Our conversation had turned to my discomfort about the oncology appointment next week, and as I expected, he is thinking that it's a good idea to go and find out what they say. His stance is that he saw his neighbour opt to die early rather than endure another horrific cycle of chemotherapy. Therefore he believes that we should consider the option carefully and perhaps reject it if it doesn't seem to give a good return on investment. He feels that my original and extreme reaction to being told I had breast cancer was too extreme (I wanted to have both breasts immediately removed) and that I need to think carefully about chemotherapy and not have an instant and emotional reaction if I am told that I need it.
I snapped back because whatever, I want it to be my decision and noone else's, no matter what the return in investment. I will not know how I feel until the moment I am told whether or not I need chemotherapy, and no matter what my reaction, I want to have it accepted that it is my decision. I railed at him for criticising the "emotional" and extreme way in which I faced my diagnosis in the first place and told him that whatever I said or did, it was my way of dealing with it.
He looked hurt. He has had malignant skin cancer in the last so he does know what it is like to be told that you have invasive cancer at a point before you know just how bad it is. He has been here. But everyone is different. I just want to feel that some of the control, some of the decision-making, is mine.
We got past it and I had my appointment. It seems that the seroma is too insignificant to risk the draining procedure, but on the whole the breast is looking good. The plastics surgeon came in and said that the feeling I have of the implant moving around, is fairly normal and that it will shrink and settle in due course. I was also told now to actively wash the scabbed area gently, and this would remove it.
On the way home we found that we needed to make a delivery to Edinburgh. T-shirts that we had been told by our customer were allegedly needed for an event tonight, even though the event printed on them is actually not beginning for another few days. But although the t-shirts were ready and printed, our overnight courier had failed to collect them the night before. We dropped into the factory and collected the six cartons and set off on the 300-mile trip up North. As we passed Preston, K spoke to the customer to assure him that, true to request, we were delivering the order personally because the courier had let us down. And everything in the customer's guilty voice told us that the deadline had been a false one, although this wasn't said in words.
But what the heck? It was a far better day than when we went 'merely' to the Lake District for the meeting....even some blue sky visible in jagged nuggets between the rolling white clouds. We crossed the border into Scotland a couple of hours later, and after the mandatory staccato run into Edinburgh, we followed the Satnav's instructions straight to our destination on Victoria Street in the Old Town and delivered the cartons....rather, I sat helplessly in the car while K ferried them all in.
I know he wanted to park up and get out, and find somewhere to buy stovies, but I couldn't face walking around pre-festival Edinburgh even though I had been seated for over three hours. At this time of year, Edinburgh has plenty of restaurants and shops but they are either heaving with visitors, or closed. The prospect, at 4pm, of finding somewhere to sell us a decent scotch pie or a tub of stovies, was limited. So, to K's disappointment, we simply turned tail and drive back down south again, stopping only to devour a Krispy Kreme doughnut at a service station near the border.
But what the heck? It was a far better day than when we went 'merely' to the Lake District for the meeting....even some blue sky visible in jagged nuggets between the rolling white clouds. We crossed the border into Scotland a couple of hours later, and after the mandatory staccato run into Edinburgh, we followed the Satnav's instructions straight to our destination on Victoria Street in the Old Town and delivered the cartons....rather, I sat helplessly in the car while K ferried them all in.
I know he wanted to park up and get out, and find somewhere to buy stovies, but I couldn't face walking around pre-festival Edinburgh even though I had been seated for over three hours. At this time of year, Edinburgh has plenty of restaurants and shops but they are either heaving with visitors, or closed. The prospect, at 4pm, of finding somewhere to sell us a decent scotch pie or a tub of stovies, was limited. So, to K's disappointment, we simply turned tail and drive back down south again, stopping only to devour a Krispy Kreme doughnut at a service station near the border.
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