So what I'm trying to get at is can you tell me a bit more about your mental state during the watchful waiting period, you know. You hinted that you weren't entirely happy with having nothing done, you know, is it a big problem?
No it's a very strange, it's also hard to put myself back there, bearing in mind that was 98/99 and part of 2000, it's quite a few years ago.
Part of me was, I suppose, slightly relieved that they weren't actually going to do this chemotherapy that I'd heard about. Each time I would go and I suppose each time the haematologist would say, “No we don't need to give any more treatment,” somewhere in the back of my head was thinking, “Well this can carry on for years, you know, ten years, twelve years and then well, perhaps that's it, perhaps that's all that's going to be”. So it was slightly worrying but as long as they kept reassuring me that I was OK. And my own feeling in my body was I was OK and I could work and travel, I could do everything which I'd done prior to diagnosis, I could live with that.
The problems came going back to the hospital every eight, ten weeks, whatever it might have been, because then you remember. You just get to the point where you're busy with other things, life is happening, and you can sort of put it to the back of your head. When you have to go to the hospital and sit in the waiting room and it's in the front of your head again and you have to consider all of the options that are available to you. But some people I understand really struggle with the watchful waiting because they want to get on and do something. And I was fortunate: I'm busy, I was working, and that filled the gap, I suppose that filled the worry hole that could be there. And then when we came to the point of actually doing the chemotherapy then I could actually focus on that, I could focus on, “Right, now we start to work”. |
