Not A Drop

I went to see "A Star is Born" in the hopes of having a good cry. 

I went to a counsellor the same day.

Not a drop.

I did that thing of playing chicken with the counsellor when she went silent for ages. I thought I was going to get the giggles, so I ended up filling the space. But I should have held my nerve.

It is very hard to go to counselling without thinking of Tony Soprano.* 

I was never much of a crier when I was little. I remember watching TV with a relative once (non-Irish) who started sobbing away at a made-for-TV movie, and I was gobsmacked at the shamelessness of it. Even more incredibly, as the credits came up, she just blew her nose, wiped her face and switched over to Wheel of Fortune. I couldn't understand how such heartfelt emotion could be switched on and off. If I had reached the point of tears, that usually meant I was facing down deep disconsolate pain and my inner angst had burst out of my nail-digging fist. It would evolve into a wailing and a shuddering and a sickupping mess. It wasn't just something that could come upon me like a sneeze or a giggle, out it pops and you move on, without analysing deeply the whats and whys.

Everyone knows that this all changes when you become pregnant or have children. The floodgates open, the heart creaks at any tiny hint of something small being hurt or harmed, and the tears leak like my kitchen ceiling. It's enjoyable and liberating and I absolutely loved going to see Mamma Mia in the Mums 'n' Babies cinema club and soaking the Baby Bjorn with my tears as well as the baby's drool. 

There is something very therapeutic about a good cry. But Bradley and Gaga didn't do it for me. And I find I am boring myself, these days, so pouring my heart out to the kindly therapist totally failed on the lacrimation front. I could think about my children being motherless, that is always a shoo-in for producing a good salty flow, but I'm not a total masochist.

I was reading Sara Baume's "A Line Made By Walking", in which a young woman who is suffering an emotional wobble returns home to live in her dead grandmother's house. She describes lying with her face on the carpet for hours. That's how I feel on my down days. This insight I am getting (only intermittently, thankfully) into the world of depression is revelatory. It's the absence of feeling, the vacuum of emotion, that is most disturbing. Sadness, heartbreak, desolation - they would all be an improvement on the black-hole-ness. Despite many years of speaking to people with low mood, I always assumed there were strong feelings involved - raw emotion, deep hurt. Now I realise that those would be a relief, a sign that you were still able to feel and experience life, rather than just existing in this detached nothingness. The ability to have a good cry is the very thing that depression takes away from you.

I am grateful for the fact that my visits to the dark places are brief. I think my impatience is serving me well here; boring as I am when I'm content, it's a far sight better than the Father Stone I become when I'm feeling low. So my subconscious self decides to snap out of it, to change the channel. 

We went to see The Grinch the following week.

The tears flowed.  

*{To be fair to the counsellor, in addition to the usual dying/not-dying dilemma that I bring, this time I had the extra baggage of Doing Work on the House. She just threw her hands in the air at that stage. Someone who is mid-renovations cannot be helped by conventional psychotherapy. And if you're living in the house at the same time? Well then you pretty much deserve all the misery. There is no way to keep positive and chirpy when every day starts with the rat-tat-tat of three burly builders dragging a load of rubble into your kitchen, before you've had your first sip of tea. Lovely fellas they are, but Christ I will be happy to see the back of them}

I'm a Loser Baby

I didn't make it to the final stages of the Blog Awards. Very sad. 

Looking down the list of finalists, though, I see that my USP isn't S very well in today's culture. Sticking to conventional medicine and eating just, well, food, isn't going to get me very far in the world of cancerlebrity. 
I don't eat meat though! Except lamb and duck, and the occasional nibble of a cheap burger. 
And I tweet! I am hip down with the SoMe groove! Can't manage Instagram but, and SnapChat is a whole other mysterious realm. Facebook makes me jittery (poor grammar and multiple u ok huns give me heartburn).
But my biggest crime of all is being on Their Side. You know, those evil conniving doctors. Liars, cover-uppers, misogynists, pocket-liners, poisoners, couldn't-give-a-shitters. 

Sigh.
It will be ever thus, and I need to get over it. 

