Tomorrow is a new age.

I can't find yesterday's post, though God knows it took long enough to get around to writing it. It was a busy weekend, seeing my lovely boys at last and I'm pleased to say that they were very well- behaved and I was sorry to see them go on Sunday. We played games together and I think they enjoyed themselves too. Hopefully I will be able to see them more this coming weekend...

...which we are already halfway towards. And tomorrow I think is what you might call s 'red letter' day, and one I am nervous about, because for the first time, I'll be walking through the doors of the Arden Cancer Centre. I haven't been brave over the last few weeks, because despite the pain send the surgery, it has been as though it was so long ago that they told me that I had cancer, and it seems all like a bit of a dream. A haze of drugs and pain and adjustment, followed by bouts of euphoria when I got the relatively good news that there was nothing in my lymph nodes and that they though they had removed everything.

But tomorrow I may learn what else is waiting, and perhaps I shall get the test results which will indicate how likely if is that my cancer will return. They say it is unlikely that I should need chemotherapy, but then by they I mean the surgeon who didn't even operate on me, so what does he know? The specialist seeing me has an impressive pedigree but I note that he is also involved in a clinical trial which looks at the value of chemotherapy on pre-menopausal women. Of which I am currently one.

Currently, because my likely treatment is a five-year course of Tamoxifen, which will put me squarely in the menopause, and I am hearing so many tales of woe about it. One friend found it so dreadful that she stopped taking it: she had a complete personality change, became angry all the time. Another did not lose her temper or her libido, but suffers from blood clots. Though I try to determine not to read things on the web, it's impossible to avoid them when I'm genuinely trying to find out what I can about the drug.  And until last week, I was thinking that I had until mid-September until my body began this change, because they'd told me I wouldn't get an oncology appointment until a least then.

Will I get fat? Grow a moustache? Lose my libido? I won't mourn losing my period, but the inevitable loss means that I am going to age. My skin will become thinner and dryer, my hair will thin  and my bones will become porous. Night sweats, hot flashes and temper tantrums to look forward to. This is the good outcome for tomorrow. The bad outcome will be being told that I would benefit from chemotherapy as well. Not simply because chemotherapy is a bitch, but because the genes in my tissue will have indicated that the cancer might return.

Whatever the outcome, you will see it here.