What to say?

Two years of constant stress, worries about infections, side effects of treatment and getting a little girl through chemotherapy have really taken their toll. I am coping and getting through every day and I'm not even depressed. But emotionally there is a knot that I cannot untie. Mention Catherine to me and how great it is that she has finished treatment and you will get the expected 'Yes, it is great isn't it'. But I am not great.

My little girl has got through all this and mentally she is pretty much unscathed. She has a phobia of needles and sometimes talks about when her hair fell out, but otherwise she is doing ok. But all the 'keeping a stiff upper lip' and jollying Catherine along that I have been doing the last couple of years has not been good for me. All the playing down of Catherine's sickness and nausea, all the chivvying along telling her she would be ok, all the bouncing around to try and make her feel better, all the 'making normal' has driven me, quite frankly, mildly insane.

Smiling on the outside whilst my head was screaming 'MY LITTLE GIRL HAS CANCER. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS??????'

Every day thinking and feeling I LOVE MY KID. WHY DOES SHE HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS?

I sat with Catherine tonight on the sofa as she had leg pains. She had been out walking and her legs hurt. I nearly cried there and then. Painful legs were the first symptom of Leukaemia. I remember reading in my home doctor journal two years ago about painful legs and they were either a sign of growing pains or leukaemia. At the time I thought 'growing pains...that must be it. It could NEVER be leukaemia'. Oh how wrong I was.

Now I live my life in a weird sense of tension, constantly on alert. It is almost like I have been through a war zone and am now trying to believe it is over. And whilst I keep trying to fool myself that I am ok and Catherine is doing ok and everything will be fine now, my subconscious mind keeps telling me that life is actually quite dangerous and anything can happen at any time. Seriously, if in the next few days some trick-or-treater comes up and whispers 'boo' over my shoulder, I will leap out of my skin!

It isn't just Catherine's illness that I have dealt with over the past few years. I was diagnosed with heart failure after the birth of Catherine's brother and was told that I might live or die and that it was too early to tell (I was diagnosed April this year). Miraculously, God healed my heart but even after a miracle, I still feel like I have been in the trenches for too long.

So there you have it! And whilst I am so grateful to God for his healing of my child, and whilst I am so lucky that medical treatments mean she is still here, I am hurting. And I imagine that Suzanne is probably the only other person who reads this who might have some understanding of what on earth I am going on about...but then again there may be others and I might be wrong...