My First Down Day

It was bound to happen...I've finally caved and allowed myself to feel a little reality for a change, and it hurts. I was woken this morning by a call from Mum asking if I needed to wake myself up before she spoke to me because she needed to talk. Alarm bells immediately went off, and proceeded to get louder when it was followed by "if you would like to come out on October 1st, you can". This was after I had asked a few weeks back, but Mum decided she needed some quiet time with Dad, so clearly something had changed. I reached for Kirk's hand and tried to listen as she told me her legs went to spaghetti this morning when she got up from breakfast. She managed to get herself to her chair, but had problems for hours afterwards. I should say that this has come off the back of 3 awful days of pain and emotional upset, so perhaps it has something to do with that, perhaps it's the cancer...that's the point, we just don't know anymore.

Once I got off the phone I explained everything to my husband who immediately voiced concern over me jumping on a plane in a couple of days. After the birth of our son, I was diagnosed with Iron Deficiency and have been struggling on and off with the symptoms every since. Over the last few months my Ferritin levels have been sliding down quite rapidly which have resulted in me sleeping almost every afternoon for 2-3 hours (thank goodness my kids are both in full time school). I am barely coping with what I have on my plate right now, which is why my better half has concerns. My mum in no way would want me to travel if I wasn't 100%, so I have decided to stay put and not go. This was harder than you can imagine, and I pray to God I never look back and regret the decision, but I just can't face travelling when I am already so drained. For those of you who are the praying kind, please send a prayer in our direction - Thank you!

Anyhow, this isn't usually me, and I've done a great job of keeping all my feelings well and truly behind closed doors, but today I guess they needed to peek through. In fact, it was just yesterday that a colleague told me how strong she thought I was...why I enquired about how she came to that conclusion, she said she would be an emotional wreck if this was happening to her, and she had no idea how I could manage this, school, work, and family. Easy - I detached myself from the situation because of exactly that point...I was an emotional wreck and I was making myself ill. Self preservation kicked in, and I shut everything away, much to the concern of my Psychiatrist and Counsellor! I said I will deal with it when I have the strength to do so, but for now I'm happy; they mutually agreed to pick up the pieces afterwards and acknowledged that I'm clearly not ready just yet.

Right, I'm off back to my crafting/therapy, and I'm sorry that this feels like such a depressing post! Next one will hopefully be cheery! Hope everyone reading this is happy and healthy!

One of my favourite pictures of Mum and my little guy!