15/09/2010

Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is hard. It's an endless cycle of treatment after treatment and journey after journey.
It's hard to accept that that is my life now. Or at least for the time being. An hour and a half to the hospital, half an hour's treatment, an hour and a half home again, then sleep. I sleep so much it's hard to believe. I have no energy to do anything else. Even moving from one room to another is an effort.
But the hospital itself… that's strange. It's corridors, and happy music, and lights off then on again, positioning on the table, treatment that makes blue lights dance behind my eyes, and clacking heels down the corridor, and laughter with the radiographers, frowns and groans in the changing room. Smiles in the waiting room as everyone has a kind of camaraderie, we're all in this together, all us sick people being cured. Grimaces as we are alone, each of us unwilling to wish this on any one else. Cause yeah, it's a painless treatment, and it doesn't take long, but it's later, it's life outside the hospital that stops. You can deal with the treatment, spending time at the hospital, because you have to. When you are home, when life is your own again, your energy is gone, your eyes are tired, your stomach, your throat hurt, but that is nothing compared to the nausea and the perplexing sleep depravation - eight hours a night is not enough, I need at least 12.
We can deal with the hospital. But on the outside, there is nothing, we are empty shells.
And I'll be honest; if I have to be a shell, I'd rather be one on the beach!

06/09/2010

Him

I love him. I love him with the whole of my heart. I love him to the point where it hurts.
I feel like I will never be alone. Like I will always have him who understands me to the point where I don't even have to speak and he knows what is in my head. My heart soars when I think of him and dream of him and when I look at him I forget how to breathe.
But we are apart. Separated. Split by hospitals and 300 miles. And when it isn't distance that keeps us apart, it's life itself. He runs and swims and surfs and does things as ridiculous as the Ironman challenge. I'm stuck doing nothing but waiting for the next day of treatment, getting tireder by the day, staying with the family, slowly having my life sucked away.
I want to give him the world. I want to run barefoot in the sand with him, chasing tales in the rain. But I don't know how. I just hope he can forgive me, and remember that if I'm well again... well then the world is his!

* Footnote: Ironman = a crazy triathlon of 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile cycle and 26 mile run - one after the other, no break, no rest, just pure relentless fitness.

03/09/2010

Don't Leave

You woke up and said, "Baby I had one of those dreams again.
The rain came down and I lost you in the wind."
You said something about, "Don't Leave," before you fell back to sleep,
Before I could sing my song back to you.