On with the show (1/3)

Well two weeks to go to the wedding so I suppose its time to crack on! There is a lot to be getting on with, some of it very exciting, some of it I’m dreading!!

A lot of what I have to decide on my part is the way I am to look. This in itself strikes an off key chord with me as I have suffered at the hands of an illness that completely changed the way I look and put me through a recluse-ism as a result. You see the way I dealt with this is to try and convince myself that looks are not important yet here I am deliberating how to have my hair, what jewellery to wear and shoes. The shoe thing really annoys me. I simply can’t find anything I like or isn’t six inches high and completely impractical for wearing all day. In the end in a fit of peak I announce to my bridesmaids (who, lovely ladies, have already sorted their own shoes) that I… in the middle of November…. Will in fact be wearing no shoes at all. None. Screw it.

The one thing I really can’t scrimp on though is the dress; I’ve been liaising with a lovely designer in Yorkshire who as a friend of D’s cousin has offered to make me a dress for free. Hypocritically now after all that said I am actually thrilled to have a dress tailor made just for me, one of a kind! What bride, what girl could ask for more??? So I’ve emailed some pictures of dresses I’ve seen and Linda (the designer) has emailed back with two ideas, both so beautiful it takes me ages to decide. I can’t even ask D because he isn’t supposed to know what I’m going to wear and whilst the phrase “traditionally at weddings ….” Is currently driving me nuts I am really looking forward to seeing his face as I approach him down the aisle!! Pressure much?

I do decide and less than a week later we are driving up to Yorkshire for a fitting! It’s exciting but I’m also nervous and tense not least, because I am carrying with me a very big leather bag. This bag I vividly remember buying for university books… books for a course I will never attend now……… sigh. Where was I? Oh yes this bag is now containing a large plastic bottle, jug and funnel. Tomorrow you see I have the opposite kind of day trip, the one I dread, the one to Addenbrookes in Cambridge. For that trip I most defiantly will not be having a beautiful dress fitted, I will be stuck with needles for bloods and injections, scanned by a radioactive machine and (this is where the bottle comes in) handing in a 24hr collection of urine. Lovely I know but it is how they test for some of the cancer’s symptomatic chemicals in my system! So needs must.

I’m not sure that Linda notices. I hope not because otherwise the day is spectacular and I am thrilled with the dress! It is just what I want. Not just the dress but Linda also offers to make me a little jacket and hair accessories etc; she really is too kind!

The next day however is, as I said entirely different and I am filled with dread at what the tests might show. Did I make the right decision in waiting?? What if this is it? The downward slope? I can’t bear the tension for me, let alone for D and for my family and friends. I actually feel responsible for the results! Tuesday arrives and I go through it for the most part like the quiet robot that this hospital brings out in me. I shut down my emotions, close my eyes and just hold out an arm.

However there is one point where I break; we are waiting in the reception for the CT scans just after mine has been done – they see if you pass out after so you have to wait around- and it hits me. I am here in this horrible, horrible place of disease. If only that last scan had been clean and they as promised had moved me to the three monthly appointments. If only I had truly made it a year away from my operation cancer free and thus had the stats show I was so much less likely of this stupid re-occurance! I am furious and terrified! A combination that moves me to hysterical tears and the one recurring thought “I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE!!”

Look out tomorrow for a guest blog and find out how it feels looking in. vx