Am I 'real' yet?

I would HAPPILY take the combination of achey, uncomfortable situations I described in the last post. The pain has moved to my back and hips. One sleepless night, several painkillers and one desperate phone call to the hospital begging them to furnish me with something stronger later and I'm no better off. The nurse I spoke to said most women liken it to labour pain when it reaches your lower back and hips. I can tell you now if this is labour pain there will be no babies passing through these hips. Sorry parents and in laws- no grandbabies for you. I consider myself to have a fairly high pain threshold but this feels like I've been crushed by a truck and now someone is twisting screwdrivers in to the most painful points. I can't sit, I can't stand, I can't lie on my back, stomach or side. I hate neulastra. If I wasn't so determined not to make this ordeal any longer than it has to be I would definitely be refusing this drug again. To do so would probably double my treatment time as I wait for my counts to come back up naturally after each hit and so it's not an option. Just one more thing to add to the list of things I hate about cancer. (This list is growing, fast. Really need to get back to working on the list of things I like about cancer. Like, today, instead of going to work I'm going for a day out with my Mam and sis. That's if I can kill the pain with super drugs of course.)

I have a good friend, who in an extremely unfair twist of fate, at age 28 has been suffering real back pain for several years. I always sympathised, but I never understood. I know that now. I hope more than anything that she finds the cure she needs. I can't imagine having this pain with no end in sight.

Makes me think, once again, about how this experience might or might not change me. Will I be different having felt real pain, real fear? Surely there can be few fears greater then the fear of losing your life. Maybe the fear of losing a child. I don't think I'm going to come out the end of this thinking it was a blessing in disguise, or a lesson I'm glad to have learned like some cancer survivors experience. I think I'm going to put it down to what it was, a horrible thing that happened that I survived. It will definitely make me feel different, worse, uglier, fatter, balder, tired. I'll be proud though. And definitely relieved. And probably still scared - scared it's not over. Maybe it makes me a bit more real. All I've ever wanted from my life was experiences. Without them, good or bad, how can you say you've lived? There would be nothing worse than dying feeling like you never lived.

This reminds me of the velveteen rabbit (I read it after that friends episode - this is coz I know you like rabbits and I know you like cheese - anyone?!).

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Or maybe when you're going through something like this, you need to feel that something positive will come of it or else you couldn't keep going.