

Last night I was knackered, it was 9:30 pm, I hadn’t yet had a shower after cooking dinner, coming back from a run, feeding the children, the dog had yet to be walked, aaaaarrrrgh! so I gave up, but not for long.  This morning, I gave up my yoga class as I was determined to get the heating going before the children came back from school.  I did some research, Mr Google and Mr YouTube are lifesavers, found out that probably there wasn’t enough water in the system, checked the tank, aha! that’s why the plumber goes in the attic! Tank refilled, I proceeded to repeat all of last night’s actions until tadah! the heating started working.  Hence the reason I can sit comfortably in the study to type this post.

However at the end of this (minor) ordeal I sat down and cried, I suddenly missed Michael so much I ached all over.  He would have been so proud, he would have given me a big hug and a kiss and would have said that because I had saved him £40 on call out charges, he’d take me out to dinner or go out and get me flowers, or both.  I miss him, it hurts.

Instead I’m off to the hospital to be reminded once again how ill I am, to be given a very painful injection, which purports to be keeping the cancer at bay, to start counting the days until I must have the next one.