So besides the crushing disappointment of not winning any awards, I am once again trying to win the war against insidious and creeping doubt. The astute amongst you (hi mum) will be aware that it's been almost two months since my last scan, so I am in the upswing of scanxiety once again. I know this because all of my muscles hurt. I grind my teeth at night and the muscle spasm cascades merrily down my neck and spine. I have accepted that I have a functional disorder - a physical condition caused by psychological distress - but I always assumed that if you were aware it was psychological then the curse would be broken and the pain would fall away like the thorny forest around the freshly-kissed Aurora. Because if you know your anxiety is the cause, then you can tell your body to calm down, right? Not so. And each new pain triggers further anxiety and off we go again. 
[I've just realised that fibromyalgia would be an excellent topic for an award-winning blog. Not sure I could handle the offers of iv mistletoe infusions or angel therapy though]. 

I'm listening to Tindersticks. I had forgotten how good it feels to listen to miserable music. 

I'm rambling. I've been hell-bent head-down determined focussed goal-orientated for months now. I had very little pain during that time. It works. It steers me away from the thoughts of doom demise death desertion. 
I had calluses, not sores, and I'd like to keep them.
But the old skin cracks reappear, the memory of the spotty skin and the tingling fingers and the bloody bloody drain. 
They are there in the past, but also in all likelihood in the future too.
The acceptance of that is good for me. I have spoken to people whose cancer has recurred and they have been cut in half by the shock and disbelief, and the ignominy of having their hopes and dreams set on fire in an instant. But but but. I never thought it would come back. It's why the bloody treatment bells are a bad idea. "Don't be so negative!!" I hear the cries. "Negativity will kill you!" Emm, no, that would be the cancer, love. Besides, a pessimist is never disappointed. 

So I will forge ahead, filling my days with distracting busy-ness and ignoring the background stomach-lurching uncertainty of When. 

It's Not The Waking

This time last week I was filled with that kind of excitement that makes your skin tingle, but you don't realise it's happening. I was buzzing around from room to room, feeling for my phone in my pocket, spinning my head around to see what I might be missing. My brain was on overdrive, doing quick facial recognition checks (it's so good when people actually look like their Avatars) and slotting names and faces alongside each other in my internal database. 

I didn't know that this person was me. I know I like meeting people, and I know I like talking, and I have realised you get to talk more if you listen more, but I did not know that I liked hugging strangers, or brazenly accosting people to introduce myself. 
I've taken to organising events in recent years to make up for my complete absence of social life, and generally that involves guilting my friends into travelling long distances to go to the pub with me. This time it was a bit different, because this wasn't a simple matter of sipping pints of Guinness while reminiscing endlessly about the old days. This time there was a purpose or even, dare I say it, a Cause. 

We were gathering together to talk about being female doctors. We were standing up there and pointing loudly at our woman-ness. We might as well have all been naked with a baby hanging off each nipple. We could not have been more female. 
And it felt ridiculously good. It felt empowering, liberating, enlightening. Exactly what all the critics would worry that it might be like. Bloody women, giving out, no bloody gratitude for all we've done for them, would they not go home and get back to their knitting, 'tis the children I feel sorry for.

Knowledge filled the room. Did you know that some specialities have more female doctors than men? Did you know that those specialities tend to be the lower-paid ones? Did you know there is a massive gender pension gap for female doctors in Ireland? Did you know that some hospitals have far fewer female consultants than others? Did you know that gender affects health outcomes for the entire population, in a multiplicity of ways? Did you know that 160 million women are "missing" worldwide? Did you know that female surgeons have better patient outcomes than male surgeons? Did you know that if you put one hundred women in a room together, they will create an environment where individuals who usually find it hard to speak up at meetings will raise their hand?

Afterwards, I smelled of at least eight different hugged-on perfumes. 

Later on we drank some bubbles on the chilly rooftop, and ate some great food, and chatted about table quizzes and children and lifechanging injuries. We danced a little bit. 

This is where it begins for WIMIN. 
This is going to be the start of something.

Oh, and for the record, one professor brought her knitting with her.