It's quite a challenge having cancer. I'm in the chemo phase - although will find out by end of next week if need more, maybe not - and there are all those niggly side-effects that can overwhelm your life if you're not careful.
There is the hair loss which includes rapidly disappearing eyebrows;precarious, in my case, threatening-to-split-in-half nails; stomach hassles; and, cannot think. Even worse is the constant threat of getting sick. Your immune system is compromised and this week I got flu. It really threw me; was more miserable than from just about anything and who knows, it might have been unrelated to the cancer.
But I am so sick of not feeling ok. Sick of not being able to go out, sick of missing things (today it was the Deborah Bell www.deborahbell.org/ walkabout at David Krut) and most of all, and this is the most downheartening (is there such a word?), the constant obsession with oneself and how one is feeling. In one sense, this blog just reinforces this.
But otherwise, am ok. Reading a fab book - Ndumiso Ngcobo's Is it Coz I'm Black? twodogs.book.co.za/blog/2008/10/13/is-it-coz-im-black-ndumiso-ngcobos-sequel-to-some-of-my-best-friends-are-white which is in the same vein as his first book, Some of my best friends are white. Both are hearty laugh-out-loud collections of essays/observations/satirical looks at life in the 'new South Africa'. Highly recommend them.
So life isn't so bad at all.
More on Deborah Bell:
www.davidkrutpublishing.com/2830/deborah-bell-recent-prints
www.whoswhosa.co.za/Pages/profilefull.aspx?IndID=8739
More on Ndumiso Ngcobo:
www.thoughtleader.co.za/silwane
I live in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was diagnosed with breast cancer on Thursday January 15 2009. This is my journey with cancer and other musings as surveyed - initially temporarily hairless - from under my hats.
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