2023/24 Update
It’s been so long since I’ve posted. I’ve been deciding whether to keep this blog or be done with it. I still haven’t decided but I need to treat it as less of a burden and a way to have some fun and post updates.
So what’s happened since the last update. Well we had a bit of a rocky year. After I finished chemotherapy in February last year, I graduated with my double masters in April and we all went to Townsville to celebrate my graduation.
In May we went to Egypt for a family emergency. Then when we came back in June, I had some scans and it turned out that my cancer spread to my liver so along with being in my lungs, sternum and lymph nodes, it spread to my liver. I started a new chemo regime every three weeks and had been on it until February this year until we found it stopped working. It was supposed to be lifelong but now we have to change the plan.
We bough our first family home with a pool so it was a bit scary having to fork out double what we were paying in rent in mortgage payments but it’s finally good to be a homeowner. I won’t go too much into it as I have concerns about payments if anything happens to me but for now, it’s nice to be able to go to Bunnings and know we can do our own DIY and not have to ask for permission!
I had a bowel infection over Christmas which made me quite sick and I just got out of hospital from another more serious one. Because of having two quite serious bowel infections my oncologist is concerned about my quality of life and being able to cope with chemo as having serious bowel infections can be fatal during chemotherapy.
Work is going really well and I am undertaking a postgraduate course in evidence based coaching so that I can do workplace and executive coaching. It’s all grounded in positive psychology and brings together previous studies I have done so it’s nice to tie it all together. It feels like I have a bit more of a sense of purpose. Whilst I may not live long enought to register and practice as a psychologist, to me this is the next best thing and I can refer clients to the appropriately registered clinician if I encounter clients that require psychological treatment.
Lindy was struggling with my treatment and adjusting to a new school so we have put some strategies in place with the school and working with a lovely OT. With time, she is becoming less anxious and more confident so she is back to trying extracurricular activities which is giving her something positive to focus on since I spend so much time on the weekends on treatment week in bed.
Everything concerning my health is rather uncertain at the moment. I’ll let you all know when I know more.
xx
